FABPOW! Sausage Carbonara and Avery Brown Dredge

A typical Saturday morning is waking up and spending the next three-or-four hours split between writing, exercising and looking at every recipe book I own trying to work out what to cook for the rest of the weekend, usually finding everything and nothing and cooking a fish finger sandwich for lunch and buying a pizza for dinner, then repeating the process on Sunday morning.

Sometimes, through the indecision, I do find recipes to cook. And this is one of them. It’s from Jamie’s Italy. Carbonara plus sausages. Many dishes can be improved with the addition of a sausage and I figured carbonara was one of them.

Rich and salty, comforting, simple and delicious; I love carbonara. I needed a beer to cut the richness, to handle the smoked pancetta and to balance the herby banger. Avery Brown Dredge was in my head as it recently passed a year since the beer was brewed. I’ve still got a few bottles left so I grabbed one. Bright orange-gold, big frothy white foam, it’s just as good as it’s ever been, maybe even better – orangey, sweet aroma followed by a Saaz spiciness, with a dry and peppery bitterness. The sweetness balances the richness and the smoke and the whole thing wraps together in a perfect little package. If you haven’t got ABD then try something like Victory Prima Pils or Dogfish Head My Antonia.

With sausages and spaghetti left over, on Sunday I made one of my favourite dishes: fry little balls of sausage, add garlic and chilli, a carton of chopped tomatoes, seasoning, fresh basil and mix with spaghetti. Easy. But I’ve never found a FABPOW for this one. I’ve gone down the dark lager road but I need something bigger, so perhaps it’s time for Schlenkerla...

Two FABPOWs in a week! I call that a successful weekend staring at recipe books.

A note on the sausage carbonara recipe: cooking for one hungry person, I halved the recipe given for four and it was the right amount for me. Four sausages between four people is a bit stingy, I think. 

FABPOW! Blueberry Pancakes and Palo Santo Marron

FABPOW, where have you been?! The last one was so long ago; I’ve been neglectful. Not that I haven’t tried. I have tried. Most weekends I’ve tried. I just haven’t succeeded. I’ve had some good matches but good isn’t good enough. A FABPOW is better than that.

And this one is seriously good. It’s also in time to celebrate Pancake Day.

My version is a classic pancake recipe (English-style, not thick American-style) with a slosh of stout in the mix and a handful of blueberries in the pan, then covered in maple syrup on the plate. The beer on the side was Dogfish Head's Palo Santo Marron. The bottle was almost three years old but it still had loads going on: cocoa, vanilla, berries, a brandy-like booziness. Just imagine those flavours with the burst of sharp sweetness from the blueberries and the maple syrup. Perfect. Any big, rich stout will be brilliant.

Happy Pancake Day!

The picture above is not mine, of course. It comes from the BBC. My photos were terrible so they got deleted. I must get better at taking photos...

The Six Types of Beer and Food Pairing

There are traditionally two thoughts when it comes to matching food and drink: you either go with something which compares or contrasts. I think there are four further categories: there’s a geographical pairing, the ‘calm down’ pairing, there’s the pairing which creates something more than the sum of its parts and there’s the ‘whatever’ match.

A Compare pairing would be something like chocolate and imperial stout, carbonnade and dubbel, roast beef and bitter; matches where the beer has flavours which marry nicely to the food.

A Contrast pairing would see foie gras and lambic, fish and chips and pale ale, cheeseburgers and IPA, where the use of hops, carbonation or sourness is there to slice through the richness and fattiness of the food or the full flavours.

Geographical matches pair up food and drink from the same locations, whether it’s a taste of holidays or the bringing together of two things which are linked by place: gyros and Mythos, Estrella and paella, jumbalaya and Budweiser. They are often the simplest of matches and there’s also some crossover into other categories with this: US IPA and a cheeseburger, for example. There’s a psychological link to some of these, too; the pairing works because we think they belong together or we’ve long been told that they belong together: pizza and Peroni, hot dogs and Bud, oysters and Guinness.

The ‘calm down’ pairing is one which aims to round out flavours rather than boost them. It’s a hot curry with a cold lager or wheat beer. It’s about not overloading the tastebuds with things to worry about. Hops punch chilli heat in the face so a spicy curry and a hoppy beer is just too much. It’s big flavoured dishes with simpler beers because some matches need calming down and balancing out. Sometimes part of the dish can act as the calm down factor, such as coleslaw with jerk chicken, in which case a stronger flavoured beer, like a fruity-floral IPA, can work well.

The opposite of this is the hardest pairing to get right and it’s the sort of match that makes you wonder why any other beers even bother. It’s cherry beer and chocolate brownies, rauchbier and sausage, barley wine and blue cheese. These pairings each make something new, something bigger and better than the composite parts and set the match off in an exciting new direction with an explosion of flavour. It’s also often more unusual or esoteric matches, or bigger and bolder flavours, which create these pairings. And they are the sort that you remember for longer and return to. It’s not appropriate for every match because sometimes you just need to compare or contrast pairing, but sometimes, when you want something special, this is the way to go.

The final pairing is the ‘whatever’ match. It’s about not caring and just taking a beer and drinking it while eating and it working because you want it to. Not everyone cares for planning out pairings and as long as they like the match then that’s good enough.

Six types of beer and food pairing. Are there any other types I've missed?

FABPOW! Paella and Estrella

It's too easy, obvious even, but the Food and Beer Pairing of the Week, this week coming from beside the beach in Menorca, is paella and Estrella (which like last year's gyros and Mythos has a likeable rhyme to it).

This is one of those matches which is made perfect in the mouthful. Sure, the bright lift of carbonation, the sweet body and the dry quench of hops help, but the flavours themselves only go so far together. Paella and Estrella is a psychological kind of pairing where local flavours come together. It's why dumplings and Gambrinus work so well in the Czech Republic and why Carbonnade and dubbel work so well in Bruges, but take them somewhere else and they lose something: the psychological link lifts them up.

Paella: Fishy rice, rich and salty, golden from the tang of saffron, livened by lemon and fresh with seafood. Estrella stamps in rather than slides over, with its full body and hints of bubble gum, sherbet, honey and bread. There's an inelegance to it but it works like a pint of bitter and a ploughman's served in a pub garden: because it does, because they seem to belong on the same table, because it's simple, a no-brainer. And of course they taste good together but it works best because it's two local flavours enjoyed locally and that's enough for some of the best food and beer matches.

FABPOW! The Search for the Best Beer for Sausage, Chips and Beans

Two weeks ago I asked an important question on the back of many failed attempts to find the answer for myself: what is the perfect beer for sausage, chips and beans? This weekend I made it my mission to get the definitive answer by using those responses.

The beers were gathered and I soon realised that I had to call in some assistance, so I invited Mark and Matt over to my sausage party. We started off with seven bottles but this jumped to nine by grabbing two other possible choices from the fridge. I could see from their enthusiasm for all things sausage, chips, beans and beer that they were well up for this, even if it was possibly the most ridiculously geeky thing we’ve ever done: three of us squashed around a small table with three plates of food, nine bottles and nine glasses and an hour talking about sausages.

We had a mix of beers from pale to dark, bitter to fruity to smoky to sour. The sausages were Waitrose gourmet pork (cooked to slightly beyond caramelised...), homemade chips cooked in the oven and seasoned with salt, pepper, a little paprika, a clove of garlic tossed in and a pinch of thyme. The beans were beans.

Anchor Bock was my first sip with a sausage. Smooth, chocolatey and surprisingly light bodied, it works ok and just handles the beans but veers off in different directions at the end and almost crashes.

Monsieur Rock was suggested by Andrew from the Bottle Shop, where I picked up a few of the bottles. He thought it was be a refresher able to lift the heavy flavours off the tongue and I could see where he was coming from. Sadly the beer got lost in everything and didn’t work but it's such a good beer that we finished it off alone after eating.

Bath Barnstormer, with its dark, fruity malt flavours, was nice but the badass beans blew it away and left it a little lifeless.  

I picked the Strong Dark Mild from Kernel and Redemption because I wanted a dark mild and I love Kernel and Redemption. It was probably a little too bitter to work and left the flavours blurry rather than clear.

My fridge is a constant source of Avery Brown Dredge so we grabbed one of them and I’ve never tasted a beer that works so perfect with a meaty, herby sausage. It was amazing. The almost-savoury bitterness means it’s made for meat, herbs and garlic. However, it is not made for baked beans...

Rodenbach was an interesting choice but it totally makes sense if you think of it like a ketchup or HP sauce with a beer-as-condiment match (because I think Rodenbach tastes like tomatoes and vinegar). The first taste got me excited: the beans softened the sourness and the flavour profile works really well, sending it off in an exciting new direction, but between forkfuls of food it doesn’t work so well and, as Matt said, it doesn’t sit with the tone of the meal, which calls for something simpler.

Purity Pure Gold was a late entry, plucked from the fridge in a desire for a pale British beer with British hops, and we’re glad we did grab it as it was excellent. It doesn’t add anything in terms of flavour but it does a great job of clearing the palate and compliments the mouthful. Together the food and beer taste better, and that’s always a good thing.

Rochefort 6 was my choice for a Belgian brune and was also my choice as the best match of the night. It doesn’t do anything special but it’s able to balance everything out perfectly. The simple, dried fruit body, more carbonation than found in the other beers, plus a dry bite of hops in the finish were spot on. Uncomplicated and excellent. Somehow it also made the chips taste more potatoey.

Finally there was Schlenkerla Marzen, which Mark and Matt chose as their top match. Like a sprinkle of MSG it makes the whole thing taste bigger and meatier, complementing the sausage and the beans excellently while adding its own flavour to the overall pairing. It did work superbly well.

All three of us listed Schlenkerla and Purity Pure Gold in our top 3. Matt and I had Rochfort 6 in there and Mark had Rodenbach (for sausage alone Avery Brown Dredge was a winner – if we have somehow created the perfect beer for sausages then I’ll be inordinately proud of that). If we hadn’t been geeky enough already we then spent half an hour discussing the relative merits in depth while we sipped the rest of the beers.

What is interesting in this example is the type of match you want for the dish. Rauchbier was spectacular with sausage, chips and beans but do you want something spectacular with such a simple meal? I don’t. It’s a meal we eat without thinking; a regular meal that doesn’t want beautifying with beer, but one which can benefit from a nice choice, so I want a beer which is equally simple and complimentary to go with it. The extension of this is that the beer should be something you drink before, during and after the dinner – where Rodenbach and Schlenkerla work really well as flavour explosions, I don’t want to drink them (mainly because I don’t really like them) away from the plate.

That’s what pushed Purity Pure Gold forward: it’s a simple beer but a good one. You can open it while sizzling the sausages, sip between mouthfuls and then finish it after you’re done eating. The same with the Rochefort which works before, during and after.

So there we have the definitive selection of the best beers to eat with sausage, chips and beans. My FABPOW would be Rochefort 6. The malt sweetness, the carbonation and the dry hops work amazingly well to compliment and then to cut through the fat and creamy, beany sweetness. If you want something completely different, but completely awesome, then go for Schlenkerla Marzen which is a faceful of meat.

FABPOW! Black Isle Yellow Hammer with a Summer Supper

A golden summer ale with a fluffy white foam, this beer bursts with a lively balance of citrus zest and floral freshness from the Cascade hops. It’s incredibly clean in the flavour with the hops shining bright and vibrant rather than muted or squished together anonymously (you know how sometimes hops in beer just become a white noise of bitterness, lacking any clarity in their flavour? This is the opposite of that). The mouthfeel and body are that of a just-pulled pint of cask ale, with a soft carbonation. Combine that with the sort of bitterness that exemplifies the dictionary definition of balance and drinkability and this is a cracking beer for the sunshine.

For dinner I had fresh lemon sole, baked potatoes and salad. A simple summer supper, something I'll cook most weeks, something light and healthy and fresh. The lemony, zesty quality in the beer chimes with the lemon in the fish and the dressing on the salad (usually just oil and lemon) while the creamy, starchy potato is lifted by the body of the beer.

Black Isle's Yellow Hammer is a bottle to open in the garden with a dinner that wants a light burst of freshness to bring out the fresh flavours in the food. Make sure you've got a couple of bottles though as you'll drink the first one fast.

FABPOW Wanted! What beer to go with sausage, chips and beans?

I need your assistance and I need some suggestions for a FABPOW! (a Food and Beer Pairing of the Week!)

I’ve lost count of the times I’ve tried to pair a beer with sausage, chips and beans without success. It’s one of the greatest meals in the world (add egg as well if that's your preference) and my lazy Friday dinner of choice (Friday also being a night when lots of beer bottles are emptied) but I just haven’t found a beer to go perfectly with it.

I’ve tried stouts and bitters, brown ales, dark lagers, ambers, pales ales. Nothing I’ve had has worked. The sausages and chips are the easy bits and most beers work with that, the difficult part comes with the beans – sweet, savoury, creamy, mouth-filling; they aren’t beer’s best friend.

Personally, I think the beer needs some dark malt, lots of body and sweetness and a fair amount of booze, something around 6%, but I'll try anything if it works. I’ve never tried a bock because I want to have an English beer with it but that’s possibly the next step I’ll take. I also think a good oatmeal stout could work but I haven’t found a winner yet.

So help me out: what beer do you think will be ideal? I’ll try and do a taste-off with some of the suggestions soon.

Image from here

Byron Burger Craft Beer List

For the past few months I’ve been working on the most exciting project I’ve been involved with since I started writing about beer: putting together a beer list for Byron Hamburger.

The brief was to come up with a selection of the best beers from around the world to be part of a “Summer of Craft Beer”. Easy, right? Not quite. We needed a mix of beers, we needed beers which work well with burgers, we needed them to be in 330ml bottles, they had to look good in the fridge and on the table, we needed them to be always available to fulfil orders to all the branches (the 15th location is opening soon with more to follow later in the year), they had to be affordable, they had to appeal to the drinker who had never passed Peroni but also had to stand up to the critique of a beer geek, and they all had to taste great.

A wide choice of beers at the first tasting; some just to show the variety of beers, others for serious consideration for the beer list

We began by holding a huge tasting of beers with senior members of Byron staff at Camden Town Brewery (Camden started working with Byron and suggested I get involved as well). This also featured a brewery tour to understand beer and a talk about why beer is important and how it works with food. We poured about 40 beers, talking through each of them and allowing Byron staff to taste and experience a breadth of good beer before choosing some favourites.

We narrowed the selection down to about 15 and tasted again. Then the list was cut down to a final 10 based on all of our favourites and the ones which stood up best in the taste tests.

The final list of 10 craft beers is:

Sierra Nevada Pale Ale

Brooklyn Lager

Camden Town Hells Lager

Camden Town Wheat Beer

Goose Island Honkers Ale

Odell Cutthroat Porter

Little Creatures Pale Ale

BrewDog Punk IPA

Flying Dog Snake Dog IPA

Kernel IPA

These will now sit on the menu alongside Peroni, Negro and London Pride, which have been on the drinks list since Byron began (SNPA and Brooklyn are also carried over from the original menu).

There’s a mix of British (mostly London because all Byron locations are currently in London), American (because it’s an American-style burger joint) and Australian (because everyone loved Little Creatures); a lot of beers using US hops because we felt these worked best with burgers; an approachable pale lager from Camden, a dark beer from Odell and some bigger beers for the braver drinkers in the Flying Dog and Kernel: it’s a taster of some of the great beers which are available in the UK.

I’ve since been training staff from all restaurants so if you go and any of them come out with pearls of wonderful information about these beers then I’ll take the credit... It’s also been great to talk through these beers with people who have never tried anything like them before to see what they think and how they react: Little Creatures always gets a good response, so do the Camden beers, the Kernel impresses people with flavour and aroma they never thought could exist in a beer, the Punk and the porter divide people with many being surprised by the porter.

A massive Byron feast - the only thing missing is craft beer!

As a starter beer list I think it’s excellent and if the summer of craft beer is a success then hopefully it will develop into a permanent fixture of the Byron offering with a broader choice of brews. The beers are in the fridges from today so if you want a great beer served with a fantastic burger (because Byron hamburgers are brilliant) then you know where to go.

What do you think of the list?

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I've written about beer and burgers a few times before. There's venison burger with Czech cherry lager, a trip to California where I survived on burgers and beer alone for over a week and then a beer and a burger whilst watching baseball.

FABPOW! Sam Adams Noble Pils with a Shake Shack Burger at Citi Field

I’ll always remember the first time I went to a football stadium to see a live game. I don’t know where it was or who was playing, I just remember seeing the pitch and thinking how much smaller it looked in real life, how much closer the players were and that they were real, how green it was, how it sounded (cheering and swearing) and smelt (cigarettes, frying onions, piss). Most of all I just remember being in awe of it all and I’m sure I vowed to go back every week after.

Walking onto the concourse of Citi Field, the home of the New York Mets, I had that same feeling I did when I was a 10-year-old boy: amazement, excitement, wonder; how it’s smaller in real life than on TV, but how impressive the stadium is as it hugs the gleaming emerald outfield; how bright and colourful it is; the hum of chatter, the call of food sellers ‘Hot dogs here!’ and the smell of fresh air and frying food.

It was my first baseball game after being a fan of the sport since university, and I’m there with Matt, the guy who got me into good beer, who also shares my love of baseball and eating and drinking too much. As we walk around the open concourse, past bars and food vendors, the excitement only grows in a sea of fans dressed in white, blue and orange.

Spot the baseball...

Our first beer was an odd but easy choice: Rolling Rock. It’s a look back to the uni days when our housemate Jess would bring us cases of Rock from the off-licence her dad ran (she also brought us a 6-foot inflatable Corona bottle...).

The second beer was an easier one: Budweiser (with a hot dog, of course). What is everyone else drinking? What beer is synonymous with America and sports? We had to have one while we were there. And you know what? It was exactly what we wanted while we watched the game: cold and crisp, easy to gulp, not distracting as we sat there like excited boys staring out at the game before us.

As this trip was specifically to see baseball games (as well as to eat and drink New York into a state of famine), we emptied our wallets and paid for shit-hot seats. This meant a great view, plush leather chairs, and, even better, a waiter service for food and drink so we didn’t miss any action (even better still, it meant access to a different bar which included craft beers!).

We ordered beers, going to the bar ourselves to see what was on. I had a Sam Adams Noble Pils and it was excellent; exactly what I wanted and expected, only better.

Then the burgers arrived.

Shake Shack burger have a few locations in America and, more recently, two in the Middle East. One of their outlets is at Citi Field and when we passed it earlier it had a huge line waiting to be served. We’ll get it later, we decided, before we knew about the perks of our expensive ticket purchase.

Juicy meat, oozing cheese and the softest, sweetest bun I’ve ever tasted, melting like candy floss into the warmth within, becoming chewy and working so well with the salty char of the beef and the sharp cut of the condiments. A mouthful of the Noble Pils to follow it down (FABPOW!) while we look around at the bright green playing field and things, I think to myself, don’t get much better than this.

Beer, burgers and baseball. That’s why we went to New York. This moment brought the three Bs together in the perfect way: our first night in NYC, our first baseball game, a great beer and a brilliant burger.

None of these pictures do it any justice...

FABPOW! Jambalaya

I video blogged! Below is the written version which doesn’t show me doing the eating and drinking and is hopefully more coherent.

Jambalaya: a jumble of French, Spanish and Creole in the southern states of America; a jumble of meat, vegetables and fish; a jumble of rich and spicy, smoky, meaty and savoury with bursts of sweet prawns or tomatoes. It’s a paella or pilau which has been uprooted and fallen down near the Gulf of Mexico.

I used Jamie Oliver’s recipe and it was great. If recipe reading is too strenuous then do this, with some stirring in between: chicken, smoked sausage; onion, pepper, celery; garlic, chilli (I used scotch bonnet), bay leaves, thyme; stock; rice; prawns. 

It’s a great dish for a beer, with tastes and textures calling out for the cooling cut of carbonation, and so with it I wanted to try a few different ones, to try and see what worked best and why. I like dark beers with spicy food as the chocolatey, roasty depth acts like a Scoville sponge, rounding out flavours, while there’s a smoky/savoury bridge in them which can bring flavours together. Many people like pale ales with spices, something I’m more wary of because hops and chilli tend to fight rather than play and like two naughty kids when you put them together they get naughtier and noisier rather than quieter and calmer. I also couldn’t resist trying it with a lager. If someone in a Southern US state was going to have a beer with their dinner then chances are they’d have something like Bud. Jaipur was there because I was drinking it while cooking dinner.

Smuttynose Robust Porter. Chocolate, smoke, a savoury depth and a long-lasting roasty finish which develops as it warms. With the dinner it worked really well to begin, being a cooling sensation against the fiery scotch bonnets, but when the long finish came out from its six degree slumber it rubbed against the spice and intensified it - imagine a cup of coffee when all you really want is a glass of lemonade.

Caldera Pale Ale. What a nice beer. A noseful of Cascades, smooth and crisp without the bitter hit I was expecting but enough to make you go straight back for more, making it very drinkable. The underlying sweetness in it made it work really well with the richly savoury dish, slicing through the chorizo smokiness, but the hops at the end, rather than rounding it off, add a little jagged edge. Still a nice match up though and something I’d have again.

Thornbridge Jaipur. A glass of Centennials, fruity, floral, a spectrum of oranges and a long-lasting bitterness. It’s the first bottle of Jaipur I’ve had in ages and I enjoyed it. However, it didn’t like the jambalaya. The bitterness in there became harsh with the spices, earthy and tangy.

Budweiser. I’ve got no problems drinking Budweiser and as a beer it fascinates me, particularly its history. It’s very pale, doesn’t bellow out a huge aroma (most people drink it straight from the bottle so forget late hops), but has that classic bite of apple. It’s clean and crisp, cold from the fridge it’s uncomplicated and easy to drink: it is what it is. With jambalaya... it was perfect. I wanted it to just be ok, but it was spot on. With the spice a little lemon character came through which cut through everything, an unexpected burst of sweetness was enough to fight off the saltiness and it cooled everything down and balanced it out, making it the beer I wanted to drink more of.

The jambalaya was delicious. It’s also a dish which throws out different challenges to finding a good beer to go with it – chilli heat, smoke, delicate prawns, rich rice, a heavy and sticky texture, tomato. I tried all the beers over and over (until at the end of dinner I couldn’t move for an hour) and Bud was the one I kept going back to: it just worked. It was uncomplicated and improved the flavours in both the food and the beer. Next time I should try it with Dixie, a New Orleans lager for that local flavour. Until then, Budweiser gets FABPOW’d.

FABPOW! Musa Beer Dinner

It’s taken too long to get this posted but it’s finally here. The dinner which me, Zak Avery and Pete Brown held at Musa, in Aberdeen, was a success with all six food and beer pairings working wonderfully, brilliantly well. Therefore they are all worthy of FABPOW! status.

 

To get to the pairings took a few weeks. It started by us choosing two beers each, any two beers as long as they were bottles which BrewDog could get in the UK. Then many emails bounced between us and Dave More, the excellent head chef at Musa, as we tried to come up with the best possible courses and pairings, tweaking this little detail or that. Eventually we got there.

 

Stone Ruination IPA with haggis spring rolls and black pudding bon bons (my choice). This beer is a favourite of mine, one which blew my mind with the awesome power of hops when I first had it a few years ago. At 100 IBUs it’s not exactly a light beer to start with, but who cares, it worked superbly with the richness and spices in the dishes with the bon bons being like onion bhajis with a blood sausage twist – as beer snacks go this one is a winner.

 

Dogfish Head/Birra del Borgo My Antonia with tortillitas de camarones (Zak’s choice). A great beer hopped with Saaz, Warrior and Simcoe, giving lemon pith and a floral, biting bitterness above the smooth body. It cut through the spicy prawn pancake and salsa with ease, providing that slice of carbonation and burst of palate-livening hops.

 

Maui Coconut Porter with belly pork marinated in Punk, garlic, ginger, chilli and more for three days, served with couscous and a rich jus (my choice). The smooth, chocolatey beer has an uplift of coconut and fruity-floral hops which married so well with the spice in the dish (I love dark beer like this with spice) and the deliciously fatty, roasted meat, while the nutty match of couscous and coconut was a bridge to hold it all together.

 

Brooklyn Brown Ale with chimmichuri lamb and goats’ cheese croquettes (Pete’s choice). Another great match with the roasty beer working so well with the lamb, spices and the warm cheese, with the earthy English hop bitterness cutting through the whole lot. If anything it needed a touch more body to carry off the punch of cheese, but still a really good pairing.

 

Then came the fun course: Dark Horizon ice cream shooters (Zak’s choice). The beer is big and rich, 15% of dark chocolate, coffee and dried fruit, and that topped with vanilla ice cream was just incredibly good, rich and thick and playful.

 

Cheeses to finish with a Fuller’s Vintage 2010 (Pete’s choice). Valdeon and Brie de Meaux, served lightly grilled on thin toasts, which was a twist on serving the course but it added a little gooey warmth to the big-flavoured cheeses which were served with a couple of chutneys. The beer stood up to it all and rounded off the whole meal elegantly in the face of some tongue-smashing cheeses.

 

It was a great dinner to see how different beers can compliment different flavours and textures in food. It was also good fun and each one was worthy of a FABPOW! Musa’s a cool restaurant too, with a couple of BrewDog beers on tap and a decent fridge filled with bottles. If you are going to the BrewDog bar in Aberdeen then that’s the place to line your stomach!

 

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Thanks to Johanna Basford who took the good photos (I took the Ruination and the Brooklyn and all of us obviously got too carried away with the beer to bother with taking photos of the last two courses).

Fast Food FABPOW! Big Mac and KFC

What is the best beer to enjoy with a Big Mac or a bucket of KFC?!

It’s usually the sort of thing we eat from the bag rather than taking it home and serving it up on a plate, but that shouldn’t mean it’s less worthy of finding a beer to pair it with. Sometimes it’s right to make an effort with the less finer things in life and treat them with a little reverence. That’s what this is for.

I once sat opposite a mate who ate a Big Mac in two mouthfuls. Two! He almost choked on the second bite but he managed it and it’s a sight I’ll (sadly) probably never forget. I’m no Don Gorske when it comes to Big Macs but I’m guessing it’s the most consumed burger in the world (can anything compete?) with something like 550 million sold in the US alone each year. Whenever I have one I’m filled with the same feeling I get when I drink a bottle of Bud: it’s incredibly familiar to me even though I very rarely ‘enjoy’ them; it’s as if their flavour is implanted in my brain and one mouthful is enough to trigger the Big Mac sensor. I think it’s the special sauce, the gherkin and the spongy texture which makes it, that and the handful of salty fries which follows it down and the cheese which lingers throughout. It’s delicious and anyone who says they don’t like Big Macs needs to stop being so unbearably gourmet and cool and just enjoy the trashier things in life. But, and this is the important thing, what beer to have with it?

I had two thoughts: a pale ale and, inspired by He Said Beer, She Said Wine, a Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale, which is listed as the ideal beer for a classic hamburger. The London Pale Ale didn’t cut it, being neither toasty enough for the bun nor fruity enough for the condiments and cheese. The Indian Brown was the opposite, being too big and overpowering for the flimsy little patties (it would be good for a fat charred burger, blush in the middle, but not on the McDonalds version). Not wanting to fail I went back to the fridge and looked for something else... the choice was a Granville Island Kitsilano Maple Cream Ale, which my ex-boss had brought me back from a trip to Canada. The beer was smooth, nutty, toasty and had a depth of maple syrup and a crisp, earthy finish – a nice amber ale with plenty of flavour. Put that with a Big Mac and it’s fantastic! The maple sweetness keeps everything in control, the toasty depth in the beer matches the sweet bun and the beef, while the earthy hops rein in the sour gherkin, sticky cheese and the sweet special Mac sauce. It was spot on and I challenge anyone to find a better match (I lay this out there because I’m quite happy to buy more Big Macs and eat them with good beer just to see what works best!).

During my teens KFC was a sort-of nemesis and the cause of me ballooning to a fat 15 stone (seriously). When I worked in retail, which was the worst three months ever (mainly because I was fat and unfit and struggled to stand up all day), I’d have a large KFC variety meal at least three times a week, washing it down with a pot of gravy. I rarely have it now (despite walking past a KFC at least twice a day) but I still have a deep-rooted love for it stuck somewhere in the dark recesses of my late-teens. To rekindle that love affair I bought a variety meal with its two pieces of chicken, two hot wings and crispy strip. I picked out two beers to try with this one: a Goose Island IPA and a Meantime London Lager. The Goose Island overpowered the whole thing being a little too sweet, floral and fruity, but the London Lager, a beer made with East Anglian malt and Kentish hops, was remarkably good. The chicken takes on a buttery flavour with a peppery finish from the finger licking secret blend of 11 herbs and spices. The beer has a buttery edge, hints of toffee and then a lingering dry finish and with the chicken it couldn’t have been a better match, complimenting and then refreshing the palate from the grease ready for another gnaw. You can’t beat a Coke with KFC (it’s the fizz and sweetness which does it) but this was pretty damn close.

So a Maple Cream Ale works wonders with a Big Mac and a London Lager loves a KFC. Both beers are quite subtle and that’s necessary because the depth of flavour in these fast foods isn’t the equivalent to having a freshly-grilled slab of meat in a burger joint or a plate of home-fried chicken. They are made for mass-appeal so the flavours are simple and unchallenging, this means the beers served with them need to be equally simple so they don’t overpower.

This FABPOW! (the Food and Beer Pairing of the Week!) is beer and fast food and why the hell not. I even thought about taking the bottles with me to McDonalds and have them Sideways-style to get the full eating experience, but then I thought better of it... What would you have chosen to go with these? What about with a Burger King Whopper? A Subway? A Greggs pasty?

FABPOW! Orval and Orval Cheese

I have this theory; it’s simple and it’s yet to be proved wrong: Orval is the perfect food beer. It’s got enough body to support even the richest foods, yet it’s still remarkably light; it’s got enough alcohol to power through strong flavours without demolishing them; it has a savoury depth to it which aligns it towards the dinner table; it has a bite of hops at the end which is peppery and palate cleansing without leaving an over-bitter taste; and it has that little hint of sourness, a suggestion of lemon, which adds a great lift to any combo. Those beer-superpowers mean that Orval can work with almost anything.

I’ve FABPOW’d it before with a paella, which is one of my summer favourites, but with the Orval cheese it was something altogether more delicious.

Weakened by after-effects of the day before but slowly being restored to full vitality by the power-up qualities of a few more beers, we arrive at North Bar, Leeds, on Orval Day (everyday should be Orval Day). We order a bottle each and some bread and cheese. My aged Orval was bottled on my 25^th birthday so I got all giddy with the excitement of seeing my birthday written down on something I love (why does this happen? Even seeing my birthday as the best before date on a pack of biscuits is enough to make me buy them, even if I don’t want them). We try a side-by-side with the young and old, the young being bottled in August, and the difference is astonishing; I’d never had a bottle as young as the comparator but it was completely different, lacking the peppery bite and missing that unique spritz of lemony brett – I’ll stick to mine being about a year old. Then the cheese arrived next to a huge hunk of very fresh bread, the sort that rustles and crunches as you break it, depositing its crust over your lap. The cheese is creamy and mild but packs an enormous depth of flavour. A mouthful of that followed by one of the beer and it was like the two were hugging on the tongue at the joy of being reunited; something about the two together just worked unequivocally, both with their depth of flavour, the bite in the beer tempered by the richness of the cheese, the boost of the dry hop and the lift of the wild yeast lifting the flavour off the tongue and getting it ready for another greedy mouthful.

I might have been hungover, I might have still been drunk, I might have been over-excited because of the birthday bottling, I might have just been really hungry, I might have been swayed by the sight of everyone in the bar drinking from the bowling pin-shaped bottles, but that was a seriously good lunch. If you can find Orval cheese then buy it and eat it with a bottle of Orval – delicious!

Beer and cheese is regularly talked about with so many great pairings, but this was a new one to me – anyone had any new and brilliant (or terrible – give us a warning so we don’t make the same mistake!) cheese and beer moments?

FABPOW! Kernel Export Stout and a Hummingbird Cupcake

Earlier in the day Lauren sent me a picture of herself eating just about the biggest piece of cake I’d ever seen, along with an excited message saying that she’d found the Hummingbird bakery. Of course, I quickly tapped my reply and told her to buy me something. When she got home, just as I was about to open a bottle of Kernel Export Stout, she pulled a cupcake from her bag and set it down excitedly on the table. “Oh-my-god-Mark-the-cakes-were-amaaaaaaazing!!!”

I opened the beer first. Based on a recipe from 1890, it’s 7.8%, dark and topped with the sort of foam you need a spoon to enjoy; it’s dark chocolate, coffee and cocoa with a little wisp of smoke; a full body, more dark chocolate, some distant fruity berries and dried fruit, an earthy-leathery depth and just a hint of smoke and salt. Delicious, interesting and different with each sip, it’s another great beer from Kernel (there's currently some available from Beermerchants who also have a jaw-dropping number of Mikkeller bottles).

The cake was top heavy with the kind of vanilla butter icing to make your knees go weak while the sponge was impossibly light and airy. Together the intense, dark flavours in the beer matched the icing with neither overpowering the other, while the fullness of the body made it work, lifting the sweet sponge and icing and giving it a chocolatey kick on the way down.

An impromptu FABPOW and this one taking two London craft products sold at the opposite edges of the city and putting them together in harmony. And it gives me an idea... what about a London Market Brewery which takes inspirations from what’s on the stalls, independent shops or uses leftover market ingredients. Maybe a collaboration with different stalls: so a cupcake beer or beer cupcakes with Hummingbird; a chocolate beer with a chocolate stall; fruit and veg beers; a beer to go with particular foods and jointly branded...

Beer and cake can be hard to get right but when you nail it it's brilliant. Carrot cake and US IPA is a winner, so is kriek and a gooey brownie and then a cupcake and a rich, deeply delicious stout. Any other beer and cake recommendations?

FABPOW! Venison Burgers with Kocour Višňový Ležák

The 1-litre plastic bottle of Kocour Višňový Ležák had been in the fridge since I returned from Prague over a month ago. I picked it up from the bottle shop attached to Zly Casy, one of the coolest beer bars in town, because I couldn’t resist it: a litre plastic bottle, bold branding and sour cherries. It hadn’t been drunk yet because I couldn’t decide when to open it, or if I wanted to share it, or what to eat with it. After a long week at work I needed a big glass of beer, opening the fridge I saw the giant bottle and the yellow label shone like a beam of sunlight on a grey October Friday.

I opened the bottle before I started to cook dinner. In order to get to the point of cooking I’d walked around Waitrose for half an hour with an empty basket intermittently picking things up and putting them back again, eventually settling on venison burgers, burger rolls and mustard, plus some bacon because there was going to be leftover rolls and it was more sensible to spend £3 on bacon than throw away 40p worth of rolls, naturally.

The beer is 4.7% and has sour cherry essence added. It pours a deep amber, edging towards conker red. The aroma is immediately cherries, like candy but not so sweet, a little floral like blossom. It’s smooth and crisp, the dark malts give toast and a little chocolate, which develops throughout; the cherry is fruity but not sharp, fragrant and floral but never over the top; cocoa comes through and mixes with the cherry in a great way, like a pre-mixed version of sweet kriek and dark chocolate, only in a way that’s subtle enough to make you work for it and jump for olfactory joy when you get it.

The burgers were simple: meat, slightly-toasted rolls, onions caramelised with chilli, ketchup (to one I also added gherkins, tomato and burger mustard but it was too much – the simple one worked best). With the beer it was perfection. Venison is often paired with cherries or chocolate so having a beer which gave both was fantastic, adding a touch of sweetness to the meat, while also being robust enough with the darker malts to handle the charred edges of the burger, with the sweet and spicy onions pulling it together like a group hug and the fragrant hops acting like a refresh button after each mouthful.

This was an impromptu food and beer match discovered through indecision and a little serendipity. Beer and burgers are universally great, no matter what the burger or the beer, but sometimes they can power beyond great and they can become FABPOWs. 

FABPOW! Chocolate Cupcakes and Chocolate Marble

I happened to have a half-finished glass of Chocolate Marble beside me as the little chewy, gooey chocolate mouthfuls of cupcake - baked by Dominic from Marble Brewery as a thank you and a gift to everyone who came to try their beer at Cask Pub and Kitchen last week - were passed around... and never wanting to let a potential FABPOW pass, I gulped them both down together.

Chocolate Marble is rich and roasty, 5.5%, packed with cocoa and coffee and a bang of hop and charry bitterness at the end and it was a marvel with the mini cake’s stick-to-the-roof-of-your-mouth sweetness, making the chocolate in both taste richer but retaining a deft lightness. Plus, pairing two things, both with chocolate in the title, is almost guaranteed to be a winner.

Sometimes food and beer matches are planned, some are complete chance – beer in one hand, food in the other, let’s see what happens – others work a little differently, like this one, where there’s a symbiotic link between the two and they work at a specific time and place. In this case it was beer and cupcake made from the same person, served in a pub with 10 Marble beers on cask where everyone is there to drink them and having a great time. This type of pairing is rare. It’s also powerful. It makes almost anything taste good with anything else because the senses are wrapped up with experience (likely a good experience, too). It’s not about finding perfect flavours to go together, perfect texture counterparts; it’s about the moment.

So, would I try this at home? Probably not (although it was a very good pairing) - unless I’m invited to Dom’s for tea and he decides to get baking again - but right there and then, in Cask, it was a Marbleous match!

The Marble event was excellent. All the beers were in good form and it was great to see 10 casks lined up in one place – as I was waiting to order my first pint/Pint my mouth was literally watering at the prospect. I think the Summer was the beer of the evening, although Pint came close, as did W90... and Dobber, and Beer 57 was also excellent... 

FABPOW! Tipopils and Pizza

I have a theory: any beer works with any pizza...

Pizza is an inherently simple, eat-with-your-hands food. It’s the stuff of our childhood but we still eat it as a grownup, which has a cheeky appeal, like eating milky bars or fish fingers. Pizza can be one from a box (shop bought or take away-ordered) or it can be made from scratch, satisfyingly gooey in the middle and crispy at the edges, topped to your heart’s desire. On the grand scheme of food-things, making your own pizza is joyous and fun and bursting with childish appeal, like having free-reign to decorate a banana split with sauces, sweets and sprinkles.

Tipopils is a lager from Birrificio Italiano and it’s one of the best lagers I’ve tasted. It’s made with four hop varieties (Hallertauer Magnum, Hallertauer Perle, Hallertauer Hersbrücker and Hallertauer Saaz), it’s a little sherberty to begin, a little herby and floral and a hint of fresh bread in the aroma, which mellows out to an inviting orange and pineapple fruitiness. It’s incredibly smooth drinking which creates a cuddle-effect before the bold hops stamp through and leave their lingering trail of dry bitterness. It’s got so much character to keep it interesting throughout the glass, making you want to drink more and more after each quenching mouthful. Remarkably good, enough to make me look for flights to Milan leaving in the next 24 hours.

The pizza was homemade, both the dough and the sauce (the most flour-dusted and sauce-splattered pages of any cookery book I have are the ones in Jamie Oliver’s Jamie at Home for pizza dough and tomato sauce). There were four of them; Lauren and I both topped two each – mine were dramatically better, of course (she used mostly sweetcorn and onion which, in isolation, suck as pizza toppings). One of mine was smoked pancetta, chilli and lots of mozzarella, the other was piled high with flat mushrooms, red onion, basil and mozzarella (although, as Reluctant Scooper says, the toppings aren’t relevant, it's pizza and beer and that's what matters). Both of the pizzas are umami-bombs calling for the fruity sweetness and fizz which Tipopils deals up, while the dry finish at the end cuts the richness of the cheese and tomato. The match is helped along even further by the Italian heritage of the headliners.

This was one of those dinners where every mouthful is a pleasure and you eat and drink until you are a food-comatose lump on the floor, covered in crust crumbs and spatters of tomato sauce, but still somehow sipping at the beer because it’s so good, eyeing the slices which remain.

Pizza and beer belong together, a glass in one hand and a slice in the other. Like meat and potatoes they work, whatever the infinite varieties of recipes permit. It’s the simplest of pairings and always works, whether it’s a can of cooking lager or a bottle of something special. Pizza and beer: what do you think? Is there any beer which wouldn’t work with pizza (I won’t believe it if there are!)? Are there any which work particularly well with certain pizzas?

I’m now going to eat the cold leftovers and I’m dribbling at the prospect.