Beer-and-food pairings have come a long

way from burgers and wings. Diners now

can enjoy beer dinners with a different
brew for every course.
DESCHUTES BREWERY/HOLLAND STUDIOS

BEER
Hits the
BIG TIME BY JACK ROBERTIELLO
I
f you have any doubt about how far beer has traveled as
a fine-dining beverage in the last few years, drop by
New York’s venerable Gramercy Tavern and take a peek
at the beverage list. In addition to the 30 or so regular beers,
customers can choose from about two-dozen aged brews,
such as two vintages of Brooklyn Brewery’s Black
Chocolate Stout, a 10-year-old from Oregon’s Rogue Ales
Brewery and an English ale aged in sherry casks.
Not convinced? Perhaps the next time you visit one of
Thomas Keller’s restaurants, like The French Laundry in
Yountville, Calif., or Per Se in New York City, you’ll find a
dish paired with Blue Apron, a bottle-fermented, Belgian,
double-style ale custom made by Brooklyn Brewery. Beverage
lists at Keller’s and other high-end restaurants reveal a serious
effort to establish beer’s place of significance at the table.
Or should that be “reestablish?”
THE FIRST FOOD-FRIENDLY BEVERAGE
Beer is probably the original food-friendly alcoholic
beverage, and with advocates like Brooklyn Brewery
Brewmaster Garrett Oliver, author of “The Brewmaster’s
Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer with Real
Food,” preaching the gospel, more restaurants are
introducing quality beers, offering food-and-beer pairings
and hosting brewmaster dinners.
Oliver is one of the most prominent of the many
enthusiasts who have insisted for years that brewers’ wares
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BEVERAGE TRENDS
Craft-made and European-inspired
brews elevate beer to fine-dining status
and show great food-pairing potential
have been exiled wrongly to the burger-and-pizza corner of
American cuisine. “We often forget, as the craft-beer
segment expands, that what we have is a slow return to
normality,” says Oliver. “When you look at the U.S.
historically, the period of the huge dominance of one kind
of mass-market beer is relatively small.”
Major brewers also have increased their attention to
brewing a range of beer styles and even have focused on
beer with food; the 304-page “Great Food, Great Beer:
The Anheuser-Busch Cookbook” is only part of that mega-
brewer’s attention to more flavorful brews.
MORE STYLES, LESS FIZZ
George Reisch, an Anheuser-Busch brewmaster who works
on the craft-oriented Michelob line, believes the golden
age of brewing is upon us.
“In the U.S. now,” he notes, “we have more beer styles for
sale than anywhere in the world. We are living in beer nirvana
now.” He credits the microbrew boom for resuscitating now-
popular beer styles like imperial pale ale (IPA).
Beer fits well with food, since that’s what it was designed
for, Reisch says. “It was never meant to be an egocentric
beverage that gets in the way of food, and the flavor profiles
of all the various styles of beer were developed to go with
the local foods.”
It was once normal for Americans to drink a range of
locally made beers — porters, stouts, ales, lagers, pilsners and
Winter 2009 FLAVOR & THE MENU 117
BEVERAGE TRENDS

BEER at the Table

Beer’s wide range of flavors allows for sophisticated food pairings,
but first you need to know your brews

AT HOME WITH THE RANGE: “Beer has a much wider range of

flavor than wine does,” says Brooklyn Brewery Brewmaster Garrett
Oliver. Brewers, unlike winemakers, can introduce other ingredients,
such as more highly roasted malt, smoked grains or fruits, to create
distinct flavor profiles.

SEEK HARMONY: Beer can harmonize with flavors that wine can only

IRON HILL BREWERY

contrast with, Oliver says, citing hearty red wines served with a charred
steak. “What you’re not doing [with wine] in any way is harmonizing
with the meat, which is about caramelization. Grabbing on to that
caramelization is unique to beer.”
BEYOND COLOR CODING: “Just serving a lighter brew with the first
course, an amber with the main and then a dark with dessert is a little
passé,” says Charlie Devereux, secretary of the Oregon Brewers Guild
and co-owner of Double Mountain Brewery & Taproom, who sees the
bar being raised by beer dinners. “When people come to a beer dinner,
they’re looking for something they might not find at every corner,” he
asserts. A recent dinner at the Columbia Gorge Hotel in Hood River,
Ore., included such dishes as house-made carpaccio, antelope stew and
rabbit with wild mushrooms. “These probably worked better with beer
than they would have with wines,” Devereux observes.
SMOOTH THE TRANSITION: When Greg Engert of Rustico in
Alexandria, Va., confronts skeptical wine lovers, he opts for what he calls
“transitional beers,” or beers that are more acidic, perhaps produced in
ways similar to winemaking, via aging or exposure to more
natural yeast.
BE GENTLE: “Exploring the world of beer does not involve
the kick of a steel-toed boot. It is a series of gentle nudges,”
says Dave Alexander of Washington, D.C.’s, Brickskeller and
RFD Beer. “You don't create a fan of specialty beers by getting
a Bud drinker to try a Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Barleywine,” he
notes. This dense, fruity and malty brew might be too
intense a flavor leap for those used to the pale stuff. “You
learn what the customer likes and introduce the next step
in the flavor profile along his guidelines,” suggests
Alexander, pointing to craft-brewed American lager or
German Pilsner as better bets.
ENJOY THE JOURNEY: “In any case, when the
customer discovers a new taste, he is not going to stop
liking that taste,” says Alexander. “As the world of beer
moves into the kitchen, it brings those fans along with it.”
Breweries like Iron Hill prove there’s a beer
style for every taste, from hop-heavy IPA to
cask-aged brews with bourbon notes.
the like — in different styles for different
occasions and cuisines. And the flood of yellow,
fizzy brews doesn’t adequately represent the
incredible range of beer flavors.
Beer’s reputation as an unsuitable food
partner emerged as mass-market beers became
single-note beverages, Oliver points out. Even
after American brewing returned to its roots
and expanded in the 1990s, the industry did a
poor job of promoting how well beer pairs with
food, says Mark Edelson, director of brewing for
the seven-unit Iron Hill Brewery and
Restaurant, based in Lancaster, Pa.
“The wine industry has done such an
incredible job over the last 25 to 30 years
pushing the wine and food connection, and we
as an industry have got to get better in making
the case of food with beer.”
BREWPUB REDUX
The brew-pub craze of the late 1990s didn’t
help, with its abundance of batter-fried fish and
chips. And a shakeout among the craft brewers,
who made good beer but bad business decisions,
slowed things down.
“In the early ’90s, it was no longer good
enough to be the local brewery, even if you
offered a consistent and desirable product,
which many did not,” says Dave Alexander
who, with his wife and partner, Diane, runs

118 FLAVOR & THE MENU Winter 2009 www.flavor-online.com


The Brickskeller Dining House & Down Home
Saloon and RFD (Regional Food and Drink)
Washington in Washington, D.C.
“The segment went through a heavy
weeding out. The smartest business people
survived, and the guys that had that ‘great India
pale ale recipe’ were gone. The craft-beer
industry became more savvy.”
Craft beer is stronger than ever: In 2007,
craft brewers increased the volume of beer they
sold by 12 percent. There are now 1,420 craft
brewers in the United States, including regional
breweries, microbreweries and brew pubs,
according to the Brewers Association in
Boulder, Colo. As fine-dining restaurants take
on more craft beers, the focus has grown on
pairing food and beer.
At Rustico Restaurant and Bar in
Alexandria, Va., the list of 300-plus beers is
built around the food menu, says Beer Director
Greg Engert.
Dishes with spicy and herbal elements
require hop-assertive beers; hearty game or meat
dishes call for roasty, dark stouts and porters.
But that’s only the beginning. Engert looks for
brews tweaked to match each dish’s specific
flavor profile; carrying a few Belgian-farmhouse
saison-style beers, for instance, allows him to be
more specific in his recommendations,
depending on a dish’s spiciness.
ACQUIRING TASTES
As consumers mature in matters of taste, they
welcome the chance to try more assertive
flavors, says Charlie Devereux, secretary of the
Oregon Brewers Guild and co-owner of Double
Mountain Brewery & Taproom in Hood River,
Ore. “It took a little time for people to develop
their palates,” he says, “but we in Oregon, for
instance, are used to drinking very hoppy beers;
our typical recipes use twice as many hops.”
“Americans love hops, and America is
known worldwide for hoppy brews,” says Iron
Hill Brewery’s Edelson. Bitter double IPAs
have become the standard American version.
INGREDIENTS ON TAP
As brewers toyed with more intense flavors,
restaurants like RFD maintained that beer was
being ignored as an ingredient in food.
Whipping up dishes at home like chicken with
artichoke hearts and figs in Anchor Steam Beer,
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BEVERAGE TRENDS
along with ice creams made with stout and
Belgian raspberry and fruity peach beers
inspired the Alexanders, as did the Belgian
cuisine de bière tradition.
“Top chefs in Belgium had been cooking
with beer for years,” observes Dave Anderson.
“It was only natural that American chefs would
sooner or later be drawn in.”
The food connection saved many of the
beer-centric restaurants in the late 1990s.
“If you’re in the brewery-restaurant
business, you have to operate as a restaurant
first,” says Edelson. “It’s what drives people in
and puts them in front of us so we can teach
them about beer.”
Craft brewers have stretched their recipes to
include more highly roasted malts as well as
fruits and spices. Some brewers add ingredients
like cocoa nibs to boost the chocolaty quality of
their stouts. In fact, the sky is the limit when it
comes to flavor inspiration. Portland, Maine-
based Peak Organic Brewing Co. produces ales
with far-flung ingredients like coriander, organic
pomegranate and acai and also uses local,
seasonal additions like Maine-grown organic
oats from GrandyOats in Brownfield, Maine,
and organic maple syrup from Vermont. Executive Chef Piet
Brewers also have been emulating Belgian Vanden Hogen of
producers, long cherished for the breadth and Pelican Pub & Brewery
in Pacific City, Ore.,
depth of their styles, from frothy and aromatic
prepares clams in
wheat beers to intense and challenging lambics, Pelican’s Kiwanda Cream
and elegant, Champagne-like gueuze. ale for a beer dinner.
PELICAN PUB & BREWERY
Winter 2009 FLAVOR & THE MENU 119
BEVERAGE TRENDS

Deschutes Brewery and

Brew Pubs of Bend, Ore.,
have been educating
customers about craft
brews and beer-enhanced
cuisine for 20 years.

AGING AND ADDING
More craft brewers are starting to age their beers
in new or used barrels, echoing the creativity of
Scotch whisky makers who use casks from
cognac and bourbon distillers and wineries to
finish their spirits.
“Aging of beer using bourbon barrels is very
specialized, tough to do and a labor of love, but
there’s lots of customer demand,” says Edelson.
In February 2009, all Iron Hill locations served
barrel-aged beers on tap, many with bourbon
notes from the aging casks. (Iron Hill serves
only beers it makes.)
TAK E -AWAY T I P S
HOP ALONG: Americans love hops; offer refreshing, hop-heavy
beers to pair with spicy foods
TAKE A LOW RISK: Add a few unusual
bottled beers as LTOs to bring new
attention, seasonality and flavor
descriptors to your bar scene
TAP POTENTIAL: Sip-sized samples
of beer on tap are an affordable way
to introduce new choices and open a
dialogue between servers and guests
AGE WELL: Consider adding a cask-
ANHEUSER-BUSCH
DESCHUTES BREWERY
The other frontier for today’s adventurous
brewers is yeast, as they tinker with wild
varieties that can add phenolic notes like clove
or fruit esters during fermentation.
As breweries develop a market for barrel-aged
and higher-alcohol-content beers, they become
even more experimental. Roots Organic Brewing
Co. in Portland, Ore., offers Epic Ale, which
comes in at 14 percent alcohol and is made with
malt smoked over cherrywood soaked in Scotch
whisky, cognac and cherries. Obviously, with
beers like this, the range of flavors widens, and
potential food matches increase.
With brewers innovating and chefs
responding to new pairing opportunities, one
trend seems to drive the other. It is now
common to see chefs working to pair dishes
with intensely bitter ales or making desserts that
go with chocolaty stouts.
“The [brewing] industry has made great
strides in terms of quality, variety and
sophistication of product,” says Devereux. In
terms of flavor, “chefs” and specialization, the
foodservice and brewing industries “have a lot
in common.” &
JACK ROBERTIELLO writes about
spirits, cocktails, wine, beer and food from

aged beer to the mix for flavor and Brooklyn, N.Y.; he can be e-mailed at
for a good story
applejak@earthlink.net.

120 FLAVOR & THE MENU Winter 2009 www.flavor-online.com