In Basements, in Bedroom Closets, and on the Dinner Table, Beer Is Taking Over New Territory
USED TO BE BEER KNEW ITS PLACE, STICKING TO dark bars and bright supermarkets’ refrigerated confines. Beer didn’t linger in your basement, slowly maturing, patiently waiting for a special occasion to be sipped. Beer didn’t dare show its sudsy head at dinnertime, unless it was invited to the party by pizza or a greasy burger. But today, beer is no longer content to be typecast.
Today’s craft beer, with its kaleidoscopic flavor profiles, can match any dish at your favorite restaurant or your dinner table—from Thai curries to spaghetti or caviar, if that catches your fancy. Beer is no longer an instant pleasure, as certain kinds of rich, robust brews gain newfound nuances and complexities after a stint in your cellar. More than ever, home is where the craft beer is.
Of a Certain Age
In spring 2010, Indianapolis’s Grant Curlow posted a YouTube clip that could make even the most casual beer fan drool.
In his prosaically titled Beer Cellar Video, Curlow spends 6 minutes and 48 seconds slowly and nearly wordlessly panning over a concrete basement where, arranged in stacks and racks and scattered across the plywood floor, there are more than 700 bottles of coveted brews, such as Firestone Walker’s barrel-aged XII, Bell’s Batch 9,000 strong ale, and Three Floyds’ wax-capped Dark Lord Russian imperial stout. Then there’s his Belgian bounty, including Trappist ales and sour lambics, some of which are older than Curlow’s 24 years—and only going to grow older and, hopefully, better. “I’ve got lambics down there I’m waiting for twenty years to try,” says Curlow, who started collecting during college and recently parlayed his passion into a job as the craft-beer specialist for Monarch Beverage Company. “I’m in no rush to open them.”
Welcome to the new world of old beer. Like wine, beer has the capacity to age, evolve, and develop complex new aromas and flavors. Think that Sierra Nevada Bigfoot Barleywine is a rich treat right now? Try it in ten years, when it has mellowed into a smooth elixir worthy of a snifter and a cigar. Time, combined with yeast and bacteria, can buff a beer’s rough edges and unlock its full potential—or, given a few months too many, create a liquid best sent down the drain.
Aging beer isn’t an exact science. Still, you can use tricks and tactics to tilt the sands of time in your favor. By creating an ideal climate, selecting the right beers to put to bed, and following storage protocols, you can start a cellar of your own, even if you live in a skyscraping apartment.
The Air Down There
After committing to build a beer collection, the first step is creating a safe, cozy environment in which the brews can slumber undisturbed—the cart before the horse. Some of the best advice on building a cellar can be found in Lovell, Maine, a tiny town near White Mountain National Forest that’s home to Ebenezer’s Pub. Despite its rural digs, Ebenezer’s is a world-class Belgian bar and possibly the country’s foremost repository for vintage beer. “I’m trying to build a time machine,” says co-owner Chris Lively of his climate-monitored cellar. It features a security system to guard his thousand-plus bottles that span more than a century of brewing. Like a liquid Library of Congress, “I want to have these beers here a hundred, two hundred, or three hundred years from now. We cellar beers for the interest of the beer world.”
The bar at Ebenezer’s Pub.
The legendary cellar at Ebenezer’s Pub.
For your interests, Lively suggests a cellar, or a basement, where the temperature will remain relatively low (about 55 degrees Fahrenheit is ideal, give or take five degrees), with narrow temperature fluctuation; a range of more than 20 degrees will wreak havoc. This also holds true for wine, which you can cellar alongside beer. (Red wine is typically stored at 50 to 55 degrees, and white wine is best aged at 45 degrees.)
Unlike wine, which rests on its side to keep the cork (if it has one) moist, beer should be stored upright, even if it has a cork, says Alan Sprints, founder of Portland, Oregon’s Hair of the Dog Brewing Company. “That way, sediment remains in the bottom. Store bottles on their side, and sediment kicks up when you pour.” Using a shelf system, or a fridge, will help prevent accidentally sending an upright bottle crashing to the ground.
The next step: block sunlight. Beer is photosensitive. Glass bottles let in UV rays, which cause chemicals called isohumulones (they help make beer bitter) to decompose and create compounds found in skunks’ spray Voila! Skunked beer.
Another cellaring enemy is humidity “If there’s not enough humidity the corks will dry out,” Liveley says. “If there’s too much humidity, it could damage beer and invite black mold,” which can enter through the cork or a loose crown cap. Lively likens black mold to a silent, deadly assassin. “Your beers will die a slow death,” he says. Keep them safe with an air purifier, while using a humidifier or a dehumidifier to calibrate the climate. The optimum atmosphere has “the kind of humidity you have in fall or spring” on the East Coast, Lively notes. (An ideal humidity range is about 50 to 70 percent.) What you don’t want is to walk into your cellar and feel a warm dampness, which indicates you’ve got a perfect breeding ground for bacteria. If you’re going to cellar beer, Lively recommends having a mold analysis done every two years. “It’s literally a bacterial war in the cellar.”
Though underground storage is ideal because temperatures tend to stay steady, it’s not imperative. If that’s not an option, opt for an inexpensive wine fridge or, if that’s cost prohibitive, “look toward a bedroom in the middle of your house”—the temperature should be more stable—“and use the closet,” suggests Bill Sysak, the beverage supervisor and certified cicerone (sort of a beer sommelier) at Stone World Bistro and Gardens. “Buy a two-dollar thermometer and check the closet over a couple seasons. If you don’t have extreme temperature fluctuations, you know you have a place that’s safe for beer.” (He also recommends running a humidifier.)
Beer-cellaring expert Bill Sysak.
Before starting at Stone Brewing, Sysak spent more than 30 years amassing one of California’s—if not the country’s—finest collections of cellared beers. At one point, he had accumulated more than 2,500 bottles, which he stored everywhere, from a three-door cooler in the garage (the convenience-store relic is not turned on, yet it maintains temperatures between 62 and 65 degrees) to a cabinet under the bathroom sink. “I also have three smaller wine coolers and bottles stuck under the house,” Sysak says. “The point is, a lot of my beer isn’t refrigerated.” But what if you live in Las Vegas or another scorching city? No worries, says Sysak. “If you don’t have a beer refrigerator or a cellar, and your average temperature is in the high sixties or seventies, you can insulate bottles with [polystyrenefoam] wine shipping crates,” Sysak says. “Craft beer is much more durable than people think.”
Cellaring expert Bill Sysak’s collection of aged beers—well, part of it.
Brews to Choose
Now that your cellar, fridge, or closet is secured, the fun part is filling it. However, not every beer should be allowed to age. Most are best as soon as they’re bottled, especially hop-forward pale ales and IPAs. Hops are most pungent and aromatic when fresh, and even a few months will dull their character. (For example, the label on Russian River’s amped-up IPA Pliny the Elder reads does not improve with age! hoppy beers are not meant to be aged!)
When selecting beers for aging, Sysak suggests following general guidelines. First, it’s beneficial if a beer is 8 percent ABV or stronger, since an elevated alcohol profile will typically become smoother, mellower, and more agreeable with time. Another rule of thumb is to select a darker, maltier beer, because the sweet, residual sugars tend to soften. Above all, ensure that the beer is bottle-conditioned, wherein live yeasts lurk inside the bottle.
“Though the yeast doesn’t continue to ferment, it helps the beer age,” explains Hair of the Dog’s Alan Sprints, who always finishes his beers with fermenting yeast. “All of our beers are meant to age,” he says of creations such as Dave, an English-style barley wine brewed more than fifteen years ago and boasting 29 percent ABV. “It’s so much better now than it ever was. That shows the patience it takes to hang on to a beer for an extended period of time.”
So which beer styles are worth the wait? Sysak recommends Belgian strong ales, barley wines, imperial stouts, and, bucking the high-alcohol guideline, sour Belgians, such as lambics and Flanders red ales. With aging beer, there are always exceptions to the rule, Sysak says. “I have tripels, saisons, and blonde ales that are ten or ffteen years old and beautiful.”
Other outliers include ales inoculated with wild yeasts such as Brettanomyces. They’re often unstable, since the yeast rapidly works through a beer and alters its character. One month it’s sublime, the next it’s undrinkable. However, Brett-dosed beers such as Orval, made by Trappist monks at the Abbey Notre-Dame d’Orval in Belgium, and Sanctification, from Russian River Brewing, respond well to cellaring. “They don’t age into the ten- to twenty-year range, but they do grow complex and amazing,” Sysak says. (Additionally, Sysak says, beers boasting multiple strains of yeasts and bacteria, such as Lactobacillus, hold up better.)
If you can swing it, purchase at least two bottles of each brew—or more. That way, you can crack open a bottle and taste how the beer is aging. Plus, you’ll have spares in the event you want more of a good thing, or need to replace a bottle ruined by a bad seal. “Historically, I buy large quantities,” Sysak says. “If you have a beer that you enjoy and it has a proven track record, it’s nice to get a case, whether that’s twelve bottles or twenty-four,” Sysak says.
However, you don’t want to overdo it on a single beer. While you may be crazy for Founders’ Kentucky Breakfast Stout, “you never know how your taste buds will evolve,” says Curlow, who started out collecting strong stouts before focusing on Belgian lambics and Trappist ales. “Keep your cellar varied.” Since Curlow started saving beer as a college freshman, it’s a wonder he resisted the temptation to dip into his stock. “You buy more than you can drink,” he says. “That still holds true today.”
A Matter of Taste
Pouring and sampling is a critical way to determine how a beer is developing before it ends up past its prime. Though an expiration date isn’t stamped on the bottle like a carton of milk, beer does have a limited life span. “I have beers that are fifty years old, but for beers that can be aged, the average life span ranges from a couple years to eight to ten years,” Sysak says. Taste. Evaluate. Wait. But don’t wait too long. “At five years, many beers begin to show signs of deterioration,” Sysak says. Typically, higher-gravity barley wines, imperial stouts, and old ales (a dark, malty English ale that’s usually as complex as it is strong) have the longest shelf life. “There are rare bottles of English ales out there that are over a hundred years old,” Sysak says. “Of course, they are a crapshoot, just like old wine. You can pay an exorbitant amount for nectar or vinegar.”
Settling on the ideal aging time takes trial and error. “Try it fresh, then anywhere from a month to six months to a year apart to see how the beer ages,” Sysak says. “There’s always that time when you wonder, ‘Should I wait one more year? I like how that flavor is developing.’ Then you try it and go, ‘Shoot, it’s past its prime.’”
When aging beers, clunkers come with the territory. “I know there are going to be some duds, but we just have to suck it up when it happens,” says Dave Blanchard, cofounder of Brick Store Pub in Decatur, Georgia, where vintage beers are stored in an adjoining, underground bank vault. In 2005, the bar began acquiring close to 500 varieties of age-worthy beer, refusing to release them until fall 2010. “It was a big gamble, because I know some of the vintage beer won’t be as good after aging,” Blanchard says. “It’s a big leap of faith.”
To make that leap of faith less daunting, Sysak suggests turning to resources such as RateBeer.com and BeerAdvocate.com, which have active forums dedicated to aging. “If you post, ‘I have a 2003 AleSmith Speedway Stout. Has anyone opened it lately?,’ sure enough, a dozen people will respond.”
Combining sensory analysis with crowd-sourced wisdom will allow you to make minute adjustments. If your beer is close to peaking, transfer it to a cooler environment to slow aging. If you’d like the beer to age faster, slightly elevate its environment’s temperature. “I’ve taken imperial stouts that have a hot, fusil note”—that is, alcohol—“and increased the cellaring temperatures into the mid-sixties,” Sysak says. This slightly oxidizes the beer, creating a sweet, sherry-like nuance. “Brewers will never say to do this,” he says, underscoring a simple point: When it comes to aging, you can create the rules as you go along.
Pop Your Tops
After creating, stocking, and maintaining a cellar, it’s easy to imagine that you’ve just built a beer museum. But remember, one of the pleasures of building an enviable collection is reaping the fruits of your labor.
For Sysak, savoring and sharing aged beer is part of the fun. He once cohosted (with Tom Nickel, of San Diego’s O’Brien’s American Pub) a vertical tasting of Thomas Hardy’s ales (a classic English beer that’s no longer brewed) from the first release, in 1968, to 2004. Even crazier, for ten years he hosted a party on his birthday dubbed “the largest, most extreme private beer party in the world.” Every ten minutes for twelve hours, Sysak opened two rare beers—say, a Drie Fonteinen Kriek or a Pizza Port Cuvee de Tomme—along with up to twenty kegs of beer, “in case you got thirsty in between the nine minutes of beer pours,” Sysak says of the event, which sometimes swelled to 250 people.
Of course, opening an aged beer doesn’t require a blowout. “One thing I’m most proud of is that people use my beers to celebrate special occasions,” such as birthdays or anniversaries, says Hair of the Dog’s Sprints. But even that’s too formal a reason for Curlow to crack a treasure. “You don’t need a reason to open a cellared bottle,” he says. “I love bringing friends over and popping something unusual. Whether it’s a random Thursday or Sunday, when you pop open the bottle, it’ll be the celebration.”
Ten to Cellar
Trappistes Rochefort 10
Brasserie de Rochefort
ABV: 11.3%
Pouring an intense leather brown, this Belgian monk–made quadruple smells of licorice and dark fruit that’s spent several months baking in the sun. Despite the alcohol wallop, 10 remains as creamy and quaffable as café au lait. The Christmas-friendly flavors of caramel, figs, and spice cake will become more complex with time.
Adam
Hair of the Dog Brewing Company
ABV: 10%
This nearly tar-black, Germanstyle strong ale is like former child actor Joseph Gordon-Levitt: even better with age. But even young Adam is divine, with the aromas of brownies and dark, wrinkly fruits. Adam is dense yet smooth and crammed with opulent flavors of dates, caramel, roasted malt, and a hint of smoke. Adam batches have aged for more than sixteen years—and counting.
Black Chocolate Stout
Brooklyn Brewery
ABV: 10.1%
This imperial stout pours as dark as a New York City blackout, topped by a tan head boasting a bouquet of dark-roasted malts, espresso, molasses, and chocolate. Flavors follow suit, backed by a thick, full-bodied mouthfeel and alcohol on the back end. In several years, BCS should be smoother, with more vibrant chocolate flavors.
Expedition Stout
Bell’s Brewery
ABV: 10.5%
A cellaring fave, Bell’s burly winter seasonal decants the color of a dark, moonless night. Expedition’s sweet aroma is composed of unsweetened chocolate, as well as roasted and toasted malts and java. Expedition slides over your tongue, slick and creamy, with flavors darting from molasses to cocoa to coffee; the bitterness comes quickly and unexpectedly, like a mule kick. Give Expedition time, and the alcohol burn will mellow like a California surfer.
Gueuze 100% Lambic
Brasserie Cantillon
ABV: 5%
This Belgian classic is made by blending one-, two-, and three-year-old batches of oak-aged, spontaneously fermented lambic. Each year’s release is unique, but expect a funky, citrusy, sour aroma. Gueuze drinks as tart and crisp as fresh-squeezed lemonade, with notes of hay and melon. It’s downright refreshing on a sweltering summer afternoon. Cellaring will help the sourness soften.
XS Old Crustacean Barley Wine
Rogue Ales
ABV: 11.5%
This gnarly barley wine issues forth ruby red, a shade darker than Dorothy’s slippers, packing a perfume of caramel and heady, citric hops to the tune of 110 IBUs. There’s an abundance of bitterness on the palate, as well as raisins and brown sugar. When aged, the hop profile will become subdued yet omnipresent, like a loyal pooch never leaving his master’s side.
The Abyss
Deschutes Brewery
ABV: 11%
Every fall, Deschutes releases this decadent stout the color of coal as part of its Reserve Series. Abyssis is brewed with a measure of licorice and molasses, then a third of the beer is dumped into oak and bourbon barrels to soak up the flavors of spirits and wood. The blended outcome is rich, beguiling bliss: bitter coffee and chocolate, vanilla, roasted malts, charred oak. Time will deepen the profile.
Old Rasputin Russian Imperial Stout
North Coast Brewing Company
ABV: 9%
Despite its relatively low cost and ubiquity, Old Rasputin is a rare creature. The California brewery’s imperial stout pours honey thick, releasing a bloom of chocolate-dipped raisins, espresso, and bread yanked hot from the oven. It’s as rich as a lottery winner, but those 75 bitter IBUs perform a nice balancing act. Keep Old Rasputin for five or ten years, and this bargain beer (a case often costs less than $50) will become a priceless luxury.
Speedway Stout
Alesmith Brewing Company
ABV: 12%
San Diego’s AleSmith will rev your engines with Speedway, a coffee-charged imperial stout the approximate color and viscosity of motor oil after a monthlong road trip. Speedway smells and tastes of ground coffee and dark chocolate, mammoth flavors that tango on your tongue alongside molasses and sun-ripened fruit. Mouthfeel? As silky as Victoria’s Secret skivvies. Speedway is splendid now. After five years, it’s profound and magical.
Vintage Harvest Ale
J.W. Lees & Co.
ABV: 11.5%
Mark your calendars for December 1. That’s the date that Britain’s J.W. Lees releases its once-a-year Harvest Ale, a liquid celebration made of that season’s hops and barley yield. Like a Savile Row suit, this English barley wine is tailormade for cellaring. Silken Harvest tastes somewhat like maple syrup mixed with whiskey, toffee, and brown sugar. After ten years, Harvest Ale will become as intricate as higherorder algebra.
What a Pair: Beer and Food
It’s a howling-wind fall evening in Brooklyn, New York, vicious weather that keeps people homebound and heating up cans of soup. But instead of hunkering inside, tonight dozens of thirsty, hungry Brooklynites have braved the cold to visit Beer Table.
Tables would be more accurate, with three long, communal perches crammed inside the diminutive woodsy tavern. It’s decorated with rough brick walls and shelves bursting with bottled suds and enough pickled vegetables to rival your granny’s root cellar. Tacked above the bar is paper scrawled with the evening’s draft beers—including Kiuchi Brewery’s Hitachino Nest Espresso Stout and cask-poured New England Brewing’s Sea Hag IPA—which are dispensed from taps topped with disassembled meat-grinder parts.
The blend of food and beer goes beyond simple bar paraphernalia, as I discover when a lanky, bearded server delivers a menu. It lists a snack-food smorgasbord of dehydrated watermelon chips, pickled eggs sprinkled with jalapeño powder, and a three-course dinner of smoked trout, rich pot-au-feu, and spiced carrot cake. Most impressively, each flavorful dish is matched to an equally flavorful beer. “We’re trying to go beyond burgers and steak and pair nontraditional food with beer,” says Beer Table co-owner Justin Philips of his nightly dinners. “Wine should not rule the dinner table.”
Welcome to the Table
These are good days to be a craft beer. After decades of being dwarfed by macrobrews, microbreweries are filling taps nationwide. While that counts big at the bar, the dinner table is a different tale. At most restaurants, the drinks program remains dominated by wine. Filet mignon? Allow us to recommend a cabernet sauvignon. And madam, for your pan-seared scallops, a viognier? It’s true, red and white have their place—but what about brown? It’s coming to a dinner table near you.
Home cooks and restaurant chefs are discovering that beer’s flavor spectrum—from bitter IPAs to chocolaty stouts—combined with its low acidity and palate-cleansing carbonation makes it a perfect mate for food. They’re using brews as both an ingredient and an accompaniment, creating multicourse beer-pairing dinners of surprising depth and complexity that go far beyond mozzarella sticks with a pint of pilsner.
In San Francisco, Bar Crudo hosts a dinner series coupling fresh-caught seafood with microbrews and Belgian ales, while Monk’s Kettle’s monthly event highlights a single brewery’s beers served with each course (for instance, a Dogfish Head dinner included Mediterranean-style lamb meatballs paired with their ancient Finnish-style rye ale Sah’tea). Up the coast in Astoria, Oregon, the Fort George Brewery & Public House features monthly multicourse dinners that have included an oyster-centric feast accompanied by an array of roasty stouts. Meanwhile, pairing dinners at Philadelphia’s Latin-Asian-leaning Chifa have featured octopus ceviche with purple olives and avocado served with local Victory Brewing’s Brett-injected Wild Devil Belgian ale.
“We’re using beer as a culinary tool,” says Jerry Hartley, owner of the J. Clyde, in Birmingham, Alabama, which hosts a monthly beer-pairing dinner. Since launching his series in August 2007, Hartley has seen crowds swell to 35 or 40. Dishes like crawfish gumbo opposite Abita Turbodog draw them in. “There’s no better way to educate people about beer and change its image than to pair it with food,” he says.
While restaurants and bars host numerous food-pairing events, there are plenty of private dinners, too. In New York, beer-industry veteran Samuel Merritt’s Civilization of Beer creates pairing dinners for private and corporate clients, while San Francisco—based “beer chef” Bruce Paton curates beer banquets at the local Cathedral Hill Hotel. Want to create a beer-food feast at home? Follow Garrett Oliver’s book The Brewmaster’s Table and learn to pair barley wines with cheddar cheese.
Still, few enthusiasts treat beer as reverentially as Sean Z. Paxton, of Sonoma, California, aka the “Homebrew Chef.” Since the mid-1990s, Paxton, a trained chef and photographer, has spread his gastronomic gospel with evangelical fervor. Whereas most beer-pairing zealots mimic sommeliers, matching a meal’s flavor to a particular brew, Paxton goes a step further.
“Beer is an ingredient,” he says. “And there are thousands of flavors to choose from.” Paxton uses beer with deft, painterly strokes, in inventive dishes that make beer-can chicken seem like caveman grub. At San Francisco’s divey, sticker-strewn Toronado Pub, he produces an annual Belgian beer dinner with ten-plus courses, such as hop shoots blanched in Delirium Tremens strong pale ale and Flemish red ale-marinated foie gras torchon topped with Duchesse de Bourgogne foam. Paxton has also taken this concept to its most lavish, delicious extreme at Ebenezer’s Pub in Lovell, Maine, where past Belgian-beer dinners have clocked in at an epic six hours.
Paxton’s cauliflower salad is made with curry-scented cauliflower, golden raisins soaked in Russian River’s Dawnation golden ale, toasted almonds, mache, hemp seeds, and a dressing of organic yogurt mixed with Cautillon Gueuze.
For this dish, Paxton brined duck breasts in New Belgium’s Transatlantique Kviek, seared them medium rare, and created a reduction of New Belgium’s Dark Kviek. The duck is plated alongside pearl-barley risotto made with seasonal vegetables.
This decadent plate is composed of Paxton’s homemade duck-liver paté infused with Lost Abbey’s Ten Commandments ale; pork villettes saturated with Petrus Oud Bruin—soaked figs and prunes; cornichons; heirloom radishes; and mustard made with Corseudonk Christmas Ale. Wow.
For the 2010 marathon meal, Paxton debuted more than a dozen mouth-dropping pairings. If you were lucky enough to nab a $295 seat, you would’ve devoured Hair of the Hare, encompassing braised rabbit (the hare) with a stock shot through with Hair of the Dog’s Cherry Adam from the Wood, which was served alongside sour, circa 1981 De Struise Dirty Horse. Pomme frites came with Chimay Red aioli and Allagash Brewing’s tart wild ale Victor Francenstein, which was aged with Cabernet Franc grapes. For dessert? Toffee incorporating intense Russian imperial stout Black Albert from De Struise Brouwers topped with Belgian chocolate infused with Kabert—a ludicrously rare blend of Black Albert and Portsmouth Brewery’s revered Kate the Great imperial stout.
“To be considered a beer dinner, you should cook with beer, which is the best ingredient and half the fun,” enthuses Paxton. “We’ve been cooking with wine for hundreds of years, but to me there’s nothing better than a nice beef stew with a Scotch ale. It blows wine out of the water.”
Tips for Planning a Beer-Pairing Dinner
Homebrew Chef Sean Z. Paxton Offers His top tips.
1. Beer is an ingredient. “You can use beer just like you would oregano or thyme, to add flavor,” Paxton says. “Bitter IPAs and sweet barley wines can be vital to any recipe.”
2. Tweak the standards. “Sake and sushi is an amazing combination, but so is sushi with a crisp pilsner or lager,” Paxton says. “Don’t be afraid to deviate from the norm.”
3. Stick to beers you like. “Trust your taste buds. If you don’t like a sour, complex lambic, don’t put it on the menu.”
4. Eat and drink seasonally. “Use seasonal ingredients and match them to seasonal beers,” Paxton urges. “Dark, rich beers work well with stews and braised meats for a reason.”
5. Complement and contrast. “With beer pairings, you either want to complement the flavor (like a mango salsa over fish with hefeweizen) or contrast it by serving a super-hoppy IPA with spicy Thai.”
6. Make a scene. “When you design a dinner, think about how you can make it interesting,” Paxton says. “Make a quirky appetizer or use cool stemware or keep the menu secret. The point of the dinner is to learn, have fun, and inspire people.”
7. The more the merrier. Invite as many people as you can feed, Paxton suggests. “Our society has gotten so used to eating in front of a TV. A beer-pairing dinner is an organic way to gather a like-minded community.”
8. Begin mild, end big. “Start with lighter, simpler beers and move up to stronger, more complex beers,” Paxton says. “If you kick off dinner with an imperial stout, you’ll blow out people’s palates.”
9. Have a theme. “Organize your beer dinner around a single brewery or perhaps a country. It serves as a unifying principle you can build around.”
10. Steady the course. “A three-course dinner can be just as rewarding as a ten-course dinner,” Paxton says. “Don’t bite off more than you can chew, and feel free to keep the recipes simple.”
11. Pour lightly. “Resist the urge to serve an entire beer for each course. Four or five ounces will do. You don’t want people to drink too much, too quickly.”
A broken-down meat grinder doubles as taps at Brooklyn’s Brew Table.
Dinner Is Served
When Justin Philips, a former beer importer, and his wife, Tricia, opened Beer Table in February 2008, they wanted to place equal emphasis on food and beer. In addition to quirky pickled veggies and butter beans with country ham, there’s a Bavarian-style brunch consisting of crispy, fruit-topped Belgian-style waffles served with plump weisswurst and light, wheaty Schneider-Weisse. But a sausage-beer brunch is kid’s play compared to dinner.
Chefs take to a tiled kitchen smaller than a mop closet and, armed with a couple of pots and one burner, devise dishes rooted in locally sourced New American cuisine. One night, there’s roasted beets with arugula and pickled baby fennel. The next, stewed chicken with wheatberries, or caramelized bacon with roasted fingerling potatoes and chives. Each dish is custom paired to one of Beer Table’s assiduously sourced global brews.
To test Beer Table’s talent, I take a seat one Tuesday night for dinner. While couples chatter and the sound system hums with gentle jazz, Justin and Tricia attend to customers, delivering pints of froth-capped Smuttynose Farmhouse and reciting dinner details. “I can’t believe you cook in there,” says one patron, motioning toward the chef furiously working the Lilliputian kitchen.
The dinnertime scene at Beer Table.
After taking my order, Justin—who often shares waiter duties with Tricia—delivers crisp bread crowned with shriveled, pickled oysters. The crunch balances the oysters’ slippery brininess and primes my palate for the first course: a tangle of tangy, crunchy julienned celeriac and Empire apples studded with pinkish smoked trout and vivid-green parsley. “That trout was smoked by the Eel Man,” he says. Wait—the Eel Man?
“His name’s Ray Turner, and he catches eel, trout, and other fish and smokes them,” Justin says of Turner’s Hancock, New York, operation, Delaware Delicacies Smoke House. Locally sourced, indeed. Justin then presents Germany’s Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Helles. The brewery that crafted this light lager specializes in rauchbier (smoke beer), made using smoked malt. The crisp, sparkling Schlenkerla evokes campfires in aroma and taste, an ideal companion for the trout salad. The snappy apples and celery root provide a pleasing contrast and temper the trout’s woodsy blast, further accentuated by the lager’s gentle, smoky essence. “It’s like the beer was brewed for this dish,” says a nearby guest, forking up trout and taking a long drink.
After I clean my plate, Justin delivers the classic boiled French pot-au-feu. It’s presented with fall-apart beef chunks, a rich marrowbone, and tender potatoes and carrots. On the side, there’s salt, horseradish, and coarse-ground mustard for dipping and a double-walled glass brimming with savory beef broth.
“You can either pour it on top or drink it,” Justin explains. He pours me a wineglass full of ambrosial Cuvée des Fleurs, which Long Island brewery Southampton makes with edible flowers. I sip the rich, savory broth, then the hazy, amber beer—like a liquid scalpel, Cuvée’s spicy sweetness cuts through the broth, tempting me to kick it back like a bolt of bourbon. Instead, I dribble broth on the pot-au-feu and then follow the lead of several boisterous Australians, who are ravenously scooping out bone marrow. I follow suit, spreading a dab of gelatinous marrow on a spud. On its own, the marrow is much too rich. But Cuvée’s alchemic magic scales back the decadence.
Diners savoring suds and sustenance at Beer Table.
“I take it you liked dinner,” Justin says, scooping up my empty plate and glass. “Mm-hmmm,”
I mumble, mentally scheming to sneak into the kitchen and steal an armful of marrowbones and a Cuvée bottle.
“Ready for dessert?”
I have the world’s smallest sweet tooth, preferring a warming, post-dinner bourbon. But this dessert is too tempting to pass up: carrot cake spackled with ginger-spiked cream cheese, the plate painted with blood-orange sauce. Justin fills a wide-mouthed snifter with Dansk Mjød Old Danish Braggot, a malty beer blended with sweet mead. “Wow, this cakes melts into the beer,” gushes a woman with curly brown ringlets. I fork up some cake, then sip Braggot. She’s right. The beer’s candy sweetness is a perfect match for the cake.
“It was a perfect ending to a hearty meal,” says Bec Death, a member of that boisterous Aussie party She typically favors beer over wine but had never tried a beer dinner. Curiosity took her to tonight’s meal, which left her pleasantly surprised and hankering for another. “Each course built up to the next,” she says. “The pairings always complemented, not overwhelmed, the food.”
One of her dining companions, eco-friendly clothing company owner Billie Paris, was equally impressed. “We tend to have beer with snacks like wasabi peas and chips, but we hadn’t thought to experiment with beer-and-meal matching,” says Paris, who’s eager to sample another pairing meal and switch up her usual dinner protocol: beer when perusing the menu, then wine to accompany the food. And she’s excited by beer’s myriad matching capabilities. “Who would have known that there was a dessert-type beer?”
And that’s what it comes down to. Pint by pint, entrée after entrée, bars and restaurants are deviating from decades of standard operating procedure, and Beer Table is happy to join that march. “Many people see us as more of a drinking place,” Justin says, clearing my empty plate. “But we’re really a tasting spot where people happen to drink.”
A Cheat Sheet to Ten Common Brew-and-Chew Pairings
Pizza: Go for a crisp, subtly sweet and hoppy Vienna lager, such as Brooklyn Brewery’s Brooklyn Lager or Great Lakes Brewing Company’s Eliott Ness.
Oysters: A creamy, roasty dry Irish stout, such as Guinness or Avery Brewing Company’s Out of Bounds Stout, helps bring out the briny oceanic tang.
Hamburgers: To cut through the richness, try a lightly hopped pale ale like Stone Brewing Co.’s Pale Ale or Boulder Beer’s Hazed & Infused.
Thai: To stand up to curries’ lip-searing heat, select a spicy, boldly hopped IPA—maybe Bear Republic Brewing Co.’s Racer 5 or Founders Brewing Company’s Centennial IPA.
Chocolate: Pair the sweet with a dark, chocolate-kissed imperial stout such as AleSmith Brewing Company’s Speedway or Great Divide’s Yeti.
Sushi: Raw fish works wonderfully with light, delicate hefeweizen (try Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier) or perhaps a witbier, such as Allagash Brewing Company’s White.
Fried Chicken: For crunchy, greasy fried chicken, go with a strong, hop-tinged maibock, such as Rogue Brewery’s Dead Guy Ale or Abita Brewing Co.’s Andygator.
Salads: If the salad has a cream dressing, try a bright pilsner such as Victory Brewing Company’s Prima Pils; a vinaigrette or acidic dressing requires a complementary flavor, such as the Duck-Rabbit Craft Brewery’s hoppy Duck-Rabbit Brown Ale.
Steak: Charred meat makes nice with a rich, malty Belgian dubbel, such as a Chimay Première or Brouwerij St. Bernardus’s St. Bernardus Prior 8.
Salmon: The grilled fish would go great with a saison, such as Goose Island Beer Co.’s Sofie, or a wheat beer like Two Brothers Brewing Company’s Ebel’s Weiss.