Follow Sean Inman to the best in craft beer
Sometimes pairing cheese and beer is daunting. Hell, picking the right beer and/or cheese means staring at a cooler and second-guessing yourself.
But your helpful Cicerone’s have laid out an easy chart to make the process easier….
Memorize or print out the next time you are at your beer/cheese monger’s.
Recently, I saw an ice cream and beer pairing put together by Baskin-Robbins and All About Beer Magazine.
One of the pairings got me motivated enough to go get the ice cream (not that hard) and a beer to go with it. (even less hard to do)
Here are the results….
On it’s own, the German dopplebock is quite sweet to an almost caramel point but with a certain lightness to it. Having a sip after the ice cream really brings out the tobacco smoke from the beer as well as drying it out. Neither the chocolate of peanut butter from the ice cream seems changed all that much. Both are pretty rich and the dark lager only seems to cut the butterfat a bit without adding anything to the dessert.
I can see the point of using a lager against a doubly rich ice cream but I think it doesn’t quite work in this case. Peanut butter being too much for the ABV of the beer. I don’t know what beer style would work with this without distortion. I’m thinking of the banana bread beer and wondering what that might be like….
I usually take a pass on press/media dinners that aren’t billed as beer-centric but I hadn’t been to the Federal Bar in NoHo for too long and felt it was time to see if I could covertly add some craft beer to my Dine L.A. menu.
dine L.A. is the excuse you need to check out different restaurants that you have been meaning to eat at but just haven’t done it. And for the craft beer fan, it is a great way to see how different beers pair with a set course of dishes.
You get two courses at lunch and three at dinner so you can get a couple of beers of different styles and then see which one works the best with your appetizer, main course or dessert.
The Federal Bar offered up a wide array of options that you can get with dinner such as the MCO Burger (moo-cluck-oink), short ribs, fish, mac and cheese and a pair of desserts.
Beer fans will note that they have some of the Fat Tire collabs on tap as well as new to LA, Laurelwood Brewing. If you wanted to get super pricey, there were some Garage Project ales too.
Restaurant Week takes place over July 18-31, 2016, including weekends and the prices are as follows:
Lunch (2+ Courses): $15, $20, $25
Dinner (3+ Courses): $29, $39, $49, $95+ (dineL.A. Exclusive Series)
Many beer and food pairing dinners will add a beer to the ingredient mix. And while that is novel in its own way, the new concept under the name Brewed Food is “going beyond using finished beers to utilizing yeasts for fermentation, wort, spent grain, hops, etc..”
And if that intrigues you then you may want to keep your eyes peeled for when Chef and Certified Cicerone Jensen Cummings brings his Brewed Food tour to Los Angeles and San Diego in May. At each stop of the tour “local chefs and brewers host an interactive workshop of beer yeast fermented foods and other brewing ingredient foods paired with beers.”
Basically, this approach turns the brewhouse into a pantry of sorts to inspire dishes to pair with beers. Considering that Chef Jensen was the National Hop Chef Champion of 2014 (which I did not even know existed) leads me to think that this might be more than beer dinner business as usual and might rejuvenate the craft beer dinner event in general.
What happens when you have a certified Cicerone team up with El Segundo hoppy IPAs? Well tomorrow night, Chef Anne Conness (who has also created two exclusive beers for the restaurant to compliment her cuisine.)will present three courses of spicy food at Sausal.
Course #1 – Goat Cheese Stuffed Jalapeño Popper Salad with Mango, Frisée, Endive, and Bacon (paired with El Segundo Brewing Co.’s Citra Pale Ale)
Course #2 – Pork Adobo Stuffed Tamale with Deep Dark Black Mole Sauce, Avocado, and Pico de Gallo (paired with El Segundo Brewing Co.’s Hop Plunge IPA)
Course #3 – Rancho Beef Short Rib with Cabbage Slaw, Hominy, and Cilantro (paired with El Segundo Brewing Co.’s Power Plant Triple IPA)
Dessert – Mexican Chocolate Truffles (for the table)
Reservations can be made in advance by calling (310) 322-2721.
I did not know that Pedaler’s Fork in Calabasas was not only a restaurant but also a bike shop and coffee spot as well. Plus it was the host of a beer pairing dinner with the challenging foudre based beers of New Belgium Brewing.
Thanks to the generosity of New Belgium, I was able to learn more on the Art (and Science) of Beer and Food pairing with the challenging and damn tasty, sour beers from the Fort Collins Foeder Forest.
Course # 1 – Shrimp Pasta with Black Pepper Nage and Pea Tendrils paired with Transatlantique Kriek
This was an odd choice. The bright and tart cherry from the Kriek was dulled by the cream and salt of the shrimp and the pasta. The cherry didn’t get a chance to shine and would have been better served with a salad that had some cheese and nuts in it. The ravioli were quite good as was the sauce and the beer was fantastic (my second favorite of the night) but combined they just didn’t add anything.
Course # 2 – Braised Pork Shoulder with Charred Celeriac Puree and Dried Apricot Sauce paired with La Folie Sour Brown
Now this worked! The light touch of apricot with the pork really found a willing partner in the La Folie which added a tart bite and notes of barrel wood to the food.
Course # 3 – Chocoloate Mousse Cake with Chocolate-Blackberry Ice Cream and Blackberry Sauce paired with NBB Love
First off, this beer is beyond excellent. It was so good. Subtle whiskey mixing with tart and a bit of blackberry as well. The chocolate mousse was fine. But in comparison it was the undercard of the dessert course. I had the cake and had sips of the beers and it was fine but it didn’t light a fire. A blackberry sorbet or gelato with chocolate cookies might have been stronger.
Kudos to New Belgium though for the thoughtful swag though. A really cool wood coaster with the Lost in the Woods logo, a napkin with the logo and a keychain bottle opener with wood and metal too. SO much better than a glass. Well done.
But not the mushroom kind because I cannot stand fungi. Rather the chocolate version…
..from Moonstruck Chocolatiers that includes beer flavors from Rogue, Widmer, Deschutes and Full Sail. Plus the bottle cap design is quite clever.
(They also have a distillers variety pack too!)
There are foods that are improved with the addition of beer in the preparation and others that I am not so sure about and as much as I like marshmallows (especially in hot cocoa) I wonder how Wondermade Beer Marshmallows will make them taste.
But I do know that I would pair them with Base Camp Brewing’s S’more Stout.
Today’s theme is the sweet tooth of beer and we start with a book that a Cookie Monster and a beer geek monster would love, Cookies & Beer a new cook(i.e.)book by Jonathan Bender.
For all the home brewers out there with an over abundance of spent grain, here is another way to use it, with chocolate chips.
If you want to get a sampling of San Gabriel valley breweries in one setting the the upcoming Congregation Ale House beer dinner will accomplish that goal.
The breweries on the list are: Sanctum Brewing Company, Progress Brewing, Claremont Craft Ales, Alosta Brewing Co, as well as host, Congregation Ales.
$49/person with limited seating.