Category: beer and food

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beer and food

More on tastebuds

On a recent programme on the Beeb, mad scientist chef Heston Blumenthal, most famous for his bacon and egg ice cream, carried out an interesting experiment on his tastebuds.

He dried them out with a tampon.

Yes, that’s right. He put a ladies’ sanitary product on his tongue, on TV.

It absorbed saliva and, more importantly, a mucus that builds up on the tongue when we eat certain foods, and which interferes with our tastebuds.

He found custard creamier afterward, and other flavours more pronounced.

Now, me and Boak didn’t want to replicate that exactly, but we did try eating some dry white bread when we were tasting a beer that night. And, do you know what? The beer tasted much more intense and we thought we could detect more hop flavour.

Michael Jackson suggested this years ago, but I scoffed, preferring to, er, scoff pork scratchings. Now I know. For “serious” tastings, dry bread (or tampons) it is.

Bailey

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beer and food

Beer & food matching at Christmas

christmas_beer_menu.jpgGarrett Oliver maintains that there are no foods that can’t be matched with beer. So I thought I’d have a go at matching beers to the different courses of the traditional Boak family Christmas.

I didn’t have the benefit of Mr Oliver’s advice while I was choosing the beers, but I can consult in retrospect, as I bought Bailey a copy of The Brewmaster’s Table for Christmas. We may put up a book review when we’ve finished, but we’re enjoying it immensely at the moment.

1. Grapefruit appetiser + Blanche de Namur

Why selected: Grapefruit was always going to be a challenge, especially when grilled with spices. Spices and citrus suggested a Belgian Wit to me. I went for Blanche de Namur as it’s one of the more subtle (some may say bland) of the Wits I’ve tried.

Garrett Oliver says: citrusy flavours work well with Wits.

The verdict: This worked very nicely, although I might go for a less subtle Wit next time. Incidentally, this beer goes fantastically well with orange-flavoured dark chocolate.

2. Roast Chestnut soup + Meantime London Porter

Why selected: I thought a nice roast porter should work with roast chestnuts (stunningly original there, eh?) and went for Meantime mostly because it comes in nice snazzy bottles, but also I remember it as being bitter and smoky, which was what I wanted.

Garrett Oliver says: “British porters are rich, elegant beers that… are capable of matching many more dishes than one might imagine” and lists scallops, chargrilled meat, Shepherd’s pie and subtle chocolate deserts.

Verdict: This would have worked if I hadn’t added sherry to the soup. It made the soup taste wonderfully Christmassy, but clashed with the porter. That’s my fault, rather than the porter’s.

3. Turkey (plus trimmings!) + La Chouffe Golden Ale

Why selected: Wasn’t really sure, but I felt that a good-bodied blonde Belgian (fnah fnah) was what I needed for the main course. I went for La Chouffe Golden Ale as I didn’t want anything too extreme, and I remembered this as having an understated but satisfying flavour.

Garrett Oliver Says: With turkey, Biere De Garde, dunkel, dubbel, Oktoberfest Marzen, American Amber Lager, Belgian Pale Ale. He also mentions La Chouffe (as a Saison) and suggests it with Indian food (really?), barbeque, Thai, duck, cassoulet and rustic sausages.

The verdict: It’s a lovely beer, but not quite right with the turkey. I think you could go two ways with this — either go for something more extreme (a good trippel?) or perhaps go something lighter, like Palm.

4. Christmas Pudding + Delirium Christmas beer

Why selected: We had Delirium Christmas a few weeks back, and were impressed with its dark, spicy warmth, and thought that it would go well with spicy & sweet Christmas food. At 10%, it should round off the meal nicely.

What Garrett Oliver says: Haven’t found anything on Christmas pudding, and I’m not sure how he’d classify the beer. He recommends Delirium Tremens with a whole host of savoury stuff, but DT is pretty different from the Christmas beer.

Verdict: Didn’t work. For some reason, the beer tasted completely different when up against the pudding. There may have been some differences between bottles (yesterday I served from a large bottle, and there are some that maintain that Belgian beers taste different in large bottles to small bottles). Or it may be that it just couldn’t cope with the mighty pudding, which had been maturing for a year and a month. The pudding brought out the worst in the beer — the carbonation (too much!), the comparatively light body, and the sweetness — without delivering the warm spicy kick I’d hoped for.

I don’t know what would work with the pudding — maybe a heavier Belgian (St Bernardus 12?) Think I have a way to go with this food and beer matching business.

By the way – hope you all had a lovely Christmas.

Boak

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beer and food

Pretentious? Watashi?

Stout and Oysters is a classic combination. The problem is, neither of us much likes oysters, which is just as well, as they’re bleedin’ expensive.

But we do like sushi — especially the stuff that comes in polystyrene trays from the Japan Centre on Piccadilly.

bbporter.jpgLast night, we tried homemade “junkfood” salmon rolls with Black Boss, one of the Polish porters we picked up at the Great British Beer Festival.

We’ll tell you more about the beer in our forthcoming Baltic porter round-up but, for now, what we can say is: sushi and porter is a combination that works.

There didn’t seem to be any competing flavours, so both the beer and the food tasted distinct from each other.

With hindsight, we’d drink something a little drier and a little weaker — Titanic Stout would probably be perfect.

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beer and food buying beer

Christmas gifts for beer lovers

What do you buy a beer lover for Christmas, other than beer?

jacksonbook.jpg1. The late Michael Jackson’s new book, the Eyewitness Guide to Beer — probably an update of his 1998 Dorling Kindersley book Ultimate Beer, but looks interesting anyway.

2. Some glassware. You can pick up branded Fuller’s glasses for around £4 in most of their pubs. Many supermarkets are selling gift sets with branded glasses from Shepherd Neame Spitfire, Old Speckled Hen and other well-known brands. Or, you can go posh — here’s a selection online. I like the look of these but could also do with one of these to drink imperial stout from.

beermachine.jpg3. A homebrewing kit. There are some basic, gimmicky automatic brewing machines, which look like fun. Or, you can buy a decent beginners kit from these people and pay less for it. But don’t forget to get a decent book to go with it.

4. More homebrewing stuff. If your loved one is already brewing, why not help them take it to the next level with some fancy kit like a

pubinabox.jpg5. There are all kinds of “pub at home” kits and accessories, from the cheap and cheerful to the ludicrously elaborate and expensive. If you don’t fancy having any of that in the house, what about the shed…?

6. Some rare and, erm, beautiful breweriana from Ebay might go down well. Not sure I’d want a load of old bottle tops for Christmas myself, but who knows what evil lurks in the minds of men.

7. What about the ludicrously named World’s Best Bottle Opener? Or even a nice traditional one. You can never have too many. Like umbrellas, they have a habit of disappearing. Just don’t buy a Homer Simpson novelty bottle opener. Believe me, the novelty of hearing “mmmmm, beer” wears off after, ooh, two bottles or so.

8. What about some food to accompany beer, or a combination of the two? O’Hanlon’s port stout and stilton; almost anything Belgian with some chocolate; or some pork scratchings…

9. CAMRA membership!

10. goodgift.jpgGood gifts are increasingly popular. If there’s too much junk in your house anyway, and you don’t want to encourage your loved ones to get fat and drunk, why not buy a brewery in Tanzania on their behalf?

11. And finally, if you are going to buy beer — and, let’s face it, it’s probably your best bet — choose them with a theme such as strong stouts, Christmas beers, German beers, or whatever, and package them nicely.

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beer and food

Who decided that IPA went with curry just because of the name?

Bailey´s been holding the fort while I´ve been studying for exams, but now they´re over, I feel I should make it up. However, as I´m still in the middle of Spain I´m stuck for immediate inspiration, so thought I´d post on something which has been bugging me for a while.

IPA and curry. I´ve been told by many wise people that instead of fizzy lager, one should drink IPA with curry. But I don´t see it. I´ve tried it on several occasions, and each time, the curry just completely kills the flavour of the IPA. Even a powerful tasting IPA like St Austell´s “Proper Job” is left completely bland by my chickpea massala.

Curry kills hop flavouring. Not that crazy really, given that hops are another spice. It´s just a waste of a decent IPA.

So what to drink with curry? A “Munich-style Helles” or alternatively Cornershop East European Lager (I´d like to see that as a style in the BJCP guidelines!) is inoffensive and refreshing, but then again, if you can´t really taste the beer, is it worth bothering at all?

I have a theory that a nice belgian wheatbeer might work, although it would have to be one that´s not too spicy. One to try when I get back.

Any other suggestions?

Boak