4 Tips on Pairing Beer and Food for Optimum Flavor.

by Kevin Smith Author

There’s something to the classic pizza and beer dining regimen that goes beyond the college dorm life. Certain flavors partner well together to bring out the best tastes, and that certainly applies to how you pair your foods with your favorite beers. That’s right! Flavor pairing isn’t just for wines. Here are a few tips to get those tastes just right.

Pay Yourself a Complement

You want the flavors the complement each other well. It’s the whole wine and cheese concept—the flavors may be vastly different, but when brought together the idea is that they enhance each other and bring out an entirely different taste bud experience. Great compliments are achieved by, say, pairing rich foods with also have a heavy and rich flavor, like stouts or even porters. Similarly, a chicken salad may do better with a light beer, and fruity wheat beers tag along well with fruity dishes or sweet desserts.

Consider the Contrasts

Sometimes, opposites attract. Pairing contrasting beer and food flavors may seem intimidating to start with, but it gets easier over time. Consider these strong flavors that may dominate a dish: sweet, oily or rich. As long as the dish you’re trying to contrast as a singular, dominant kind of flavor, then it makes it easier to partner a contrasting beer with it successfully. It’s why, say, a stout beer pairs well with oysters.

Don’t Reach Too Far

Every palette is a bit different. In general, a lot of medium and dark beers have strong, somewhat overpowering flavors. This may make them harder to pair with foods that don’t also have a strong flavor to them. The tricky dilemma of partnering beer and food is that you don’t want to choose a beer that swallows up the flavor of everything that you’re eating.

Cleanse that Palate

When the food that you’re eating has a really, really strong flavor, sometimes what you really need from your beer is a palate cleanse more than anything. Let’s say the spicy wings you’re trying on for size are the next notch up from what you’re used to in the spice level. Maybe a light beer is just what the doctor ordered to wash it down.

Dining well at made from scratch restaurants in Alpharetta, GA, or your favorite dives, can take on a whole new edge whenever you start testing out different beers with your meal.