GPBC Coffee Stout + Roast Beef Sandwich

This is the flip side of Danner’s recent visit to the J Clyde where he had a Good People Brewing Co. IPA followed by an Olde Towne Amber with his fried green tomato BLT.  I also had two beers with a sandwich.  My first was the long-anticipated GPBC Coffee Oatmeal Stout.  The sandwich:  a roast beef with lettuce, red onion, and a horseradish cream cheese on a hoagie bun.  Nice.  Danner opined that the GPBC stout may have been a new keg from a new batch.  Will this become a regular offering?…

First, the beer.  Murky brownblack with a thin tan head.  I immediately got a whiff of the zesty Willamette hops.  You’ve gotta love a fresh hop smell coming through in a stout.  My first sip set the course for the beer.  Smooth, a nice simple malt backbone, then WHAM–coffee, coffee, coffee.  The hops and coffee certainly played off of each other, creating a unique flavor that I can best describe as Bazooka Joe.  Weird, I know.  This is absolutely the most unique stout I’ve had.

I know Danner has been searching for solutions for pairing malty beer with food.  I have to agree.  I’ve had Terrapin’s Wake-n-Bake coffee oatmeal stout with greasy food before and it was a horrendous pairing.  But in this case, the meat was lean and the horseradish cream cheese and crisp red onion worked as a palate cleanser, gearing me up for my next sip of what would otherwise have been an near-overwhelming pint of beer.  The verdict?  Horseradish plus coffee oatmeal stout equals SUCCESS!

Like Danner, I finished my beer with half a sandwich left and ordered the GPBC IPA that Danner was raving about.  A good beer–very good if you’re into getting the freshest IPA possible.  I mean, it was how I imaging chewing on a hop cone might be.  Not bitter, but every nuance of the GPBC hop of choice was evident.  Unlike Danner, I have a very hard time trying to pair IPAs with food.  I’ve simply had no success.  I defy those who say IPAs go well with spicy food.  It just doesn’t make sense to me that you’d bruise your tongue with heat, only to bruise your tongue again with hops.  Why?  But that may be a topic for another post.  Suffice it to say that the IPA and the sandwich were not star crossed lovers.  They were ships passing in the night.  Neither one helped the other, further verifying my theory that IPA plus most any food equals NO SUCCESS…

Tags: Good People Brewing, Horseradish, IPA, J. Clyde, Oatmeal Coffee Stout, Spicy, Wake-n-Bake