I refuse to accept this – that’s why I became involved in beer culture – so I kicked this recipe up a notch by using an Imperial Stout – Old Rasputin from North Coast, to be precise.

250ml/8.5oz Old Rasputin
250g/8.8oz sweet (unsalted) butter
75g/2.6oz cocoa
400g/14oz caster (superfine) sugar
142ml/4.8oz sour cream
2 eggs
1 tablespoon vanilla
275g/9.7oz plain (all purpose) flour
2.5 tsp baking soda

Preheat the oven to gas mark 4 / 180c / 350f. Butter and line a 23cm/9 inch springform tin.
Pour the Old Rasputin into a large wide saucepan, add the butter in spoons or slices and heat until the butter has melted. Whisk in the cocoa and sugar.
Beat the sour cream with the eggs and vanilla and then pour into the mixture in the pan, then whisk in the flour and baking soda.
Pour the cake batter into the greased and lined tin and bake for 45-60 minutes until a toothpick inserted in the cake comes out mostly clean. Leave to cool completely in the tin on the cooling rack – this is a very moist cake.

When the cake is cold, sit it on a flat platter while you add the topping – a plain, white vanilla frosting makes the cake look like a glass of a fine stout.

Cut a slice of the cake and eat with some of the Old Rasputin. Wonder as the chocolate runs to the front of your mouth, followed by a rampaging horde of coffee flavours, then the sweetness is finally chased off your palate with an assertive *snap* of hop bitterness.

Now you can confidently leave those watery mass brands on the shelf for those of a less discriminating palate to purchase while you enjoy an extraordinary dessert served with a World Class beer.

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Beerlicious articles by Stuart Carter, stuart@beerlicious.net is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

I already had a glass of Oktoberfest poured up when I decided to serve up a helping of homemade peach cobbler.  I never dreamed the two would compliment each other.

Lo and behold, the gentle sweetness and light bready maltiness of the beer blended perfectly with the sweetness and peach flavors of the cobbler.  It was stunning.

If you had asked me before hand what beer I would ideally pair with the cobbler, I would have said witbier or fruit lambic.  I’ll give those a try someday.  In the meantime, I had this pairing again after the first experiment and it held up perfectly.  Serendipity.

Grilled Gulf Shrimp served on a Fried Green Tomato and Remoulade paired with Terrapin Rye Squared
The high gravity Terrapin beers have just entered Alabama. This was my first experience with the Rye Squared. As usual the hops in the Terrapin worked wonders with the spice in the remoulade to make an explosive spice mix. Wonderful.

Jolly Pumpkin La Roja served with a traditional Chef’s Salad and La Roja Vinaigrette Dressing
Jolly Pumpkin make very interesting and complex beers using wild fermentation, and are not the easiest to get hold of. All of them have some brettanomyces to provide a sour, wild flavour and unique taste profile.
The combination with the vinaigrette dressing and the chef’s salad is divine. The gentle sourness provides an almost vinegary tang that works perfectly with the salad. Seek out Jolly Pumpkin ales – don’t be put off by the description “sour” – this is an exceptionally good beer.

Three Cheese Tortellini covered in an Alabama Chevre Pasta Sauce accompanied by Rochefort 8 Trappiste Ale
The three-cheese pasta and goat cheese sauce is a great dish in itself.  The Rochefort is the 73rd best beer in the world (at the time of writing) and deserves this place – it is stunningly flavourful, rich and malty, explosively carbonated and delicious.
The combination is sheer perfection. The maltiness in the beer matches the rich unctuousness of the cheese, while the explosive carbonation scrubs the palate – and tongue – clean with every mouthful, cleaning and refreshing the palate to make every bite of the tortellini just as tasty as the first.
An example of a perfect beer and food pairing.

Cask Conditioned Ola Dubh Special 40 Reserve along with Sliced Smoked BBQ Mutton
Ola Dubh – Scottish Gaelic for Black Oil – is an old ale from Scotland. It’s matured in a cask that was previously used to mature single malt Scottish whisky from Highland Park, Scotland’s second most northerly distillery. It is rich, dense, tasty, with profound notes of single malt; a sublime beverage.
The Ola Dubh stands in stark contrast to the rich smokiness of the pulled mutton and the citrus-infused BBQ sauce, perking up your taste buds and providing a nice digestif to finish off the main course.

Good People Fatso Imperial Stout Ice Cream Float
Fatso is the new Imperial Stout from Birmingham’s own Good People brewery. Its taste has masses of coffee richness and an almost silky mouthfeel. In the ice cream float, it mutates into the richest, densest, most silky mocha coffee you can even imagine.  Absolutely wonderful.

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Beerlicious articles by Stuart Carter, stuart@beerlicious.net is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Come a little closer.

Wrap your mind around this one.  Decadent mini cupcakes paired with robust English Porter.  Remember cupcakes?  Well, they’re out.  Apparently, making mini cakes has become passé.  Now making mini cupcakes are all the rage.  Yep, you heard it here first.  Beerlicious is on the cutting edge of pastry fashion.  Here’s how I found out.  Last Thursday, my sister-in-law came through Birmingham with a friend on their way to a wedding in Mobile.  They went out to eat with my wife at a new European-style restaurant on 2nd Ave. North in Birmingham, Urban Standard, after reading a good writeup of the restaurant in Birmingham Weekly.  FWIW, Urban Standard is the only restaurant I am aware of in Birmingham that serves Primavera coffee.  Primavera is very selective about who they allow to serve their coffe.  Brett, the owner, once told me that they will only allow restaurants to serve their coffe if they are confident that the restaurant will prepare it correctly, which means proper equipment, proper glassware, and proper training.  At Urban Standard, the wife and SIL saw that they sold cupcakes, but decided that wasnt’ good enough. 

Closer Still.

They had already planned their next stop at a Homewood Bake Shoppe, Pastry Art, specifically to pick up some mini cupcakes.  Why mini cupcakes?  Who knows, but who am I to question fashion?  Now, my SIL lives in Beer Capital of the South, a.k.a. Asheville, NC.  When she comes to Beer Wasteland, she is always faithful to bring me a growler of something good.  This time she brought a growler of English Porter from Asheville’s newest brewery, Wedge Brewing Co.  So, my treat, when I arrived home on Thursday, was four mini cupcakes and a growler.  Excellent!  Of course I had to try to beer right away, and it was quite good.  I actually prefer American Style porters, with less fruitiness and more bold and assertive roasty flavors.  However, Wedge’s Community Porter is good for what it is and compares well to other English Porters I’ve had (Samuel Smith’s and Fuller’s).  The porter with dinner was fine, but the interesting part came when my wife and I sampled the various mini cupcakes from Pastry Art.  First was a chocolate cupcake.  My favorite.  What could be better than chocolate on chocolate with porter to boot?  Well, chocolate on chocolate with nuts was.  And even better than that?  Red Velvet.  In fact, to my surprise, the red velvet worked better with the beer than the chocolate cupcakes did.  For some reason the chocolate cupcakes had a lingering sweetness that competed with the beer, whereas the red velvet cupcake brought out a nice dry aftertaste in the porter.  

There's the art in Pastry Art.

The strawberry mini cupcake was the best of both worlds, initially dry with the roasted coffee and burnt chocolate flavors, the sweet strawberry didn’t stay down, but imposed itself slowly, mixing very nicely with the subtle esters in the porter.  Do you have to be “in” or have a sister-in-law who lives in Beer Nirvana to enjoy this pairing?  Certainly not.  A slice of strawberry cake and Fuller’s London Porter or Samuel Smith’s Taddy Porter would probably fit the bill just fine.

The stout is warm and rich, with a dark coffee bitterness. How does it stand up to chocolate?

First up: Moser Roth 70% Cocoa Dark Chocolate. Really not a good combo. It washes out the flavour of the beer, making it taste watery, and bringing out the bitterness in the chocolate.

Second: Moser Roth Orange Almond. Much better. Brings out a really rich creaminess in the beer.

Third: Terry’s Dark Chocolate Orange. Not sure about this one. There is a smooth richness there, and a subtle sweetness, but the orange flavour almost disappears.

Fourth: Cadbury’s Dairy Milk. Oh my. I think I heard an angelic chorus. Perfection. The beer takes some of the sweetness away from the chocolate; the chocolate-beer combination tastes like hot chocolate, with a rich velvet texture. Words fail me in describing how wonderful this combination is – but it wouldn’t surprise me if it brought about world peace.

One final note – please make sure you allow the beer to come to a “lightly chilled”, rather than “ice cold” temperature, or you may be disappointed

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Beerlicious articles by Stuart Carter, stuart@beerlicious.net is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

Three Floyds are one of the best known brewpubs, famed in the beer world for their Dark Lord Imperial Stout. Robert the Bruce is their Scottish style ale, broadly similar to a brown ale in flavour profile – it’s rich and malty, with very delicate hopping to balance the sweetness.

The malty beer is a perfect pairing for the pot roast. It really does not get any better than this. Malty sweetness, rich flavours from the caramelised meat juices, the meat meltingly tender on the tongue, and the almost unctuous natural gravy – hoo boy, good stuff!

The surprise for me was the pairing with Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate. For me it just works, for others it may not – this is the delight of pairing beer and food, you never know quite what will please your palate!

A truly outstanding pairing is cheesecake and a good porter or stout. Fuller’s London Porter has a subtle but unmistakable coffee taste. Rogue’s Shakespeare Stout is dark, intense, and works well with rich fruity cheesecakes.

A good surprise pairing is strawberry cheesecake and summer seasonal beers, like Blue Moon Honeymoon. This pairing is light and delicate and will appeal to a palate that does not appreciate the intensity of dark beer!

Guinness, despite being the name everyone recognises, is a bit lacking in flavour and so I would only suggest it as a pairing with a delicate tasting cheesecake. I generally advise people to avoid Guinness because of its weak taste – there are many better options to choose from, most of them from right here in the USA.

Introducing your friends and family to dark beer and cheesecake should open their minds to why you like craft beer. It may also win some of them over from pairing wine and food which can only be a good thing: wine and food simply do not offer the same level of complexity and precision that you can get from pairing beer – good craft beer – and food.