Today being a colder day, I decided to go with a beef chuck pot roast, with potatoes, sweet potatoes, onions, and using some of the Amber Ale to provide the liquid component of the dinner.

This was a perfect meal for a colder day. The malt sweetness played off the beef and the sweet potato. The carbonation lifted the fat off the tongue, refreshing the mouth for each bite. The hop bitterness freshened the tastebuds and contrasted nicely with the sweet, fatty richness of the rest of the meal.

Sometimes simplicity is what you crave. This hit the spot exactly right.

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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.

Got the orange and brown food groups covered.

The food was fore-ordained.  In the course of conversation over the weekend, a friend recommended pot roast with sweet potatoes instead of white potatoes.  Said it made the roast sweet.  Sounded good to me; when I was buying a few necessities Sunday I picked up a roast, some sweet potatoes, carrots, and a sweet onion to throw in the crock pot.  Sliced the onion and sweet potatoes this morning before going to work and threw them in with the roast and the baby carrots.

I had no recipe to work from, so I just added a few random things in hopes of achieving a good end result: water, olive oil, a splash of vinegar, some oregano, steak spice, plenty of salt, and some Tabasco.  Set on low, give it 9 hours or so.

Extra Special Bitter! Not "Early Spring Beer," jerks.

The end result was pretty good, but not quite what I’d hoped.  I didn’t think the roast tasted any different from the many times I’ve made pot roast with white potatoes.  Pretty much identical, really.  So that was a disappointment.  But pot roast is inherenty a tasty food, so it was enjoyable, of course.  And the sweet potatoes actually became savory over the course of the extended slow cook.  There was hardly any sweetness left.  My wife appreciated that, though.  So different strokes for different folks.  The Tabasco did add a nice mild kick that helped things without being overkill for the little ones.

Beerwise I really debated on whether to go very sweet and malty to compliment the flavors in the food, or sharply bitter to contrast.  I went somewhat in between.  ESB’s have decent malty punch, but are still quite hoppy.  Pretty good call.  Enjoyable pairing.

Sierra Nevada releases their ESB as a Spring seasonal, thus the “Early Spring Beer” tripe they put on the label.  But ESBs are not traditionally released in the early Spring.  Looks like they took a page from Redhook’s playbook and just wanted to get “extra” and “bitter” off the label.  I guess it turns some people off.  But it pissed me off when Redhook changed to “extra special beer” and this is pretty annoying too.  ESB is a noble style with a rich history.  Pretending it’s something other than “extra special bitter” detracts from that history.  Bah.

But the beer is good.

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!