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.

Speaking as someone who’s spent years searching for the best technique to cook steak at home, I must say I think I’ve found it.  It goes without saying that you have to start with decent meat.  USDA Prime if you have money to burn, Choice if you don’t.  And of course the “well-marbled” cuts are most flavorful, which means you want some fat in there folks.  Rib eye is great for this.  It just so happens that Costco has Choice cuts of rib eye for a good price; that’s what I was cooking up tonight.

Eschew the sauces and overbearing seasonings.  You want to taste that cow flesh, not a marinade that would be just as good on cheap steak.  If you’re going to spend the money on a good cut of beef, don’t hide the flavor with sauces and whatnot.  Salt and pepper, that’s it.  If you’re all about the marinade, fine: buy cheap steak.

Obviously going with a grill is a good option, but there again you’re faced with hiding some of the meat’s natural flavor with the smokiness of the grill.  I went with the iron skillet on a gas stove, high heat.  I have no idea how you’d get through this without a massive amount of smoke in your house.  Deal with it.  I had about three rooms filled with smoke.  Smoke detector disabled, obviously.

I had a giant, fat cut of steak.  Nearly two inches thick.  So I cooked my steak about 15 minutes, 7+ minutes on each side.  This produces an INCREDIBLE charred, crispy crust that seals in the juices, while leaving the center a warm rare.  Red.  So juicy and so good.  This was the best steak I have ever cooked, period.

Because a good steak is such a rare treat for me, I went an unusual route with the pairing: two beers at the same time.  In one glass I had Terrapin’s Monk’s Revenge, in another glass I had North Coast’s Old No. 38 stout.  I wanted to experience two completely opposite beers with this masterpiece.

Monk’s Revenge is a first class example of a Belgian IPA.  A glorious new style that combines all the best of spicy/phenolic Belgian yeast character with the best hops on the planet: American hops.  Terrapin does a fantastic job of balancing the Belgian character with the IPA character.  Top notch.  And Old No. 38 is the best Irish dry stout you can buy in the U.S..  Guinness is such a bore up against North Coast’s work of art.

Although it will surely explode your brain, I have to tell you they were both earth-shatteringly good pairings.  Two opposite beers, yet both went perfectly with this awesome steak.  No weird off-flavors as I feared when combining the food with them.  Each made the meal even more enjoyable.

I love it when a plan comes together.

Beef crockpot chili with Terrapin IBA is a good, but not outstanding pairing. If you have the beef in your mouth while taking a sip of the IBA, the hops’ bitterness can be overwhelming. If you have the chili stew base without meat, and take a sip, you get all the chewy malt richness instead. It is quite startling to get such different tastes from one beer! Unfortunately I can’t recommend this pairing, as the contrast is too jarring for me.

Old Leghumper is an American porter: dark, rich, coffee, caramel, very comforting and carb-laden. The pairing of the chili with the Old Leghumper is better than the pairing with the IBA: the coffee depth and maltiness play off superbly against the rich beef and chili sauce. It even works with the sour cream and cheddar with which I decorated my bowl of chili. Utterly brilliant pairing, highly recommended.

For a food this assertive, I turned to the Terrapin Rye Pale Ale. As usual, it reacted with aplomb and unflappable competence. The sharp vinegar taste and seasonings balance off the hops and rye in the Terrapin, bringing out the sweetness of the malt. The hops provide a palate-cleansing bitterness to counterbalance the sharp vinegar tartness of the food.

A very good pairing indeed, which just serves to increase my respect for Terrapin’s brewmaster.

Right on.  Neither has any intense flavors, which increased the likelihood of a successful pairing.  But again, the RPA is on the less malty/more hoppy end of the spectrum.  So I haven’t broken through the Malt Barrier yet.

I had an epiphany today and bought ingredients for something I will probably make sometime this weekend.  I have a lot of malty hopes wrapped up in this upcoming dish.  More on that later.

Sadly… this does not go well with pizza. The flavours clash horribly, producing a harsh hop bitterness which does not sit well on the tongue. I suspect that for those of you who are hopheads this could work well, but this is not for me. This made me sad, because I have had an outstanding pairing with the IBA – it goes extremely well with a leafy green salad with blue cheese dressing. My homework: have this with a pesto pizza!

Now, pizza with Terrapin Rye Pale Ale? Oh yeah… that’s the stuff! The hops come over as a refreshingly crisp *snap*, cleaning your palate and refreshing it for the next bite, while leaving a pleasing malt sweetness at the back of your mouth.

This is a combo you should seek out as soon as possible!

The beer was good.  And the pasta was good.  But the combination, not so much.  Which is the whole point of this blog.  To explore these pairings and see what works and what doesn’t.

Wheat wine is an interesting topic.  It still is not an officially recognized style by the Beer Judge Certification Program, the closest thing there is to a sanctioned entity determining what is and is not technically a “beer style.”  But several breweries have been experimenting with it for a few years and it is emerging.

The gist of a wheat wine is that it is an exceptionally high alcohol beer brewed with 50% or more of wheat malt.  It is obviously a parallel to a barleywine, which is a high alcohol beer brewed with just barley malt.

I’ve had a few but Terrapin’s is the first I’ve had fermented with hefeweizen yeast.  Honestly, I’m impressed they got a hefe yeast to survive up to 11% ABV.  All yeasts have a certain alcohol tolerance, above which they will die out, and I know they reused the same yeast they used to brew their SunRay Hefeweizen, which is a traditional Bavarian hefe.  They used the SunRay batch as  a “yeast starter” to grow enough yeast cells for the Gamma Ray.  Hefeweizens are typically not more than 5% ABV, so to have a hefe yeast survive to 11% is quite a feat.

The dominate flavors in the beer are honey, the hefe yeast, and the alcohol bite.  It’s really an excellent brew, quite unique.

But sadly, it was not destined to work with the Italian pasta I cooked up tonight.  Regarding this pasta… what’ll they think of next?  First, gordita kits.  Now, Macaroni Grill, at home, in a kit.  Seriously people, this was good.  The kit includes linguine pasta, a packet of grated parmesan and romano cheese blend, basil and cheese seasoning, creamy sauce, and sun-dried tomatoes.  Time-wise, it wasn’t any faster than most pasta dishes I whip up off the cuff.  But this didn’t require any thinking about what to cook, and it was a solid meal.

It was definitely up to par with what you could expect to get at Macroni Grill.  Not that that is the pinnacle of Italian food, but you know you like it.  They have some good stuff.

Unfortunately, this was a star-crossed pairing. Not really good, at all.  And I put some thought into it.  I have recently acquired a spare fridge on the super cheap via craigslist, and so now I have the space to keep a wide variety of beer chilled.  I perused my fairly substantial variety of beer and decided I wanted to try the Gamma Ray with this meal.  And it just didn’t hold up.  Harsh flavors in the combo.  Sigh.

I suspect we’ll hit this kit again sometime, and I think I may spring for a Belgian beer next time.

A blurry cameraphone pic of a clearly good meal.

I was certain this would be a winner, and I wasn’t disappointed.

The sandwich featured some hard salami, thin-sliced smoked turkey, shredded cheddar, and spicy brown mustard, all lightly toasted on a hoagie roll.  On the side were some Zapp’s Voodoo Gumbo potato chips.  What better to accompany such a deli delight than some Rye Pale Ale?

The special edition Zapp’s here were a little disappointing.  They didn’t pack as much punch as the colorful package would lead you to believe.  But still yummy.

Yes! More of this, please. Beer pairs with food better than wine, but the PR war needed to make the masses aware of this fact has barely begun. Garrett Oliver is doing what he can, but many more brewmasters need to be pushing the beauty of food and beer pairings. And wholesalers. Especially wholesalers, since they are the ones with the most frequent face time with retailers and restaurants.

Anyway, for your edification, here are the contents of that Terrapin insert. Good stuff:

Terrapin Rye Pale Ale
Food: Can’t be too spicy… Jerk chicken, shrimp & grits or a classic reuben on rye.
Cheese: Gruyere or Manchego

Terrapin Golden Ale
Food: Wants crispy veggies and fresh fish on the grill after your great adventure.
Cheese: Herbed Chevres or Teleme

Terrapin Sunray Wheat
Food: Bratwurst, stone ground mustard and pretzels.
Cheese: Brie or Camembert

Terrapin India Brown Ale
Food: BBQ or anything that’s hittin’ the grill — pairs with spice, lime and cilantro with the best of ‘em.
Cheese: Aged Gouda or Dry Jack

All very basic and simple, but that’s exactly what a 12 pack insert calls for. Don’t intimidate anyone, or bore them. Just offer some useful information and get them thinking about how specific beers compliment specific foods. Bada bing.