10 Great Beer and Food Pairings

Beer Pairing: American pale lager

Craft beers are no longer always “heavy.” Many new-school light American craft lagers—meaning, modern takes on the traditional canned beers of yesteryear—are straightforward, clean-tasting, and refreshing brews that don’t skimp on flavor, but won’t overpower light, bright flavors, or the subtle sweetness of fried foods, like these tasty fish and herbal cilantro combos. Our pick: 329 Lager from LA’s Golden Road Brewery. Add a slice of key lime to punch it all up.

Beer Pairing: Double IPA

With this dish’s char, lime, and citrus, only a double IPA, amped up to a mouthwatering tang, will do. Properly made, not only do IPAs and Double IPAs have their own citrus-grove-like tang that works well with actual citrus flavors, their herbal components tend to bring out the fiery dimensions in other dishes. Meanwhile, most have some residual sweetness to balance it all out, which can echo the umami and sweetness of medium-rare beef. Our pick: Green Flash’s Road Warrior out of San Diego, CA.

Beer Pairing: Munich Dark Lager

This is a copper-to-deep brown, clean-tasting lager with faint spiciness and an assertive, biscuity maltiness. The classic commercial version is Negra Modelo, but these days, many craft brewers are pulling off delicious versions of this time-honored style. Hood River, Oregon’s Full Sail released its smooth Session Black a few years ago, and the accolades have just kept coming.

Beer Pairing: Saison

Whatever else paella brings to the party, from shellfish to piquant sausage, saffron rules them all, and it’s both too delicately delicious and dear to overpower. Enter saison, traditionally brewed in Flemish farmhouses for seasonal workers. The most traditional versions are a touch sour, which, Albariño-like, cuts through paella’s richness. It’s a super versatile beer style: think delicate spiciness, cracker-like malt backbone, and tongue-scrubbing carbonation. Our pick: Surette, Crooked Stave Artisan Beer Project, Denver, CO; www.crookedstave.com.

Beer Pairing: Belgian Abbey Dark or Dubbel

Belgium’s famous abbey brewing traditions have yielded many a great beer style, and one of the most unsung is dubbel, also known as abbey dark. With complex, rich flavors of raisin, treacle, and stonefruit, this beer style might not seem an obvious combo for pasta, save for its magic ingredient: bacon. Like a robust red wine, this Burgundian beer style was made for matching up with rich, cheesy dishes (and that smoky, fatty deliciousness). Our pick: Lost & Found Abbey Ale, Lost Abbey, San Marcos, CA; www.lostabbey.com.

Beer Pairing: White IPA

White IPA is a hybrid of two rather dissimilar beer styles: wit, or white beer, which hails from Belgium and is brewed mainly with wheat malt, orange peel, and coriander spice, and IPA, a reddish-hued, hops-forward English-style ale Americans have fallen head over heels with (maybe you’ve heard of it). It works here because the witbier-like sweetness plays well with the sweet, rich cheese and peppers, while its crisp, hoppy edge can stand up to the bitter rabe. Our pick: Galaxy White IPA, Anchorage Brewing Co., which has an added earthy kick from a wild yeast strain brewers have gone gaga for called Brettanomyces.

Beer Pairing: Saison; White IPA; or Porter

With Thai food’s complexity—a single dish can be sweet, sour, salty, spicy, meaty, bitter, and herbal all at once—beer pairing is tricky, but you have options. Saisons, being so multi-layered, are adaptable to many flavors in food (try the superbly fresh and balanced Urban Farmhouse, from Portland’s The Commons). Alternately look for Thai-style ingredients in actual beers, like Upslope’s Thai-Style White IPA (Boulder, CO), brewed with ginger, lemongrass, and Thai basil, among other things; or Maui Brewing Co.’s CoCoNut Porter, rich with the essence of toasted coconut (www.mauibrewingco.com).

Beer Pairing: Quadrupel

No fat, no flavor. Properly seasoned and grilled pork ribs satisfy some of our most primal urges, and nothing less than a bold beer pairing is called for. Wine lovers would likely reach for a brawny Zin or Barbera. The beer pairing you need for ribs is a quadrupel, the Belgian abbey brew that marries huge layers of rich, stonefruit flavor with peppery yeast strains without the astringent tannins of big red wines. Look for Mør Mør from Brouwerij West in Los Angeles, CA; www.brouwerijwest.com.

Beer Pairing: Belgian-style strong ale with peaches

To pair this dessert with a delicious beer focus on the peaches themselves, which ought to pop with a bit of tartness. The classic summer staple fruit has found its way into many a new craft beer lately, from lighter wheat and pale ales to big, rich dessert-y creations. Look for Great Divide of Denver’s Peach Grand Cru, a limited annual release generally clocking in around 12% ABV. Rarer still is Peche n’ Brett, a peach-infused lambic style sour beer from Logsdon Organic Farmhouse Ales, outside of Hood River, Oregon, that will powerfully contrast the sweet ice cream. Based in the Bay Area? Almanac’s Brandy Barrel Peche could also be just the ticket.

Beer Pairing: Salted Caramel Stout; Old Ale

Coffee, peanut butter, and salt don’t exactly come to mind when one thinks of beer, but the fact is there are now more and more beers on that end of the flavor spectrum. You can thank roasted malt—a.k.a. barley, the grain that gives body and booze to beer, which is kilned for color and taste, from the faintest bready taste to full-on espresso—for this versatility. Portland, Oregon’s Breakside Brewery has even released a salted caramel stout, a unique collaboration with Portland’s Salt & Straw ice cream company and fleur de sel from Jacobsen’s Salt, which harvested from Oregon’s craggy Pacific shores. In other words, you won’t find many others out there. If you can’t spot one, look for an English-style “old ale” —yes, it’s aged and will age longer—like North Coast’s warming Old Stock Ale, which approaches the strength of many wines (11.8% ABV).