BetterBeerBlog

I would like to thank everyone who came through and attended the Beer & Dessert Tasting Event at Wine Affairs. We had 27 confirmed reservations with 25 people rolling through. I would’ve been happy to have had 20 people make reservations, let alone show up, so to see my expectations surpassed is a victory in itself.

In the weeks leading up to the event, I would often tell people that I was hosting a beer and dessert tasting event for SF Beer Week. The most common reaction was, “Why beer and dessert?” Well, why not? Beer is perfectly suited for pairing with desserts. With over 70 different styles of beer, there’s a wide range of flavors that are available to pair with desserts. Beer can be sweet, it can be fruity, it can be woodsy and earthy. Beer can be high in alcohol and most importantly, it can be bitter. This is an underrated and important aspect as having contrasting flavors to induce balance is often overlooked.

I follow a few guidelines when pairing beers and foods. By following these guidelines, you can pair just about anything:

• Harmonize - Find beers and foods where the flavors mirror, or echo each other.
• Complimentary - Finding beers and foods where the flavors are different but supportive of each other.
• Contrasting - Pairing beers and foods where the flavors are opposite of each other.
• Intensity - Pairing beers and foods of similar impact so neither overpowers the other.

With all that said, how did the desserts go?

Course 1

Dessert: Crêpes filled with strawberry, banana, whipped cream and hazelnut spread
Beer: Leinenkugel Sunset Wheat Ale

Tasting Notes: I considered this pairing to be our introductory pairing, our safe pairing. The Sunset Wheat Ale is a witbier-style spiced beer with huge estery fruit character that was brewed with a lager yeast. More than one person that night referred to this beer as the “fruity pebble” beer. This pairing was more of a complimentary/harmonious combination with a lot of fruit-on-fruit actions.

Course 2
Dessert: Coconut sweet rice topped with toasted coconut flakes
Beer: Meantime London Porter

Tasting Notes: This was the dish that Sammy worked hard to put together. It’s a traditional Cambodian dessert and I remember first having this during our wedding. This dessert isn’t over sweet but it does have a strong, creamy coconut flavor accented with toasted coconut flakes. The Porter has more deep, roasted flavors with coffee and chocolate notes. The pairing was intended to be a complimentary pairing. Think of the Porter as your coffee while the coconut sweet rice is your cream.

Course 3
Dessert: Pineapple Flán
Beer: Green Flash West Coast IPA

Tasting Notes: This was probably our most adventurous pairing of the night. The Green Flash West Coast IPA is a great example of the IPA style. It has a huge hop character, lots of floral, citrus and pineapple notes. Weighing in at 7% ABV, it’s a big beer. We needed a dessert just as big and flán is as big as it gets. The creamy texture of the flán is juxtaposed against the carbonated mouthfeel of the beer while the high level of caramel sweetness is contrasted against the aggressive bitterness of the beer. The pineapple notes in the beer ties in with the pineapple in the flán. This was mainly a contrasting pairing with a touch of harmonizing flavors.

Course 4
Dessert: Dark fruit bread pudding with a spicy, fig sauce
Beer: Chimay Grande Reserve

Tasting Notes: Chimay was the one beer that really got me into drinking Belgian Ales and the more flavorful craft ales. Chimay is a Belgian Dark Strong Ale with a complex malt sweetness and dark fruit notes such as dates, figs and raisins. The bread pudding wasn’t your traditional bread pudding in that the crust was crusty and crunchy while the interior wasn’t as mushy as some others. The caramel sauce we developed for this dessert had figs and a noticeable spicy heat from the cayenne pepper we added. The reason we added the spice was to contrast with the sweetness of the beer. As the theory goes, beer can deal with spice in two ways, matching the level of heat with an appropriate level of hop bitterness or with a matching level of malt sweetness. This was definitely a harmonizing pairing with a slight contrasting note between the malt sweetness and spicy heat.

So what did the people think? Based upon the feedback forms people were kind enough to fill out, the People Choice was the Fruit crepes with Leinenkugel Sunset Wheat. The least favorite pairing was the Pineapple flan and Green Flash West Coast IPA. This outcome surprised me as I was pulling for either the flan or bread pudding to come out on top. The other surprise was the coconut sweet rice and porter pairing came in second. This surprises me in that this pairing almost didn’t make it.

What was also cool was that I started the event off with my homebrewed Pale Ale as my reception beer. I always mention in the beginning that I’m a homebrewer and it adds a personal touch to use my homebrew. It’s also nice to show people that you can make pretty good beer at home. Judging from the comments I received, the homebrew went over pretty well. The crew at Wine Affairs really enjoyed the beer and Diane even mentioned that she’d be willing to sell my beer as soon as I’d be willing to sell it. How’s that for a vote of confidence?

As successful as I thought this event was, we did have a few hitches. The first one being that we didn’t have the place to ourselves. This meant that I had to compete with the ambient conversations as well as the radio. Which leads me to the next problem: I wasn’t loud enough. I don’t normally have a problem talking in front of small groups of people 6 - 12 in size. In fact, when talking about beer, I can talk anyone’s ear off. But when I get in front of larger groups, 20 or more, it becomes more of an issue. I have problems projecting myself and I start to loose the intimacy level. I start to feel like I’m lecturing versus engaging in conversation. In the future, if we’re to be working with Wine Affairs again, we’ll probably have to use the upstairs area for more privacy. There were a few other bits of constructive criticism regarding the event process, pacing as well as some of the finer details. Live and learn, that’s how it goes.

Before I end this post, I’d like to thank Joanna and Judy for all the cooking they do for us. We ride them pretty hard sometimes but it’s mainly because I want to see the both of them rise up to their full potential. Lastly, I’d like to thank Sammy, not only for cooking but for doing all the little things that make these events worthwhile and successful. She’s a big reason I am able to do what I do and why it’s done so well.

This entry was posted on Friday, February 13th, 2009 at 12:29 am and is filed under Beer and Food Pairing Event, Beer and Food Pairings, Craft Beer, Homebrew. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.