Matching Beer and Barbecue Meats
Grilled on September 14th, 2006 in Beef, Chicken, PorkChances are when you’re preparing for a barbecue cookout, you’ll probably going to be tapping a keg or buying a few cases to help accentuate the cooking experience. In making that pivotal beer purchasing decision, have you taken into account what you’ll be cooking that day to make the most of it? If you’re like, the answer is probably not. I usually just get some old faithfuls like Yuengling, but just like you can pair wine with a particular meal, you can pair your beer with what you’ll be grilling using similar principles. What you want to do is pair rich flavored beers with rich flavored meats, perhaps offsetting a meat’s sweetness with maltiness or its spiciness with sweetness.
That being said, chicken and pork are light flavored, slightly sweet meats naturally so they work well with a maltier, heartier brew. Fish is also another light flavored meat that you would probably try to match with a drier, crisper wine (similar to the types of wine you’d pair it with, dry and white). Red meat, which most folks associate with an old fashioned BBQ, works best with very rich flavored, darker brews with a bit of kick (hops).
So, using those principles, try to match your favorite beer with your favorite meat and you’re ready to go! (avoid the Pabst Blue Ribbon or Natural Light unless you’re planning a game of pong or flip-cup afterwards)
While I can agree in principal about matching beers with food… it almost goes against my impression of BBQing… my meat, my way with my beer and informal… Save the matching tastes to the inside cooking.
But on second thought… this does give a good excuse for trying some different brews and might help convince any significant others the merrit of having a grill party…
“Oh come on honey, a BBQ would be great… we could get some slaughtered animals and cook them up all tasty and impress the friends with our choice of beers… everybody has done the wine-tasting fluff… we can be the first to have a beer tasting party!”
Might need to be re-worded… but I think it’ll work.
Graydon
Mako’s Kitchen
http://makoskitchen.com
What’s funny is I felt funny thinking about matching beer with bbq for that reason - bbq is informal, it’s chill, it’s really just hanging out and you drink what you pull from the cooler. But, I looked around online and saw a couple other sites give their take on matching beer with bbq and thought I’d give my own two cents on it. Why not right?
Makes sense to me…. maybe even continue on so as the micro breweries start pumping out some of their seasonal ale, we’ll know that bbq’d pork chops go great with a pumpkin ale (or maybe not… but you get the idea).
I’m picturing the shopping trip..
1 package of 1″ pork chops and 7 different 6-packs of beer… “…I owe it to my readers to know which goes best with the porkchops…”
Graydon, I’m jealous… I’m in Maryland and I need to go to a beer/liqour store to get my brew, I can’t just pick it up from the supermarket!
Yep, we got it good… but it doesn’t beat Louisiana… liquor in the gas stations! However, as I get older and more “mature” (wife says that never happens) I can’t decide if it’s a good idea to be able to get the car and one’s self loaded at the same time.
They might have changed that since I’ve last been over… but it won’t keep me from wishing.