Beer hops in to wine's terroir

Nov 12 2010 By Richard McComb

Food critic Richard McComb gets a taste of the emerging trend of food and beer matching.

Beer has long since thrown off its unwarranted image as the tipple of choice for bearded plane-spotters and there are signs the drink is set to enter a new, chic domain – the fine dining restaurant.

Food matching for previous generations may have centred on whether a certain ale worked best with cheese and onion crisps, pork scratchings or scampi fries.

But at a well-attended dinner in Birmingham, the talk was of finding the perfect brew to complement a dessert of caramelised banana, caramel parfait and peanut butter ice cream. It wasn’t easy.

Fortunately, Paul Halsey, managing director of Warwickshire-based brewery Purity, was on hand at Simpsons in Edgbaston, ably assisted by hop merchant Paul Corbett, a man blessed with a forensically precise beer-tasting palate.

The two Pauls talked dinners through the enjoyment and satisfaction to be found in matching top-level cooking to beers, both those brewed in Warwickshire as well as drinks specially imported by Purity.

Corbett says: “Hops are very important to the flavour of any beer. They provide bitterness when added at the early stages of the boil and aroma and flavour when added during the last few minutes. They are to beer what grapes are to wine and the variation of flavours and aromas that can be achieved by matching hops well is one of the keys to not only producing a good beer but also to matching it to each dish on the menu.

“We often use the word terroir when talking about the flavours in a wine and the same can be said of the flavours of the hops.

‘‘Whether they be from the rich, red, heavy clay soils of Herefordshire, the mild maritime climate of the UK or the fertile, light soil and hot Mediterranean summers of the Savinja Valley in central Slovenia, the terroir plays a huge part in the wonderful flavours in each beer.”

So how does this work in practice – and what beer, for example, goes well with a Michelin-starred dish of banana, parfait and ice cream? Maisel’s Weisse Beer, of course.