Welcome to brew.cook.pair.joy‘s pairing lessons! Here, you’ll find all of my beer and food pairing blog posts to date. This way, those of you who are new to this can have a whole wealth of information right at your fingertips!

By the way, an excellent resource for beer and food pairing is a book called The Brewmaster’s Table written by Garrett Oliver. He delves deeply into every beer style you can think of, some commercial examples of each, and the foods that pair best with each one. It’s a long one, but you can really get a good feel for the art of pairing if you read it. But for now, let’s get started!

Basic Principles of Beer & Food Pairing

As you read through the pairing lessons, here are some general ideas to keep in mind:

Strength of flavor. It’s important to make sure that the beer does not overwhelm the food and vice versa. Delicate dishes work best with delicate beers. Stronger, more intense foods require more assertive beers.

Commonalities. Often times, the best combinations occur when the beer and food share a common flavor. For example, a beer with caramel notes will match well with the carmelization of roasted pork.

Balance. Consider sweetness, bitterness, spiciness, carbonation, and richness, and the interactions of these characteristics in food and beer. The pairing should be balanced based on these interactions. This concept is a little less obvious, so let me give a few examples.

• A beer that has notable sweetness goes great with an aged, tangy cheese. Taking sips of the malty goodness in between bites of the sharp cheese creates a balance. On the other end of the spectrum, a very dry, roasty beer will compliment a sweet chocolate dessert. If there is a lot of residual sweetness in both the beer and the food, it can be overwhelming and cloying.

• Highly bitter beers work wonderfully with spicy foods. Bitterness and spiciness both tend to have a dulling effect on the taste buds. If you’re eating spicy Mexican food, you wouldn’t be able to taste a light, subtly sweet beer. However, intense bitterness can be perceived even when your tongue is on fire.

• Very rich, mouth-coating foods that are high in fat can feel very heavy. Beers higher in carbonation can help here, as the bubbles have the ability to lift that heaviness off the palate. Why do you think people like drinking soda with pizza so much?

Before you begin reading the pairing lessons, I want to stress that the most effective way to learn about pairing is to try it yourself! Experimentation is the best (and most enjoyable) way to learn how to pair beer and food. Reading up on pairing can get you started, but you can’t really get a feel for it until you do it.

That being said, here are all the pairing lessons I’ve written to date. Get started with these, and stay tuned for more to come!

Pairing Lesson 1 – Wheat beers

Pairing Lesson 2 – Stouts and Porters

Pairing Lesson 3 – Kolsch, Cream Ale, and Blonde Ale

Pairing Lesson 4 – Pale Ale, IPA, and Imperial IPA

Pairing Lesson 5 – Oktoberfest/Märzen and Vienna Lager