Wine guru says beer can be best with food

Something unusual appeared in the Guardian newspaper: a piece in praise of beer. This is as rare as England winning a cricket or football match, but there it was in the Saturday Cook section, a short article saying beer should be treated as seriously as wine when matching food with alcohol.

The writer was Christian Holthausen (above), a wine specialist living in London and an expert on Champagne. “Last week,” he wrote, “I explored the idea of selecting a wine that is tailored to the moment, but sometimes a beer could be more appropriate. The truth is that beer can be very complicated. Many sommeliers have told me (in hushed tones) that beer has a larger range of flavours than wine.

“Brewers play with more than just grapes, tanks and barrels; they can use barley or wheat (for sweetness) and hops (bitterness), as well as spices, fruits and chocolate.”

Give that man honorary life membership of the British Guild of Beer Writers! His words underscore what many of us have been saying for years: that beer shouldn’t be treated as an also-ran at the dining table or thought of as just a fizzy fire extinguisher for a late night curry.

Beer not only comes in every shade from palest Pilsner to jet-black stout but also embraces a multitude of flavours as a result of the careful blending of different malts and hops. Malt, depending on the temperature it’s roasted or “kilned” in a maltings, can have juicy, honey, biscuit, wholemeal, cobnuts, tobacco, caramel, oatmeal, raisin and sultanas flavours – and that’s just for starters.

And there isn’t room on the page to describe the aromas and flavours delivered by hops grown in North America, England, Europe, China, Japan, Australia and New Zealand. Depending on the variety and the climate in which it grows, the amazing hop plant – described by pioneering English craft brewer Sean Franklin as “the grapes of brewing” – can deliver notes of grapefruit, melon, tropical fruit, pepper, spice, pine, eucalyptus, blackcurrant, orange, tangerine, lemon, quinine and quince. And that’s also just for starters.

Slowly but surely a number of restaurants are now taking beer seriously. I have helped draw up a beer list for Andrei Lussmann’s three restaurants in Hertfordshire and he tells me that Classic English Ale from the 3 Brewers on a farm just outside St Albans has become a cult drink. He used to offer just Peroni and Estrella but now has a range of British beers, including Meantime’s and Freedom’s.

It’s happening in pubs, too. Two top Yorkshire pub chefs have got together to launch a beer specifically designed to accompany food. Two Chefs Honey Beer, 4%, is brewed with Yorkshire honey and a touch of lemon thyme. It’s produced by the Great Yorkshire Brewing Company for James Mackenzie of the Pipe & Glass near Beverley and Andrew Pern of the Star, Harome. Both pubs are acclaimed for their food: Mackenzie has a coveted Michelin star and Pern has won the Gastropub of the Year award. (Pictured above: Andrew Pern, left, and James Mackenzie.)

They are not wine snobs and appreciate the pleasure beer can give both on the table and in the kitchen. At their pubs you can enjoy such dishes as tagliatelle of corned-fed guinea fowl, battered oyster and lemon balm fritters, goats’ cheese soufflé, Barnsley chop, East Coast lemon sole, risotto of wild garlic with broad beans, and Wye Valley asparagus with duck egg and fennel, washed down with glasses of Honey Beer. They plan a dark winter ale as well that will accompany hearty dishes for the colder months.

I went to the re-opening of the George & Dragon in Acton, West London, which now has its own in-house brewery and where food is matched with the beers. The pub is a former coaching inn on the road to Oxford and has a number of wood-panelled rooms with open fires and settles.

The brewery is called the Dragonfly and the Chinese-built kit can produce 1,000 litres of beer per brew. The brewer is Connor Donoghue from Dublin and, not surprisingly, he produces a superb dry stout called Dark Matter, along with a Best Bitter called 2 O’Clock Ordinary, Early Doors pale ale and a German wheat beer called Achtung.

Donoghue is keen to match his beers with the excellent tucker prepared in the kitchen. Dishes include pork pie and chilli, sausages and English mustard, black pudding fritters with beetroot ketchup, salmon and salt cod fishcakes, Dark Matter rarebit, beer fondue with garlic soldiers, and sweet potato and pulled pork hash. The beers are used in at least two of the dishes, the rarebit and the fondue.

We’re making progress on the beer-and-food front but there’s still work to do. Christian Holthausen says one of the advantages of beer is that you don’t need a corkscrew and can “swig it straight from the bottle”. Does he swig Champagne from the neck? Of course not. And don’t do it to beer, either.

*Print version: Publican’s Morning Advertiser, 24 July 2014.