Beer! And the foods that love it - includes related article on beer styles; recipes for cooking with beer - Cover Story

Sunset, Oct, 1996 by Jeff Phillips

An eating and drinking guide for microbrew fans

Q: What do you call a deep brown (nearly black) ale with a malty aroma - one that's smooth and sweet on the palate and rick with complex hints of smoke, chocolate, and caramel?

A: Cream stout.

Q: What do you call a cream stout served with barbecued oysters?

A: Delicious!

The craft-brewing revolution has brought a cornucopia of beer styles to liquor stores and supermarkets. Today the spectrum of beer flavors runs from the crisp, slightly hoppy freshness of pale, European-style pilsners to the creamy-sweet maltiness of an English-style brown ale. Things have really changed in this universe since the days when just about the only beer you could find was character-free American lager.

The microbrewery boom is well established, leaving open only one major question: What's best to eat with all the complex and flavorful brews so readily available around the West? As the variety of beer styles has mushroomed, so have the options for surprising and delicious pairings of beer with food. Chefs at Western brew pubs are expanding their menus beyond garlic fries and burgers. They're serving pilsner with caviar, stout with oysters, India pale ale with venison, porter with banana crepes - and they've inspired us to experiment with combinations of our own.

This season, as tailgates swing open at football stadium parking lots and the last warm days of autumn beg for just one more barbecue, is a perfect time to plan your own Oktoberfest beer-and-food-tasting party. Our beer-tasting chart will help you identify the flavor components of some of the most widely brewed beer styles, examples of which can be paired with our menu for a meal you can serve indoors or out.

Don't worry if you can't find the specific beers located on the chart; each region of the West has its own microbreweries busily crafting examples of most of the beer styles we've identified (even though brewers don't always label their handiwork as clearly as consumers might wish). We've tried to suggest matchups of food and beer that work particularly well - but the rule here is that the only "correct" pairings are the ones that you and your guests, after dedicated and diligent slurping, decide you really like.

RELATED ARTICLE: A Heads-Up Guide to Beer Styles

Don't know your pilsner from your porter? Use this chart to explore the universe of beer flavors

The proliferation of beer styles is potentially confusing to consumers. As one brewer admits, a beer's "style" is often defined as much by the demands of market positioning as by its flavor components.

We've tried to impose some order on this genial chaos by refining a prototype chart developed by Pete Slosberg, founder of Pete's Brewing Co. of Palo Alto, the maker of Pete's Wicked Ale. Our chart is designed to illustrate the broad spectrum of beer flavors and to show how the major beer-making styles generally fit within that spectrum. It doesn't purport to absolutely define the flavor universe, but it will help you distinguish between a wheat beer and a golden ale. If you decide to throw a beer-and-food-tasting party, consider making color copies of this chart for your guests to use.

Ales and lagers. For simplicity we've divided the beer universe into two families: ales and lagers. Ales are fermented at warmer temperatures and generally for a shorter time than lagers. Ales tend to have a fruity aroma; lagers tend to taste crisper and drier. The hops used for flavoring in both can make them bitter.

Color (and alcohol content). Both ales and lagers range in color from pale gold to black. In general, color indicates the intensity of flavor contributed by malted (just-sprouted) barley that has been roasted to a light tan for pale gold beers (grainy or bready flavors) up to a chocolate color for dark beers (smoky to chocolaty and caramelly flavors).

Color is not an indicator of body (the thin or thick feeling of the beer in your mouth) or of potency. Alcohol level can range from 2.3 percent to 3.5 percent (by weight) for "light" beers to as much as 13 percent for barley wine.

Balancing sweet and bitter. This is where beer tasting gets both interesting and highly subjective. In general, the complex barley sugars contribute to a beer's sweetness, whereas hops, parts of a flowering plant added to beer as a natural preservative and for flavor, contribute to bitterness. Not surprisingly, many good beers will have a pleasant balance of the two characteristics.

The dominant characteristic of a beer determined its placement on our chart. A sweet-starting beer with a lingering bitter aftertaste was put on the bitter side. Note that everybody has different thresholds for bitter and sweet; few people, including experienced brewers, will agree about the precise chart placement of any beer.

Tasting. Most beers have fuller flavor profiles if removed from the refrigerator about half an hour before tasting. Ideally you'll pour each beer into a clean glass - connoisseurs distinguish among glasses for pilsner, wheat beer, Belgian, and other styles, but clear plastic tumblers work for a crowd. Assess the beer's color against a light source or white background. Swirl the liquid and sniff the aroma for hints of what is to come, then roll a big sip around in your mouth and swallow. Sweetness will register as its recognizable taste but also as a tingly sensation on the front of your tongue; bitterness will grab you at the back of your throat.