Grand plans are noble, although also a grind. I intended to use today’s theme to challenge myself to create some food pairings for the beer I selected (intended = it didn't happen). But excuses are for losers. To preserve my masterplan, I'll do my best to churn out a few relevant paragraphs on beer and food pairings. And I'll still be drinking. So except for the possibility that I didn’t get raptured today, I’d say I’m still winning.

The rise of craft beers, miles apart from America’s industrially produced light lagers, has recently spawned a trend of beer and food pairing. Breaking into the mainstream has been slow. Wine is the sovereign food partner of fine dining. Every respectable restaurant has a wine list. Selections and quality of sommeliers can make or break a great restaurants’ reputation. Wine's place with food is based on its acidic, strong, and complex flavors. However, I question if the myth that wine is a superior food companion is not largely based on legacy.

Wine, crafted with arguably a superior ingredient -- the grape, is a one-dimensional beverage. All wines taste like fermented, aged grapes. Beers while crafted with more pedestrian ingredients -- grains and hops, are multidimensional beverages. Brewers craft their beers by tweaking the balance of malty sweetness and hop bitterness. Furthermore, flavor complexity is tailored using different types of malted grains and limitless amounts of adjuncts. Both wine and beer can utilize either naturally occurring or cultured yeasts to covert sugars to alcohol, but the yeast in beer making plays such a large part in the finished product’s flavor profile it can act as an important of an ingredient as  the malts and hops.

As a quick example, Saint Arnold Brewing Company recently replaced its lowest selling beer (Texas Wheat, an American-style Wheat) with an altered version of one of its more popular beers (Fancy Lawnmower, a German-style Kölsch). The brewery now has two beers with the exact same recipe, but fermented with two different yeasts that yield very different tasting beers. In a recent newsletter, Saint Arnold reported selling as many kegs in a week and a half of the new replacement (Weedwacker) as it did of Texas Wheat in a whole year.

With an unrestricted amount of flavor profiles, beer is unmatched in potential flavor pairing combinations with food. Beer can also leverage its carbonation to lift aromas and clean your palate between samples. Wine is challenged by spicy foods, pickles, asparagus, etc. Your local wine merchant may have thousands of wines to choose from, but only a small handful of them would even be acceptable for that coconut-curry Thai dish.

My first beer pairing education came from a session by the Texas Culinary Academy in 2005. The chef giving the seminar demonstrated the three C’s of beverage pairing: Cut, Compliment, and Contrast.

Cut: Spicy foods can be cut by malty sweet beers, like an English Pale Ale or a German Marzen. The richer the food, hoppy beers can clean the creaminess or fattiness from your palate. Dry stouts can even cut through the richness of a sweet chocolate dessert.

Compliment: Beer really shines as a food pair in this category. While wine basically enhances foods with acidity, beer can provide a subtle compliment to a food’s flavor. Belgian beers spiced with orange zest and coriander provides a great compliment to salads. Japanese beers brewed with rice are perfect companions to pieces of sushi.

Contrast: Like wine, any food that is enhanced with acidity can be adjusted to provide a good contrasting food pair (imagine something that tastes good with a lemon squeezed on it). Fish and white wine is a good pair, as is a light-bodied pilsner. However, no contrasting pair may be as sublime as a raw oyster and a dry stout. I first had this pair at SAVOR in 2009, where the Choptank Oyster Company was shucking fresh oysters. I made several trips through the line with samples of some of the best stouts and roasty porters in at the event.

Whether beer or wine, food pairing promotes the kind of creativity that I love when cooking. It also encourages a more thoughtful and enjoyable eating experience. In the end, my originally planned post probably would have been more enjoyable for me than it would have been for you (kind of like beer reviews, eh?)

Day 6
May 21, 2011
Dogfish Head Craft Brewery Namaste (Milton, DE)

Website/Bottle Information:
"A Belgian-style White made with dried organic orange slices, fresh cut lemongrass and a bit of coriander. This beer is a great summer quencher.
Namaste was originally brewed at our brewpub in with our friend Leo from Birra del Borgo in Italy as a tribute to our friends at 3 Fonteinen brewery in Belgium, who had devastating production loss (1/3 of their annual production!) at their brewery in 2009. You can read more about the original brewing of this beer here on Sam's blog."


Serving: 750mL bottle
Style: Witbier
IBU: 20
ABV: 5.0%

He Said:
I haven't poured a beer from a 750mL bottle with as light and fluffy of a head as this one in a long time. The beer is very effervescent. All the carbonation really carries up aromas of the lemongrass and coriander that the beer is brewed with and some musty funk that it probably wasn't brewed with. I'll admit that if I hadn't used it in several homebrewing recipes, I wouldn't know coriander's aroma though. Some citrus is detectable, but it seems to be more from the yeast and not the oranges used in the brewing of Namaste.

I am always impressed with the incredible balance of each Dogfish Head beer. Even their hoppiest IPAs have a malty sweetness to perfectly balance the bitterness. Namaste is no different. Hops are present in the perfect amount to balance the beer and keep the flavor profile dynamic from start to finish.

Namaste is lemony, light, and refreshing. If I had attempted to craft some food pairings, I think this would have gone great with a salad incorporating some citrus. It would have also gone equally well with a chicken quesadilla.

I generally attribute the term "Namaste" with yoga or new age-type activities. Tonight this beer was enjoyed while bathing two little children, which is probably the furthest from that lifestyle. Translated, "Namaste" means greetings or good day. I think I'd say this is a pretty good day.

She Said:
Color - Golden

Carbonation - Very bubbly

Smell - Citrusy, Belgian

Taste - To be fair, I have tasted this beer before and enjoyed it even more the first time. The lemongrass and citrus flavors totally shined through in my previous tasting. This time those flavors are present but aren't as powerful (aging? storage issues?). I still enjoy Namaste's light bubbly taste that doesn't stick to your palate. The beer is a cool and refreshing treat for a hot summer day. I recommended this beer to friends after the first time I enjoyed it and would do the same now.

In the summer of 2006, TwoPints and I traveled to Delaware with Milton and Rehoboth in our crosshairs. While in Rehoboth, we serendipitously connected with 90 Minutes/30 Days. The brewery describes it as a "special brewpub-only release... We aged three kegs of our 90 Minute IPA in Pinot Noir barrels stuffed with Amarillo hops for 30 days - hold on to your hats!"

It was a game changer. Something to write home about. Seriously, I would have tweeted the moment... if that existed back then. On our 2nd visit in as many days, we ordered the last pint of 90 Minutes/30 Days and thought nothing of it (but the sadness that the next round would have to be something else). It turns out, this was the last (only?) version that was ever brewed. It was one of my favorite draft beers I've ever had.

Day 3
May 13, 2009
Dogfish Head Red & White
2008 (?)

Website/Bottle Information:
A big, belgian-style Wit brewed with coriander and orange peel and fermented with Pinot Noir juice. After fermentation a fraction of the batch is aged in Oregon Pinot Noir barrels, and another fraction is aged on oak staves. The beer is blended together before packaging.

This has been one of our most popular Limited Edition beers at both our Rehoboth Beach, DE brewpub and at festivals. It successfully marries the refreshing citrusy qualities of a Belgian-style white beer with the robust complexity of a bold red wine.

Original Release Date: 01/2007

Glassware Recommendation: Snifter

Availability: Limited

He Said:
Tonight started with a few glasses of Havens at my parents' house while picking up the kids. Once home, the evolution to a Dogfish Head Red & White for Day 3 of American Craft Beer Week was inevitable.

Sam Calagione may be a lot of things to to the craft brewing world, but in my opinion, his beers epitomize flavor balance. Quite simply, Red & White is a beer that blends wine (red) with a Belgian Wit beer (white). Personally, I don't really detect the Pinot flavor, but seriously, do you want this to be the dominant flavor in your beer? The wine and oak flavors are best kept in the background. Frankly, this beer does not remind me much of a Wit either, but maybe that is due to the multifaceted blend. The sugary Belgian flavors and are prevalent and compliment the beer nicely. The beer is complex, delicious, but not quite an equal to 90 Minutes/30 Days. But I'm Amercian (unapologetically by birth). I like hops. I can't help it.

She Said:

Oh Red and White you're so sweet,

drinking you is always a treat.

Bright and bubbly, you're never a bore,

leaving me to drink much more.

Off to Central Market beer aisle we go,

finding our prized Red and White down the row.

Oak barrels and Pinot Noir,

I'm so ready for another pour!

Thank you Dogfish Head for making it your mission

to bring us this awesome Limited Edition.

I'm not one to write poetry, but I was inspired by this Limited Edition Belgian-style Wit beer. I love the sweet beginning and the bit of a bite at the end. If you roll it around your mouth you can taste the coriander, which happens to be a flavor that works well with orange, another ingredient in this DELICIOUS beer (Oh uh there goes the SHIFT key again!). There is no way that I couldn't be a fan of this FANTABLOUS beer, not only does it taste great but one of my favorite brewers created it (SirRon is my ultimate favorite). Two pints up to Sam and Dogfish Head for keeping it "off centered" ............ oak barrels... GENIUS!

Well we finally got home from watching Beer Wars and the panel interview afterward. Of course the first thing we had to do is pour a craft brew. Some thoughts I want to mention before I forget are as follows:

Is Sam the Golden Boy of craft beers or what?!? I've always thought Sam to be adorable, and tonight was a feast for the eyes. He was a major part of this movie and it was great to see that his ever growing business has not changed the man. He allowed the film crew access to the brewery AND his home. He was kind enough to share his thoughts, at length, on what looked like several occasions. I particularly loved that he answered the phone to talk to a random consumer who dialed the 1-800 number. As I was discussing with SirRon in the car on the way home, whether Sam wants to be or not he is becoming the face of the craft brewing industry. I think his fellow colleagues should embrace this because when Sam speaks, he is not only speaking about his product, he is endorsing craft brewing as a whole. One thing I heard him say during one of his brew dinners in the film was that the members of the audience should take any beer they like and drink it at room temp. He mentioned that at room temp you really get all the flavors of each ingredient that has gone into the beer. His point being, that craft beers have much better quality of ingredients than the larger brewing companies.

One of my new favorites that I was introduced to tonight was Greg Koch of Stone. I've always enjoyed a good Arrogant Bastard but never really knew the face behind the company. I found him to be very pleasing to the eye and passionate about his product (aren't all craft brewers?). He was a new character to me as I've not spent much time with west coast breweries. I will say I'm a fan, and will look for those large Stone bottles once again to add to our collection.

Charlie, well what can you say about Charlie, he's awesome! I love to hear Charlie speak about the art of craft brewing and hear his stories about his own homebrews. Craft breweries are lucky to have Charlie in their corner.

Now this Moonshot business. I felt, and so did SirRon, that the filmmaker choose this beer not because it was a craft brewed beer (which it wasn't!!!! Well said Beer Advocate dude, "crap brew"), but because it was a women peddling the beer. Since our filmmaker likes to make us think that she's all about craft beers and she too is part of the business (you know having run Mike's Hard Lemonade for THREE years (Again NOT a craft beer)) I think she was, to quote Simon Cowell, "a bit over indulgent" following this lady around. I'm sorry I can't remember the lady's name, and there were times I felt bad for the poor girl. I mean she couldn't even get Busch to buy her stuff. But seriously, her storyline had little to do with the craft brewing industry. She has a product and she wants to market it, she doesn't make the product, she doesn't produce the product (from what I could tell) so what's the point? Oh right, she's a woman! Now I don't like to be cruel to my own kind, but this lady and her story really didn't have any business here. I was under the impression that this movie was about craft beers and their struggles with distributors. This lady took up way too much time of the movie. A movie that was promoted in the newspapers and on the internet as a story about the three tiered system.

So now I've covered some of the major players, let us talk about this panel situation. I don't know how many of you saw this but there were several frustrating parts to this for me. It really irritated me that Sam and Greg did not fight for the quality of their beers. Ben Stein (we'll get to him later) would ask questions about the concern they might have about BIG breweries looking like craft breweries with their new beers. Sam and Greg argued it well, but they left out the biggest point. Sam and Greg brew beers with quality ingredients. They don't mass produce and skimp on the ingredients. Ben also jabbed at Sam and Greg mentioning how much they have grown, and won't they be just like the big breweries only wanting to get bigger and wanting the money. I felt that this type of comment was rude to Dogfish Head and Stone. They are only growing in controlled amounts and they are not giving up the quality of their ingredients. Also during panel time I discovered that the lady that seemed so smart in the movie spouting off facts about percentages of craft beers and big beers being sold is actually stupid or has no real knowledge of craft breweries. When she was allowed to speak during panel time I wanted her to just shut up. She didn't know what she was saying and how rude it was to say those things about Sam and Greg. Again saying that they were just going to turn in to Anheuser-Busch because that's what EVERYONE wanted. She obviously didn't know a darn thing about Sam and Greg's philosophy. As they said in the movie, had she been paying any attention, Greg and Sam will not grow beyond what they feel they can do to keep quality high. I very much disliked this lady.

Ben Stein, oh Benny Benny Benny! How about do a little research before you are supposed to moderate a craft beer panel? How about watch the movie that preceded the panel discussion so that you don't ask questions that were already asked and answered in the movie? How about remember it is not about you, but about the panel and we don't care if you live in California? How about ask a clear question instead of just muttering the same words over and over? How about let the Beer Advocate guy speak since he is a freaken expert on the topic and you, BEN, have made it very clear are NOT?!? I hate to hate on Ben but there it is. He did a p-poor job (I must edit my cursing because after all I am a mother of two littles) tonight. I'm sure it's difficult to do a live show but, you know, prepare for it a bit. Act like you care.

One thing I noticed during panel time is that as often as possible the person filming tried to include Sam on screen. God Bless the film person!

Overall movie review from little ole me, informative in part and brought on a great discussion in the car on the way home. I wish that they would have had this playing more often so that others could see it. I'm afraid I won't have anyone to talk to about this movie except SirRon and I think we sort of talked this out.

Later Gang! Looking forward to the Mock Draught!