The Brewers Association has been doing some good work trying to push the idea of pairing beer with food, since most people think of wine being the perfect food partner. I am obviously a believer that beer matches up to most food better than wine does. It just makes sense, wine is made from two ingredients, grape juice and yeast, while beer has almost an endless list of  ingredients. Of course there are four ingredients that we need to call beer beer, water, barley, hops and yeast, but beyond that there are endless possibilities. Take your driest white wine and your sweetest red wine and they will share more of the same flavors than an Oude Geueze and a Russian Imperial Stout. Beer covers a much wider flavor palate. Anyways, all I really wanted to say was that the BA has a nice PDF covering some food and beer pairing basics. It may not cover all the styles, but it is well put together in a clean and concise manner.

You can visit the food pairing pages by clicking on the photo (and then click through the different pages under “Exploring Food & Beer” in the left column) or you can just download the PDF by clicking here.

Now if only sites like Foodpairing.be could work on that. They have a great concept of a site that shows what goes with what, including a long list of wine styles, but only one beer, Leffe Blonde. Could they at least choose one decent beer? I wonder if they know anything about beer in Belgium (insert devilish grin here).