Maybe it's Star-Ledger + beer = boring

Guess what? Beer and food pairings are boring.

Don't take our word for it, just follow the link and the comments.

Guess the folks at Boston Beer who have championed enjoying food with beer have been wrong all along. Food and beer pairings are boring. Not to mention Garrett Oliver from Brooklyn Brewery, who seems to have wasted a lot of time on The Brewmaster's Table. Alas.

Guess the folks at the Brewers Association have been on a misguided mission for the past three years with SAVOR because food and beer pairings are boring. Ditto for CraftBeer.com. Sigh.

Guess White Dog Foundation and in Philadelphia and Victory Brewing in Downington, Pa., have been barking up the wrong tree with the Brewer's Plate for six years, uniting great regional cuisine with beers made within a 150-mile radius. Beer and food pairings are boring. Zounds! Flying Fish, River Horse, Triumph, Climax, Boaks and Iron Hill must have all got suckered on that one.

Speaking of Iron Hill they must have been led astray, coaching their staff to know about food and beer, and how they complement each other. Damn it all! Food and beer pairings are boring!

OK, enough sarcasm.

Craft beer enthusiasts, and not just the geeks, know food and beer go better together than wine and food, and let's hand it to wine, because it does an admirable job with food. It's just that beer, in its creation, welcomes more ingredients – hops for starters – into the fold than wine, resulting in a more expansive gamut of flavors that fit with more kinds of cuisine than its fermented cousin wine.

Beer and food pairings boring? Hardly. It's very much where beer, namely craft beer, belongs, especially right now, amid an era of wonderful beer choices. Otherwise, we might as well settle for Pringles and a Coors, or Bud and Doritos, instead of crab bisque made with a bourbon reduction complemented by a pint of Climax ESB; pork loin with a dunkel from Triumph; jambalaya with Flying Fish Farmhouse ale.

Yes, Virginia, better beer deserves better food.

Perhaps what the Star-Ledger thinks is, writing about beer and food together is boring, overdone. As if taking the days from Thanksgiving to Christmas and playing beer advent calendar is a fresh peach at the top of the tree, not easy, low-hanging fruit.

But that's not an entirely fair comment, because suggesting beers for the yule season has been done well many times in the past. Just like suggesting great beer for great food.

The fact is, beer and food always fit comfortably side by side, can seamlessly exist in the same breath. Because they can go in the same mouthful.

Sláinte. And bon appétit.

A glass from the past

Ol' Blue Eyes had just shuffled off this mortal coil the Thursday prior, and that Saturday, Real Quiet would add to a Kentucky Derby win, earning a second jewel of the Triple Crown.

Across town from Pimlico Race Course, the Great American Beer Festival had arrived in Baltimore for a May 15-17 stand, far, far away from its Denver base.

And that was that. It won't happen again. (It didn't exactly go that well.)

This is what the Brewers Association had to say when asked about the possibility of ever trying it again:

"We do not anticipate taking GABF on the road in the future. Among other considerations, the sheer size of the event makes that an extremely challenging prospect. GABF will take place in Denver for the foreseeable future."

One thing about the Baltimore event was certain: A worse weekend – Preakness weekend – could not have been picked. There was literally no hotel space in the city and for miles around.

If that was bad planning, there was some bad execution, too. The brewers hospitality lounge was stocked not with real food for the beermakers and their helpers, but snacks, i.e. tortilla chips and pretzels. (At least that was the situation on the opening night.)

That's not a slap at the Brewers Association.

The BA gets points for going on the road with the GABF, and it rebounded (nine years later) with SAVOR, the food and craft beer pairing held in Washington, D.C. (The 2011 SAVOR is set for June 4th.)

So if you went in '98, savor your GABF-East memory, but think SAVOR for craft beer.

Catching up

Word from Beertown (the Brewers Association) is that SAVOR, that craft beer plus fine food event, was a hit, a sellout over its two-day (May 16-17) run in the nation’s capital.

That’s 2,100 beer enthusiasts over three sessions. Friend of the blog John Holl, a brethren from our journalism days, filed this for The Star-Ledger of Newark.

SAVOR isn’t really breaking new ground here, as far as beer being a dinner guest goes. But it does keep a porch light on for the wider realization that beer and food, à la fine cuisine, aren’t just a winning combination, but a natural one.

That’s another way of saying if you haven’t noticed beer shedding its plebeian image, you’ve probably been watching Beerfest over and over.

It almost makes you wonder why beer has that image to shed in the first place. Well, maybe not when you remember Coors created a bottle label that turns blue to signal the beer’s cold and ready to drink. Then you recall how dumbed-down gimmickry imposed upon the public can steer the car into a ditch.

But make no mistake, beer’s roots include the supper table. Historically speaking, in the days before folks got a good handle on bacteria, beer was relied upon as a potable beverage, while drinking water was a gamble. So talk of beer at the dinner table is just beer reclaiming what belongs to it.

Speaking of beer and food, here’s one fans of organic foods and locally grown/locally served community sustainable farming will be interested in: The Ship Inn (Milford, Hunterdon County) is committed to that philosophy in a big way.

We caught up with brewer Tim Hall on an unrelated topic, but the subject came up in our discussion. Tim says the pub composts discarded vegetable matter, while spent grain from its brewery, which now goes to a local farmer, likely will wind up in the compost, too. The pub’s thinking is to avail that compost to local produce growers who supply the Ship Inn.

The Ship, known for its British-slant on atmosphere and ales, has organic foods on its menu and takes a novel approach toward beer-to-go with its beer a box (think of it as a cardboard growler, although the Ship still offers the glass version, too.) But here’s something else about the pub that commands attention – session beers.

That’s hardly going to get Wolf Blitzer Situation Room treatment, a brewpub standing session beers on the bar. But when you consider the unyielding grip of the big beer trend – heavy on hops, high in alcohol – the Ship’s session ales are a welcome step back in time.

Nearly all their ales are under 5% ABV, with three in the range of 3.5-4% ABV. Their IPA – which puts more emphasis on India pale ales’ tradition for hop aromatics and less on bitterness – is the highest at 5.5%. But even that’s fairly light in the face of the 7% beers that are as nearly ubiquitous as iPods now.

The Ship's beers invite drinking and conversation, and prove flavor is not sacrificed when the ABV is comes back down to earth.

Happy landing.