Beer and food pairing: A match made in heaven?

When it comes to changing people’s perceptions of beer, of creating brand new excitement around the possibilities of flavour, there’s nothing more powerful (with perhaps the exception of ‘Try Before You Buy’), than beer and food matching.

But the continuing widespread lack of beer and food-matching activity across the nation’s pubs tells us that putting it into practice is problematic: maybe you don’t have time, maybe you don’t know where to start, maybe you’re concerned about taking sales away from wine where you make more margin.

Whatever the problem, beer and food pairing is not taking off as much as it should. But a new event at London’s Borough Market might just provide the inspiration you need.

Borough is arguably the most famous food market in the country. Once a humble fruit and veg market, it has ridden the foodie revolution and become famous for the quality (and expense) of its produce. These days it’s more of a tourist attraction than a place to do your weekly shop.

But the people behind the market are always thinking of ways to diversify their celebration of food, and often beer is right at its heart. The first Food Meets Beer At Borough event took place during a weekend in late July in Jubilee Place, one of the smaller courtyards of the market.

There was an entry fee, which kept out the tourists and got you your first pint of beer.

Inside was a mix of food producers and brewers, most of them offering free samples, all of them offering larger measures to be eaten and drunk at the event, or taken away.

The programme detailed the principles of beer and food matching as well providing more details of what was on offer. There was an area for cooking (with beer, of course) demonstrations, and an ‘ingredients table’ where talks on beer were held. There were also food and beer safaris, where beer experts would take you around the festival showing you where their favourite matches were.

But here’s the clever part. In the run-up to the event, each of the food producers taking part was paired up with a brewer. There were 17 pairings in all. Each pair then selected dishes and beers they felt complemented each other.

I didn’t get this at first. When I arrived, I strolled around chatting to brewers I knew. I hadn’t yet had lunch, so I kept asking what food they recommended. Every time, the brewer recommended the food stand next to them. Finally I twigged, opened my programme and found pages of delicious beer and food matches throughout.

Confectioners Whirld worked with FourPure to pair sea salt caramel fudge with amber ale, and chilli chocolate fudge with oatmeal stout.

Brindisa, the market’s famous home of Spanish food, matched their jamón ibérico with Er Boqueron, a beer made with sea water that brought out the saltiness of the ham and was much tastier than it sounds.

The buzz among the stallholders was for Ion Patisserie’s wonderful lemon cheesecake, which provided a creamy, smooth backdrop to Wild Beer Co’s Wild Goose Chase, a farmhouse pale ale brewed with gooseberries.

But my own favourite was Richard Haward’s fresh Mersea oysters with pHuschia, a sour beer brewed with cherries and raspberries that contrasted amazingly well with the saltiness in the oysters to produce a match where each partner made the other taste 10 times better.

OK, so not every pub has a famous food market on their doorstep. But take the principles at work here and you could create a whole range of different events.

What’s important is the principle of pairing flavour with flavour — it doesn’t have to be a full meal, and very few stallholders at Borough provided something that would fill you so completely you wouldn’t want another match. The event was about sampling and grazing.

Anywhere in the country, a handful of nearby brewers could be paired with local butchers or bakeries to create matches, and these could be sold through the pub, a festival marquee, or even through a group of local pubs competing for the best match.

We increasingly have great food producers all across the country as well as great brewers. Bring them together and you can wow people with food and beer pairings without even having to get your pans dirty.

The prospect is, in many ways, mouthwatering.