As part of Cleveland Beer Week, I went to Dogfish Head’s Beer Dinner at the Bedford Heights Winking Lizard Party Center. I am a longtime admirer of Dogfish Head (Sarah says the “off-centered stuff for off-centered people” slogan fits me perfectly), and I thoroughly enjoyed the experience.
We started with the 60 minute IPA as an apertif. This is the best tasting, most complex and most balanced IPA you can find, at least where I shop. If you haven’t tried it, you should.
The Château Jiahu followed along with a duck crêpe. The hawthorne fruit was dominant in the beer’s aroma, and the fruitiness of grapes and honey (based on an 9,000 year old recipe) were very much brought out by the crêpe. I am not generally a fan of duck, but the beer pulled everthing together and made for an excellent starter.
The next beer was the Theobroma, a beer based on an ancient Inca recipe. While cocoa and ancho chillies are in the beer, the dominant flavors are honey and alcohol. The pairing with mole glazed beef tenderloin skewers and avocado cream really brought out the beer’s nuances. I’m still not sure about this beer on its own, though.
Our final beer was Sah’tea, brewed with rye, black tea, pepper and other spices based on a 9th century Finnish recipe. The flavors of the beer were excellent, and the black tea probably has something to do with my composing this entry at 11:49pm. It was paired with pork loin, squash / sausage casserole, and stuffing. Sah’tea struck me as the easiest beer to drink and perhaps the most versalile in terms of food (not a stretch with black pepper and tea). The pork was tender and well-cooked, and the squash was a welcome vegetable addition to the evening.
The final beer was Midas Touch, a unique combination of mead, wine and beer based on molecular analysis of what King Midas likely drunk (all of the food-paired beers were from this kind of analysis). While I typically find this beer’s sweetness a tad cloying, it paired wonderfully with baklava. One of the baklavas seemed to have a strong roasted (tea? coffee? cocoa?) coating which was particularly suited to the beer.
Dogfish beers are always intriguing and typically very good, and all of the pairings were perfectly executed. Wine is often considered an integral part of a meal’s flavor, but this evening clearly demonstrated that beer can be at least as important in the impact of a meal.
[…] Sometimes a beer even only seems to fully reveal itself in the presence of food. I don’t generally like Dogfish Head’s Theobroma (a chocolate-cayenne-honey beer) but it was great with filet mignon at a beer dinner I attended last year. […]