Wednesday, February 18, 2009

Beer Week Part 6: Southern Style Dinner

...with some of my own beer pairings.


My friend Scott had a few of us over for some gourmet southern style cooking Sunday evening. I opted to bring a few beers over to try to pair some of them with the dishes. As I saw Oysters, Fried Chicken, and sprouts, I thought that Saison DuPont would be a pretty brilliant pairing with these. In addition, I brought a light, fruity amber over, Ommegang's Rare Vos, to pair with some of the richer items, including the biscuits and gravy, prawns, deviled eggs and the fennel, blood orange and kiwi salad.


Saison Dupont
Saison Dupont is a classic Belgian farmhouse ale. This is a beautifully balanced, complex beer that has a refreshing fruitiness and long, dry finish. It is bottled unfiltered so it may be cloudy or have a slight sediment but this is normal and perfectly natural.
Nose of bitter orange, clove, white pepper, and light grapefruit, biscuit, grain and bubblegum. Huge off-white head, deep straw color, quite hazy. Medium to large mouthfeel, due to very well carbonation. Flavors similar to nose, but more pears, apples and bubblegum, and slight earth. Finish is very bitter, dry and lingering. One of a kind. 4.6

The DuPont paired very well with the oysters. Most people will tell you stout with oysters, but I prefer this, it is almost like ginger with sushi, as it cleanses the palette quite well after the oyster, and the fruitiness and phenolics pair very well with the subtle, fishy and lemon flavors in the oyster.

The chicken was less successful, but good. This beer is probably better with roasted chicken, although the bitterness cut the light greasy aspect of the fried chicken well. The light spiciness and chicken flavor went really smooth. Something slightly richer would go well, maybe a English ESB?

The sprouts charred bitterness clashed with the DuPont a bit. They were almost too flavorful, something much more plainly bitter (a pilsner) or possibly even a malty amber would have proved better, lots of the subtlety of the saison was lost on this pairing.






and onto the vos

Ommengang Rare Vos
Belgian Amber Ale.Rare Vos is flemmish for "Sly Fox," and the name of one of Brussels’ great cafes. It has a sweetly fruity malt character and yeasty spiciness. A fine dose of yeast permits the beer to mature and mellow in the bottle.
Nose of toast, biscuit, light toffee and esters, pear, apple and light orange. Medium to light mouthfeel, mostly carbonation filling it. Flavors of biscuit, toast, light toffee, pears, apple, light white pepper and clove. Rather dry and light mouthfeel at the finish, more toast and biscuit than esters and phenols. 3.8

The vos paired well with the salad the best: the orange, kiwi and fennel worked so well with the esters and phenolics and light bitterness and toast in the Vos. The prawns a close runner up, as the spiciness and fish paired with the bitterness and phenols of the beer.

It paired less successfully with the deviled eggs and biscuits and gravy. The richness of these items may have done better with an IPA (deviled eggs) or a rich porter or stout (biscuits and mushroom gravy), something less delicate and more in contrast. Nonetheless, they were still all quite delicious.



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