A Tasty Beverage to Wash This Down

From all of us in the Mash Tun... okay fine, it's just me.

I've put it off long enough. It’s time for my yearly recommendations on what beer to pair with your Thanksgiving dinner. I know you’re saying, “It’s about time! I need to start grocery shopping for Thursday and how can I do that without knowing which beers to get?” Never fear… I've got your back.

Hello Sweetie.

I've written extensively on the interconnection between beer and Thanksgiving over the years. After all, we Americans started out drinking beer on Thanksgiving (or did we?). Unfortunately, we lost our beer drinking ways as a nation, and during the bad beer era, Thanksgiving was an exclusively “wine” holiday. Now, we have good options in the beer world, and (not) surprisingly, beer can pair very well with food… even Thanksgiving food. For previous suggestions on the art of food and beer pairing on Turkey Day, click on this link. And when you are done reading that, click on this link. Then follow up the beer pairing posts with a list of reasons to be thankful for craft beer. It’s okay… I’ll still be here when you get done reading all of this stuff. It’s the beauty of the interwebz – As far as you’re concerned, I am a fixed point in time that you can access at your whim. But you can’t change a fixed point in time… everyone knows that. Unless your name is River Song.

Spoilers.

Anywho, as you no doubt gleaned from reading about beer pairings a few minutes ago, there are seemingly endless options, which make the task both daunting and hard to mess up so there’s no need to get overwhelmed (or underwhelmed for that matter). I've found the key to success is to provide individual bottles for individual self-paced pre-dinner consumption, a table bottle for dinner, a table bottle for desert and individual bottles for individual self-paced post-dinner consumption.

Like peas and carrots

For the individual pre-dinner bottles, I recommend you stay away from anything with an aggressive flavor profile because you want to preserve your palate for the food. Something in the amber/red/brown ale family or golden/amber lager family is best – not to mention that if you have any non-craft beer people in your audience, they will not be put off by these beers. They may even be converted once they taste how nonthreatening properly made beer can be. Bonus!

For your table bottle to pair with dinner, you first have to determine what’s for dinner. Assuming you are having turkey, mash potatoes, gravy and veggies, you can either choose a classic Oktoberfest/Märzen southern-German lager to highlight the salty starchiness (particularly in the gravy) or a highly-carbonated Belgian Bière de Garde (BDG) to cut through the rich flavors and literally cleanse your palate as you eat. BDGs may be hard to find at your typical beer store, but if you can find one, it really is the perfect pairing for the various food flavors on your Thanksgiving table.

The desert table beer is another important choice that has many right answers. Again, depending on what you are eating, and assuming the answer is pie (obviously), the best solution is a sweet English barleywine or sweet stout. Sweet on sweet may seem a touch too sweet, but since the beer has a subtle barley sweetness, it actually accentuates the sugar sweetness of the pie. Another direction to go, and one I may try this year, is to counter the sweetness with spice – like a chocolate chili beer. I know you’re asking yourself “Chili in beer? That sounds terrible!” Trust me, chili peppers pair really well with chocolate, and the two together will highlight your delicious sweet pies perfectly!

Or we can skip desert and go right to beer

And then there is after dinner. This is where the gloves come off. Obviously, depending on how experienced your guests are, you will have to gauge the likelihood that they will appreciate the beers you have. I recommend, assuming you are unencumbered by rookies, strong hop bombs and high ABV face-melters. By this point, the tryptophan has already kicked in and the desert is sitting heavy in your gut as you sit back to watch the football game… you’re going to fall asleep. I recommend you go out swinging with a beer that will properly finish you off. Double IPAs, imperial stouts, Belgian strong ales… this is where you want to be.

Just remember, it only looks overwhelming. Most of the tips and tricks of beer pairing are common sense if you think about it. The only difference with Thanksgiving is that you often have many different foods with vastly different profiles that you’re trying to pair with a single beer. In a perfect world, you would line up each food item with its perfectly matching beer, but you’re not hosting a beer and food pairing event, you’re hosting Thanksgiving. Find the commonality in your dinner items, like the fact that they are all coming out of an oven and have that “baked” taste… and pair off of that.

I sincerely hope that everyone has a wonderful Thanksgiving, and that your beer and food are delicious!

Here’s to craft-brewed happiness… Cheers!