Carousel was the venue and chefs were Valentine Warner and hot new Italian restaurant Luca – in the pursuit of successful beer pairing.
Advocates of beer pairing insist that it brings out the best in the food even more than well matched wine, but it is an elusive trick to get right.
Such, at any rate, was my conclusion from a recent food-pairing of vintage and farmhouse Ales at London’s Carousel restaurant. We sampled beers from Birra del Borgo and Goose Island Beer Co paired with food by Valentine Warner and restaurant Luca, just about all of which scored highly on my card in their own right.
Beer pairing of the evening – Birra Del Borgo Cortigiana with Manjimup Truffle Agnolotti.
At least one of the pairings worked exquisitely, Birra Del Borgo Cortigiana with the second pasta starter, itself my dish of the evening comprising Manjimup Truffle Agnolotti.
The grainy base of the beer was perfectly offset by the truffle
The man on my left mumbled that there was too much truffle, but that was before his first taste met a sip of that beer which could be likened to a classic Belgian Pale ale, if a little lower in gravity at 4.5% and yet sourer, with a hint of lemon peel bitterness offset by a candied sweetness.
I could have quaffed this happily on its own by the pint, but admit the acerbic grainy base perfectly offset the truffle.
We had already partaken of the first starter, a tasty morsel of giant eviscerated prawn filled with orange and coriander seed, leaves and Douglas fir salt. This was paired quite successfully with a saison farmhouse ale from Goose Island Beer Co in Chicago called Sofie, a marvellous example of this genre with plenty of body to keep the crustacean at bay.
So called saison, or “season,” beers were once issued in industrial quantities – 5 litres a day or more – to farm hands in Wallonia, the French-speaking region of Belgium, and so were made at low strength around 3 to 3.5% to avoid too much drunkenness in the field. Since then the beer has gradually inflated in gravity to its current more satisfying but less refreshing level.
The main course was duck leg confit in olive oil accompanied by peach pickled in the paired beer, a sour Goose Island Halia. This succeeded not least because the beer itself was aged in peach to the tune of 50 pounds of the fruit per barrel. At 7.5% this was fitting accompaniment for a main course and combined well with its delicate sour peachiness but on its own divided opinion around the table. No one could deny though this is a beer to be taken seriously despite its frivolous tracery, one to sup, over dinner or not, with a few discerning friends, rather than wash down a few crisps after a hard game of tennis.
The disappointment came next with the dessert, although this was the fault of the pairing rather than either component.
The pud was our old favourite rum baba, albeit in a slightly off-putting toadstool shape, with strawberries, basil and barley cream. If anything, the baba could have been even more alcoholic for that is its nature and is a challenge to pair given that even the sweetest Sauternes struggles to match its sugar and alcohol.
Understandably our hosts decided not even to try but the choice of Birra Del Borgo’s l’Equilibrista did not work because it was just drowned by the rum and sugar.
Birra Del Borgo’s l’Equilibrista – a true beer-wine hybrid that could easily have been served as an aperitif
The beer would have been better served as an aperitif or even digestif, being a true beer/wine hybrid, whose wort was 39% Sangiovese wine must. It is initially fermented with wine yeast before undergoing a second fermentation with champagne yeast, yielding a beguiling brew which emerged as a slightly cloudy orange out of the bottle under a flowing white head. On the nose it could almost have been champagne beneath the overtones of malt.
At least the piece de résistance came last, the evening’s digestif, a version of Imperial Stout.
I was familiar with Fuller’s excellent version at 10.7% but this was much stronger still at 15%, owing in part to being steeped in bourbon barrels containing quite a lot of residual whisky. The perfect pick-me-up with a pleasant treacly medicinal quality, this combines beautifully with all things post prandial, whether chocolates, sweet biscuits, cigars or even something naughtier.
I could have sipped this all evening but fortunately was sent packing after a second refill, or else I would not have made it home through the deluge that at last gave London’s gardens a decent watering.
I arrived home drenched but happily reflecting on the rude health of craft brewing, even if the evening demonstrated that no beer is a match for rum baba.
