Intro

This week we are talking about pairing, no not that kind of pairing. Beer pairing. I'll also talk a bit about what I've been up to.

About Beer - Pairing

​Last week, I talked about the differences with lager and ale. This week, I'd like to begin to delve into some pairing concepts, before going into some more specific styles.

To start, pairing isn't as abstract as it sounds. When you make food, you are pairing. For instance, making a salad dressing, you are creating flavors that pair with the greens in the salad. When you are deciding on main dishes and side dishes, you are pairing. Ponder why meat and potatoes work well together, and you will get a sense of pairing.

There's exhaustive literature on pairing, so I'll keep to some basics from what I've learned so far.

Intensity

Ideally, you'd like to pair things that are roughly equal in intensity. If you have something tart, and pair with something extremely tart, the tartness of the that first something will be overshadowed. Maybe that is what you want, but often times, it is not.

Contrasting

Flavors that sound like opposites, can play very well together and provide balance. Think sweet and sour. With something rich, one can have something light that serves as a palate cleanser, to further the enjoyment. Acids in general play an intricate role with flavor,

Mirroring

Characteristics can be similar in order to work in harmony. For instance, why something like a zinfandel with a very berry-forward, and tart profile compliments a turkey with cranberry sauce. Dessert wines are sweet, the compliment the sweetness of the dessert. (as a general rule, have the wine sweeter than the dessert)

Avoid Clashing

Certain flavors clash. For instance, bitterness and spice often do not go well together. It is the reason why for spicy food, people will recommend not having a bold cabernet, because the high tannins also have high bitterness, and the interplay with the spice intensifies unpleasantly. Similarly, as anyone knows having a corona and spicy tacos, light lagers, which have low bitterness, helps balance the heat.

Unexpected Pairings

In one's mind, based on experience, you build a mental model of what works and doesn't, but it's important to keep an open mind as well to unexpected pairings. One example of an unexpected pairing is stout and oysters.

I'd add that the creaminess of the stout compliments the creaminess of oysters on the finish.

You Like What You Like

But, foremost in pairing is that you have to like what you are pairing. Cilantro pairs well with onions and tomatoes, but only if you like cilantro.

As with all tasting, to state the obvious, it comes down to taste. It's better not to think about right and wrong, and think about what you like.

Business Update

Not much news on the business side, but I'm making a goal of actually getting a proper website setup in September, and fixing the separate landing page for newsletter and main site. Fun stuff like that.

Also, I'll work on setting up a storefront using shop-ify. It won't be live, but my goal is to learn how it works.

Other than that, continuing to talk to people, venues, brewers, etc. As with anything, networks are key to any successful venture. Given my lack in the food and bev space, I'm making up lost ground. Happy with the progress so far. There's so many stories and points of view in the world of entrepreneurship, and food and beverage has a special passion around it that I just love.

Random Tidbits

This week I've started my intermediate Mandarin class, and finding it quite time consuming, frustrating, yet, oddly satisfying. Even though, I see a word, repeat it, and use it in a sentence, 5 minutes later, I've totally forgotten the word, and what it looks like, let alone how to write it. The joys of having an almost-senior brain.

Despite the task that seems often sisyphean, there are glimmers of progress, when I surprise myself at understanding a sentence in the wild, or at least getting a glimmer of the meaning. I'm still hopelessly reliant on pinyin (the romanization of Chinese characters, which is not Chinese), but one advantage of pinyin itself is that it makes typing Chinese pretty easy (if you can differentiate the characters that are homonyms of each other, if you can't, it's quite the dice roll).

In addition, I'm torturing myself further by learning traditional Chinese characters. For those unaware, there's two versions, traditional and simplified. The Communists decided that the Chinese characters were too complicated, so simplified it in order to promote literacy. Hence, simplified Chinese. This didn't happen in Hong Kong, Taiwan, and any other places where traditional Chinese characters continued to be used. Hence, Traditional.

As one can imagine, there's something lost in simplifying Chinese. A classic example is the word for to love, ai, is written 愛 in traditional, and 爱 in simplified. The word for heart, xin, 心, is in the traditional character, but not in simplified.

What does this have to do with beer? Well, not much, other than, like language, food and beverages have history behind them. They are influences by events in history, and how they arrive on our table or glass is a result of those forces. That can be said of almost everything, but I find that tracing the streams and tributaries through time result in interesting discoveries that keep things interesting.

I'll leave you with a Chinese saying that has equivalents in Korean, Japanese, and other languages that are influenced by Confucianism.

溫故而知新 (wēngùzhīxīn)

It roughly translates to the imperative, to study the old, to understand the new. I think of this often in the recipe formulation and appreciation of styles, and can expand upon this in future newsletters.

If you made it this far, I thank you for staying with me. :-)

For past newsletters, please visit: https://sugoi-brewing-company.ck.page/profile/posts​