Match points

Pairing beer with food may be a challenge but more pubs and restaurants are taking the plunge. John Porter reports on the opportunities that winning matches offer.

There was a time when nobody gave a second thought to beer and food matching. In the days before public sanitation, beer was a safer option than water if you wanted to avoid typhoid and cholera. It was served with every meal, including breakfast, with the weakest version served to children known as a 'small beer' – just one of many phrases that trace their origins to Britain's brewing heritage.

At the other end of the scale were the strong monastic beers brewed by religious orders to drink when they were, in theory, fasting. These contained so much malted grain they were practically bread in a tankard, and the style survives in weissbiers – white beers or wheat beers – available today.

However, combined efforts of successive governments and the temperance movement to regulate the pub trade and wean workers off beer meant that by the 21st century, beer sales were in decline in British pubs while wine was in growth.

But there are signs the balance may have started to be restored. Michel Roux's Le Gavroche and Raymond Blanc's Le Manoir aux Quat' Saisons are among the restaurants which have introduced lists of beer and food matches to food on the menu.

Matching local beer to traditional dishes and regional specialities has also become a way for pubs to add value, and persuade customers to enjoy an evening out rather than stay in with a ready meal and a bottle of plonk.

Ashley and Kelly McCarthy, who were BII Licensees of the Year in 2009, run two pubs in North Yorkshire – Ye Old Sun Inn, Colton, and The White Swan, Wighill. Trained chef Ashley McCarthy builds menus around locally sourced fresh food including a 'pie of the day' at Ye Old Sun Inn, and a 'Yorkshire tapas menu' including black pudding, local sausages and devilled whitebait at The White Swan. Last summer the pair acquired the freehold of Ye Old Sun Inn and, now free from the beer tie that sets  the price and range a pub can serve, they have revamped their cask ale offer.

"Yorkshire has a great brewing tradition and we now stock a wider range of local beer," says McCarthy, "and being free of tie means we can negotiate better prices."

Kelly McCarthy adds: "I've found there's more interest in the beer now the range has improved. As well as men having a pint with a meal, there's more interest from women. Often they'll think they don't like beer, but if you give them the chance to sample different styles, there's something they like."

Ensuring plenty of choice has also worked for The Red Lion Inn at Cricklade, Wiltshire. Tom Gee, who bought the freehold in 2008, says he is passionate about beer and local fresh food and wanted to do both well. As well as having nine regularly changing cask beers on the bars, the restaurant has a fridge featuring 37 bottled beers from around the world. "All our dishes are matched to a bottled beer and these matches are identified on the menu as well as in the special 'beer bible' we give diners when they're seated. We talk them through the menu and the associated beers, explaining why a beer is matched to a dish."

Ron Blackmore is the lessee of The Fox pub in Bury St Edmunds, Suffolk, where Greene King IPA, Hardy & Hanson's Olde Trip and Old Speckled Hen are regular beers. He says: "Food and beer matching is a great way of capturing customers' interest and lifting sales. In recent years Greene King has been producing a wider range of cask ales and that has helped keep up the interest levels. I train my staff to up sell by talking to customers and providing informed advice.

"Beer as an accompaniment to food goes back centuries, but the idea of specific cask beers matching particular food is relatively new. So you have to judge the people who might be open to a bit of experimentation and engage them in the process of choosing and, as you describe the tastes, you are actively talking up your food and beer.

"By sowing the seed in their minds that they will be served something special and that they will really enjoy the experience, they are far more likely to do so."

Words John Porter

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