And a very

Dec 26 2008 by Alastair Gilmour, The Journal

FOR some people it’s a fetish. We’d rather call it an intrepid expedition into the unknown. An infatuation with good beer and good food saw us start 2008 pairing haggis with Orkney Skull Splitter and end it with Hook Norton Haymaker accompanying slow braised ox cheek, potato galette, sautéed baby new spinach and smoked duck.

An odyssey of enthusiasm was sandwiched between.

There is more to beer-and-food matching than lager with German sausage, but even this combination can be rendered far more interesting by a little thought. White wine with fish? Try a golden lager. Red wine with red meat? Full-coloured ales have the fruitiness and complexity to do a much better job.

At a lunch in the Czech Republic, we dined on Granny’s Pancake, old Bohemian garlic soup and Bohemian Forest duckling served with dumplings and cabbage. There was pork meat with blue cheese gratinée served with potatoes or pancakes and old Bohemia-style boiled pig’s knuckle with horseradish. To accompany that, Budweiser Budvar; freshly leafy, honeyed, spicy, biscuit malty, silky, long, soft and bitter.

There was conversation, too, which is really what it’s all about. Budvar master brewer Josef Tolar expanded on his bee-keeping activities. Naturally the topic moved seamlessly from beer and bees to Czech maternity benefits.

To finish we sampled unfiltered Budvar drawn straight from horizontal tanks in the deep, cold cellars immediately below us. The beer sat contentedly on the palate and developed seemingly for ever, changing and evolving gradually.

Two months later we met a group of Japanese enthusiasts who have taken the most sociable of food events into another dimension. Led by architect Hiroshi Ota, the Tokyo Picnic Club – an 80-strong body of landscape designers, illustrators and photographers – turned their creative talents to redefining the picnic within the context of urban Tokyo. They brought Picnopolis to Newcastle and Gateshead where more than 100 aeroplane-shaped picnic areas were set up, complete with “cloud cameras” taking aerial photographs. Appropriately, a beer to observe the occasion and to match the circumstances was also included.

Wylam Brewery, one of the region’s most innovative beer producers, bottled one of its portfolio of ales as the perfect picnic accompaniment, following a tasting session of selected products. Wylam Angel Ale (4.3% alcohol by volume) was developed at the Northumberland micro-brewery by young brewers Ben Wilkinson and Lee Howourth.

“It was the first one we’d done ourselves,” says Lee. “We used Cascade, the American hop, for its bitterness and great aroma. We had just been to Newcastle Beer Festival and had taken note of beers with that hop characteristic. It’s a typical British pale ale with a bit of roast malt. We’re really chuffed with it.”

Hiroshi also brought a bottle of Tokyo Picnic Club Original Brew Picnic Beer (7.0% ABV) from a range of Nest Beers made by the Hitachino company. This “brownfield” picnic beer – designed for picnicking in urban areas such as abandoned industrial sites and dockyards (“greenfield” picnic beer is for parks and fields) – is a fine speciality brew, a Belgian-style strong dark and spicy mouthful. It is bottle-conditioned and extremely lively with an initial aroma of ginger that shifts gear into piquant orange peel. A hint of cinnamon joins the palate along with an earthy vegetableness before the aftertaste returns to a whiff of orange.

Never far away, though, are pies. Beer and pies have had a stranglehold since our response to a pub window sign in Byker, Newcastle, that promised “Free Pie With Every Pint”. Countless fillings and crusts later, they have become cordial companions, lunchtime lovers and suppertime soul mates, so meeting a pie-maker with an appreciation of ale this year was a heaven-sent opportunity.

Michael Maughan gave up a career in the pharmaceuticals industry to concentrate on making the perfect pie. Along with his partner, biology teacher Rachel Styles, he formed Northern Pie. Not only has the quality of their weighty products made a big impression but the range of “alternative” meats encased in exquisite shortcrust butter pastry has customers returning time after time. Crocodile pie with cream and tarragon; springbok with kiwi fruit, cashews and dates, and kudu with pear and mushroom seem a million miles from the couple’s “ordinary” offerings, such as beef and ale.

The Northern Pie chicken and coconut is nothing other than delicious. The freshness of the coconut envelops the meat in a sweet, exotic comfort zone and complements the butter-infused pastry perfectly. A Belgian witbier such as Hoegaarden (5.0% ABV) with its refreshingly tantalising flavours of coriander, bitter orange and slight grassy hop accompany this perfectly.

Michael’s beef and ale pie is cooked with Newcastle Brown Ale – full-bodied and silky-textured with a caramel and fruit individuality and classic sweet, nutty aftertaste – but any robust, typically English bitter with hints of malt would amuse and entertain as a pairing. High House Farm Auld Hemp (3.8% ABV) wallows in malt and fruit flavours, while Hadrian & Border Farne Island Bitter (4.0% ABV) is a finely-tuned, well-balanced ale developing a tobacco-like bitter-sweetness. And, like Michael’s pie, it’s the brewery’s best-seller.

Then there’s horse – and revenge. Ladbrokes and William Hill have grown fat on our lean betting returns, but old scores were settled in a restaurant in France with every retaliatory mouthful of steak haché de viande chevaline and bordelaise sauce, mushrooms, salade paysanne and frites brought to life by a local bottle-conditioned ale. Naufrageurs Blonde Spéciale (7.0% ABV) was on the menu alongside the region’s Bordeaux wines and it’s encouraging to note that the average Frenchman is getting to know his beers a soupçon better than he used to.

And, beer can definitely do “style”, too. The final presentation for the 2008 Pilsner Urquell International Master Bartender of the Year Awards unfolded in Prague Castle, one of the largest fortresses in the world. It was founded in the 9th Century, since when its history has reflected culture and political turbulence from the Bohemian empires to the Czech Republic’s first mewlings. A glorious combination of Romanesque, Gothic, Renaissance and Baroque styles that tingle the spine on a stroll through its courtyards.

A reception gathered pace up its red-carpeted marble staircase and along a chandelier-lined corridor where the atmosphere was intensified by an unearthly choir. We dined on fillet steak with barolo wine sauce, foie gras, crispy pancetta, baked potato, french beans and coriander pesto and we refreshed on Pilsner Urquell – the world’s first pilsner beer – heartily, happily, and long into the night.

On formal occasions like this, though, you could murder a pie.

alastair.gilmour@ncjmedia.co.uk