A salt on the senses

Beer can make a great accompaniment to salty seafood. Ben McFarland reports

Don your flip flops and Ray-Bans, squeeze into those skimpy Speedos and pack your bucket and spade because, this month, Beers Of The World’s voyage of beer and food discovery is taking your tastebuds down to the coast.

Yes, after a winter nibbling on cheese, chocolate and curry, BOTW sharpening its knife for a beer and seafood matching extravaganza. After all, where better to beer than beside the seaside?

You’d be forgiven for thinking otherwise but beer and seafood have a long relationship dating back to the 1500s.

In these times, as a sea-faring buccaneer about to set sail for the Far East in search of spice, vice and all things nice, barrels of freshly brewed beer were an essential companion to any ocean-bound voyage.

Grog, it turns out, was a necessity rather than a luxury. Jam-packed with hops to preserve it and brimming with protein, vitamins and, ahem, moraleboosting alcohol, beer was preferred to water which, apart from tasting pretty boring, was vulnerable to infection and contamination.

These eye-patch wearing, cutlass-waving swashbucklers would use the beer to wash down freshly caught fruits of the sea and the rapport between fish and seafood and beer was born.

Thankfully, beer and seafood’s relationship has developed beyond mere rancid, washed-up sea-skank spooned into a weary salt-rimmed mouth betwixt gulps of molten, musty beer.

Today, gastronomic adventurers are able to cast their net far and wide when looking for suitable beers to accompany the myriad o.....

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By Ben McFarland

Section : Beer and Food

Page number : 40