My Fruit-Beer Pairing Dinner (in planning phase)

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toastermm

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My friends and I regularly do a tasting night for a type of beer. I've decided to make the next one a little more serious. We are doing a fruit beer dinner and I am going to make it a dinner/beer pairing night. I've been attempting to do research on what pairs well with what kind of beer. This is very arbitrary, it seems. I'll share what I've found and the menu I've planned thus far.

My initial search brought me to www.beeradvocate.com (I've been a member a while, but they also suggest pairings with every beer). The suggested pairings happen to be all the same, for all beer in the fruit beer category. That's fine, when it comes to plan my cheese course, that will be a great help.

After some initial searching I finally found this site:

http://bigbeersfestival.com/beers-brewmasters-dinner.html

This was a great help, it seems to be a site that posts beer pairing dinner menu's and what beer was paired. Since I also plan on doing a barley wine dinner later on, this was a huge help to get started there. But it seems that those beer pairing dinners are centered around one or two brewery offerings. Still with all this research and reading I began formulating some ideas.

There will be about 10 of us. Some of the beer I'm offering is hard to find beer (at least where I am), so I can not offer much of it. I consider this to be more of a beer-sample/pairing. So instead of offering quantity, I'm trying to offer lots of small samples. I currently have about 11 different fruit beers we will try.

As to why I've paired one exact beer with another and with what food, I'm really really not sure. I mostly went with these rules:

1) Gut instinct. From reviews on BA, I could get an idea if the fruit beer was overly sweet, not sweet, etc...

2) I tried to pair 2 beers with every course (roughly), one that complements the food, the other that contrasts the food (sweet vs. sour, strong vs. light)... I didn't follow this exactly, because I already have my beer and the food is being decided.

3) In the end I wanted to change up beer to beer, for example, I didn't want two dogfish head beers in a row, or two overly sweet beers in a row.

4) This menu and beer order seems to change frequently, so maybe this will still change. I don't think there can be a really bad pairing here, and hey good beer and good food? That's a winner by itself. Mostly RDWHAHB.

Menu/beer:

1st course:
Aragula Salad w/fresh blueberries and cherries
Dressing: ?? Haven't decided
Beer:
BitterRoot Huckleberry Honey Ale (5.9%)

Cheese Course:
Gouda, Blue, Edam, Feta, and Figs
Beers:
Abita Purple Haze (Raspberry Wheat Beer) (4.2%)
Dogfish Head Festina Peche (4.5%)

Soup Course:
Barley, Grape and Cabbage Stew
Beers:
Hebrew Origin Pomegranate Ale (8%)
Dogfish Head Midas Touch (brewed w/Grapes & Saffron) (9%)

Main Course:
Pork w/ Honey Grape Sauce
Side: Roasted Grapes and Carrots
Beers:
Karl Strauss Belgian (brewed w/Zinfandel Grapes) (10.5%)
Dogfish Head Sahtea (brewed w/Juniper Berries) (9%)

Follow Up Course
Dark Chocolate Varieties
Currant Muffins
Beers:
Russian River Consecration (brewed w/currants) (10%)
Lindeman's Peche and Cassis Lambics (4%)

Desert Course
No idea here for desert? Cheese cake?
Beers:
Southern Tier Pumking (9%)
Samuel Smith Fruit Organic Fruit Beer Trio (Raspberry, Cherry, & Strawberry) (all around 5%)

How's it look so far? any ideas on desert? I was thinking something sweet like a type of cheese cake. Possibly a pumpkin pie as well? (to go with the pumking)
 
Why not a fruit plate for desert?

Oooh. Check for ginger flavored ice cream, I found it at freakign Krogers once, I think it was Haagen Daze.
 
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