La France Part 1

Tea on the first day of family hols, a warm, but not too hot day, filled with a little fraughtness and lots of excitement, ferry rides, sea dips and new village finding.

Tea, pasta, French saussison, tomato sauce and Gouda along with some crusty baguette and that awesome salt crystal butter. A pretty rare treat for the house of dietism, as ours has been latley. With it, the first beer of the trip. A pretty cheap and cheerful supermarket mass produced:


149: "33" export, Mare et Terre, 4.5%,
A light refreshing lager-y small stubby. A perfect refreshing drink.



150: La Goudale, Biere de Garde, Gebrouwen door, 7.2% (€4 approx for 3 75cl bottles) was a farmhouse style beer, and a much more local offering. Not really to my tastes to be perfectly honest. I've found wheat beery/banana-y type beers growing on me, but this one was too sweet I think. Maybe would have been better colder...

Can vs. Bottle

Unwittingly, my choice of beer this week has led me into a world of debate about storage methods. Three beers from Maui Brewing Co. were sat on the shelf in my local beer shop, looking pretty and exotic, drawing me to them.

142: Mana Wheat, Maui Brewing Co., 5.5%
Mr Ticker picked out pineapple, which according to the website this beer is flavoured with. For me, banana stood out. This may be due to my uncertainty about wheatbeers. There is a flavour, which is the banana ester-y component of wheatbeers which dominates for me when I taste them. Often I find this too intense, but for this beer it was muted somewhat, and actually I really liked it. It had a totally different type of fizzyness to any beers I've had before, full large bubbles. No idea if this has anything to do with the can, but certainly was different.

143: Big Swell IPA, Maui Brewing Co., 6.8%
Typical IPA aroma, florally, fruity. Different carbonation, more muted. Perhaps this isn't a can- thing then. More bitter than Mana Wheat, considerably so, but not overpowering which sometimes I've experienced in an IPA. Delicious beer. (Drank this with a burger and wedges- managed to match beer with food successfully for once!!)

144: CoCoNut PorTeR, Maui Brewing Co., 6.0%
I love porters, I loved this. More hazlenut than coconut in my opinion, but certainly different from any porter I've had. Smooth, bittersweet, delicious.

There was a compelling argument on the side of the can, about why they were packaged in cans. This being a can will keep the light out, will recycle easily, will be cheaper to export. Their website goes into more depth about the sustainability of cans, and the fact that they are safer than glass when on the beach/pool etc (not that this is a particular concern of mine in sunny Bradford...). Also, they say that metallic taste in the beer is not an issue because the inside of the can has a special coating to prevent this happening.

For me, I drank the beers being a bit ignorant about the debate on Cans vs Bottles, and only discovered this after the fact. So, my opinion from a truly unbiased stance, was that I drank three lovely beers, there was nothing metallic about the taste, they tasted fresh and I will look forward to trying more of their range. I also feel a little bit less guilty about the packaging and carbon footprint due to shipping half way round the globe.

Nothing but success in my eyes. Feel free to argue with me!

Food Pairing Disaster #2

So, another attempt at food pairing. Steak and chips. Fairly easy you might think to pick a beer than goes well. Well. We picked a nice beer from Sierra Nevada.

129: Kellerweis Hefeweizen, Sierra Nevada Brewing Co., 4.8%
However, it was banana-y. Lovely, but banana-y. And steak and chips with a banana on top isnt my idea of a wonderful match. Drank it though, and enjoyed it in a round about fashion. Next up we had a lager.

130: St Mungo, WEST Brewery, 4.9%
This was loads better and complimented it well. Wouldnt say it was an intelligent choice, but it worked nicely. I think ticking and matching has problems- if you havent tried a beer before, how are you going to know what it tastes like.

Food Pairing Adventure

My first experience with beer and food pairing came with a BrewDog evening at Coopers, Guiseley earlier in the year, way before blogging began. It was a revelation. Every beer went perfectly with the food, and added something to it, and the food added something to the beer. Another dimension. However. Every beer that I've tried since beginning blogging has been drunk solo (with the exception of Cobra, which I ate alongside a curry). There may have been the odd crisp, or square of cheese munched down in between beers, but I've generally stuck to drinking beer post-eating.


Until last night. It was more of an accident than anything else, which perhaps shouldn't be the way to do it. Dinner was smoked salmon linguine, with capers and dill, courtesy of Mr. Ticker. And the beer...

85: Motueka, Mallinsons, 4.2%
A single hopped ale. Tropical fruit aromas, as would expect. Really hoppy, but not too heavy, or too bitter. Drinkable, tasty beer.

As for paring with food... tropical fruit and salmon might not have been the best match in the world, but having said that, the beer cut through the oily salmon and cleansed the palate. It worked pretty well. Next time, will try and do some research beforehand. As if learning about beer wasn't enough... now I appear to be venturing into food pairing... uhoh....