Glass of Belgian abbey beer and tasting of cheeses made with trappist beer and fine herbs with view on Maas river in Dinant, Wallonia, Belgium

© 2016, Randy Mosher

I presented at the recent AHA conference in Baltimore along with Cicerone’s Pat Fahey, on behalf of the Brewers Association’s Beer & Food Working Group, a small committee that is working on trying to put a scientific basis behind beer and food and how pairings work–or don’t.

Below find the worksheet we used at this event.

It’s a fascinating area and one that’s interested me since the early days of craft beer back in the 1980s with Michael Jackson and Charlie Finkel events.

Given all the complexities of the products and then bringing in the multi-layered physiolgy and psychology of the tasting experience, it’s a very daunting task. Even just sorting out the vocabulary is challenging. We all use terms like balance, cancel, contrast, cut and more, but what’s the right one in any given situation? And more, what’s really going on when food and beer hit the mouth? It’s a fascinating journey we hope to attack by surveying current science, doing research on what happens in specific pairings, and eventually being about to crowdsource peoples’ experiences all over the world and mine that data for conclusions.

Thanks to everyone who came out to hear us. It was great to have an engaged audience.

Click on worksheet to download PDF