This weekend I went to a party thrown by my good friends in GSM Bristol, a group of late 16th century reenactors who work at the Bristol Renaissance Faire. This was a reunion, and I had a great time. In addition to sharing stories and laughs with friends old and new, I had the opportunity to sample a number of good beers. Some were commercial, some were home brews. A number of my friends brew, so they brought some beer and we passed the bottle getting some sips. I'm not going to take the time to rant and rave about how good some of them were. Instead, I want to focus on one interesting beer.
Ivan made a Sumerian beer. He malted his own grain and smoked some of it. The beer was to be made with wild yeast started with fermented dates. Since the recipe he was using indicated that the alcohol content would be fairly low, he boosted it with some champagne yeast.
The end result had a rich, full, interesting flavor. It was sour and acidic. It tasted like tomatoes, and the flavor from the smoked grain came through.
It was not a beer I would just sit and drink. But it is something that I think might pair well with a good meal. My friend Scott suggested that it might improve with age. Ivan said that the information he'd read about the beer didn't talk about it after much time, so he wasn't sure how it would turn out with time.
Personally, I think that it's quite drinkable now, but it needs something to complement the flavor. I'm thinking that maybe a steak withh a rice pilaf and maye some kind of fresh vegetable relish/salad with a vinegar base would be really good.
More so than any other beer that I've tried, it makes me want to learn more about beer and food paring so that you can maximize the enjoyment of both.
Maybe I need to find the time to start working on that...
