By Colin Burch
For Weekly Surge
We're in the heart of grilling season, and 
nothing goes better with grilled burgers, veggies, chicken breasts, or pork chops than a cold beer.
But which beer? That depends on what you're grilling. You need the right beer and food pairing. You don't have to be snooty, or loaded with money for expensive imported beer, to make a great pairing turn out right.
The problem is, beer pairings aren't exactly a popular topic of conversation. It's plenty easy to find wine-and-food pairing suggestions. They're almost common knowledge, such as red meat is best with reds and fish is best with whites.
But beer pairings? Not so common. Which doesn't make any sense. A popular 16th Century saying went, "Wine is but single broth; ale is meat, drink, and cloth." Amen.
Beer pairing info is so rare, in fact, that I pulled out a notebook while visiting Capital Ale House in downtown Richmond, Va., earlier this summer. I copied part of the brew pub's menu, because I had never seen detailed suggestions on what beers to drink with specific types of food.
That menu - much like the beer dinner that will run 6-9 p.m. on August 19 at City Bar, located at 7604 N. Kings Highway in Myrtle Beach - is an uncommon contribution to beauty of eating and drinking something other than wine.
Scott Oakley, assistant general manager at City Bar, said his chef will create four dishes to go with the flavor profiles of four beers: Chimay Blue from Belgium, Brooklyn Brown from New York City, Anchor Steam from San Francisco, and Peroni from Italy. The dinner will cost $15, which also includes a cocktail from the bar (RSVP at 449-7013).
City Bar did a beer dinner last year, and it wasn't as well-attended as the restaurant's wine dinners, Oakley said. That beer dinner cost $45, and was an alternate to the eatery's monthly wine dinners. City Bar is now doing wine dinners quarterly. On the months between the dinners, the restaurant holds tastings of two wines and two spirits, paired with food. Oakley recalled only about 10 people showing up to the beer dinner.
Liberty's Eric Lamb. -File Photo
Indeed, it seems that beer and food pairing isn't a thriving concern. Eric Lamb, head brewer at Liberty Steakhouse and Brewery at Broadway at the Beach, knows that to be true even among beer lovers.
"Even customers who are beer snobs, who are really into beer, aren't going to say, 'I'm having the fish, so I'll have the wheat beer...'," Lamb said. "Most of the time, they're like, 'I like this beer, so that's what I'm having'."
But restaurant managers are interested in beer pairings. Lamb said the folks with his restaurant group, which includes TBonz Gill and Grill, have discussed having a beer pairing event at sister eatery Liberty Tap Room, 7651 N. Kings Highway, but they haven't pulled the trigger yet.
And Pete Velez, brewer at the new Gordon Biersch at The Market Common, said the brewpub's Mug Club will eventually include pairing events, which will be hashed out between him and one of the chefs.
Gordon Biersch's Pete Velez. -File Photo
Dave Epstein of New South Brewing Co., a microbrewery in Myrtle Beach, once created a beer dinner with a chef when he was working at the old TBonz Gill and Grill brewpub in Mount Pleasant. "What it takes is a combination of a chef and a brewer working together," he said. "I would be glad to do that with any chef around town." But it has been 10 years since his beer-and-food pairing event in Mount Pleasant, and he doesn't remember exactly what the pairings were.
When I asked Ed Waldorf at Beach HomeBrew - located in the Galleria at the corner of Lake Arrowhead Road and U.S. 17 - about beer pairings, he immediately had some great ideas on cooking with beer, but for pairings, he recommended a chapter in Extreme Brewing by Sam Calagione, owner of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery.
For my part, I didn't read the rather short section of pairings in the late Michael Jackson's Great Beer Guide until I started working on this article.
New South's Dave Epstein. -File Photo
Beer pairing just isn't something that's usually on anyone's mind.
"It's pretty sad, actually, because there are beers out there that are every bit as bold as wine," Velez said. On occasions when pairings are done with Belgian or French beers, he said, it can change a diner's perception of beer.
But you don't even have to get that fancy. There are easy-to-follow tips that anyone can use to complement grilled fare, and the enhancement will be worthwhile.
WHERE TO LOOK
If you've examined enough wine bottles, you've seen plenty of pairing suggestions. You've seen nothing on beers.
Rogue Ales are an exception, at least in the 1-pint, 6-ounce bottles. I've seen those larger bottles at several area retailers, most recently for $6.49 at Piggly Wiggly in Carolina Forest, which carried seven varieties.
Rogue prints two small icons on the backs or sides of those larger bottles. The icons are things like a pig, a cow's head, a fish, a bird, a fire, and even a slice of pie. They represent pairing suggestions for pork, red meat, fish, and so on. Each bottle has a combination of two icons.
Like Rogue, craft breweries and microbreweries are more likely to provide pairing information. The Boston Beer Company, home of Samuel Adams, has detailed charts of pairing information on its site.
Many big domestic beers don't offer pairing information, which stands to reason - they want you to buy their beer for every occasion. But Michelob has a Web page devoted to pairing suggestions.
Naturally, in the case of both Samuel Adams and Michelob, the pairing advice relates strictly to the in-house brands.
PRELIMINARY TIPS
The Capital Ale House in Richmond, Va., started its beer pairings section with two general guidelines:
• First, "Think of dark beers as red wine and light colored beers as white wine."
• Second, "Complement hearty foods with full bodied beers and lighter foods with light bodied beers."
• A third piece of general advice appeared later in the menu: "Spicy foods go great with hops!" So think about those hopped-up India Pale Ales when you're thinking about intense Mexican food.
Meanwhile, keep in mind that foods and beers work together in different ways. Sometimes the goal is comparison; other times it is contrast.
The Michelob Web site recommends foods that would be complemented, or reinforced, by a given beer; then it also includes foods that would be contrasted, or balanced, by the same beer. Your choice depends on what you're after.
Ultimately, like so many things in life, not all sources agree. For example, while the late, venerable Jackson and the Capital Ale House menu recommend full-colored and even darker beers for red meat, Michelob's Web site will suggest its lighter Pale Ale for a bacon burger.
But those differences of opinion shouldn't keep you from pairing enthusiastically. As Calagione wrote in Extreme Brewing, the point is to "enjoy great friends, great food, and great beer."
For More Details on Beer Pairings
Great Beer Guide: 500 Classic Brews by Michael Jackson. While Jackson only devotes two pages to pairings, the entire book is full of details on the aromas and flavors found in 500 beers around the globe.
Extreme Brewing: An Enthusiast's Guide to Brewing Craft Beer At Home by Sam Calagione. Chapter 10, "Beer Pairings and Dinners," emphasizes couplings of beers and cheeses, and brews and chocolates. The same chapter includes recipes with pairing suggestions.
The Little Black Book of Beer by Ruth Cullen. The chapter entitled "Specialties and Combination Styles" includes brief - very brief - notes on food pairings with different beer styles.
On the Web:
Michelob's pairings page:
www.michelob.com/AppreciatingFood.aspx
Rogue Ales' pairings page:
www.rogue.com/news-events.html#MENUS
Samuel Adams' pairings page:
www.samueladams.com/promotions/foodandbeer/
Colin Burch writes Weekly Surge's Beerman
column. You can contact him at beerpour@yahoo.com or http://maltyhops.blogspot.com.