Celebrating with beer this holiday season

By JASON AND TODD ALSTRÖM

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It's been documented in voyage journals that the Mayflower abandoned its course and landed in Plymouth due to running out of beer. Records also suggest that one of the first establishments built in the Pilgrim colony was a brewery, and that most of the settlers were Separatist farmers, poorly educated and without much social or political standing.

Given these facts, do you honestly think that they drank wine at the very first Thanksgiving in 1621? Hell, no! They drank beer!

So, as the holiday season creeps up, some of you will be asking your hosts what to bring to Thanksgiving and Christmas. You could go ahead and be that same boring person who shows up with that cheap bottle of Chardonnay, thinking that it will help you swallow down hunks of dry turkey. But that's just plain rude, man. Cheap and boring is not the way to go. What you really need is some quality craft-brewed beer to enliven the festivities. Impress the hell out of everyone when you whip out bottles of intriguing beer and reel off brief, knowledgeable descriptions of them. Fortify the ancestral tradition by supplementing your holiday with beer. Suggest a beer pairing with dinner. Hell, make it an all-day event. Remember, there's nothing wrong with drinking at 10am. Beer goes with every meal, and every minute of the day!

Apéritif (before dinner)

Avoid killing palates too early in the day by starting off with a nice light-bodied pilsner or lager. Offer something that will arouse appetites and slowly awaken the senses, such as Brooklyn Lager or Pilsner, Otter Creek Vermont Lager, Sam Adams Boston Lager or Thomas Hooker's Munich Style Golden Lager. You could even try a Belgian-style strong pale ale, along the lines of Duvel. Its light-bodied fluffiness and higher alcohol will get the conversation going.

Hors d'oeuvre hour

Kick things up a notch with a moderate level of hops. The hoppy characters in pale ales will pair nicely with salads, a slew of cheese varieties, fruits and many other hors d'oeuvres, without overwhelming any flavors. But don't go too bitter. Try Anchor Liberty Ale, Harpoon IPA, Smuttynose's Shoals Pale Ale or Sierra Nevada Pale Ale.

Dinner

Planning on spending the evening plowing through plates of poultry, gravy, stuffing and potatoes? Try serving some strong Belgian-style ales. Their higher alcohol percentages cut through fats and starches, provide an edge of sweetness, and boast some very diverse and complex flavors that pair nicely with a traditional holiday meal. Allagash Grand Cru, Avery's Salvation, North Coast's PranQster and Ommegang's Rare Vos are some of the better choices. Another recommendation is to reintroduce more pilsners and lagers, as they will not only act as palate-cleansers between bites, but their lightness and spicy tones complement poultry and contrast with gravies and stuffing.

Dessert

In our opinion, this is the best course to pair beer with. But the last thing you want to do is kill a beer with a pairing that is too sweet, so make sure that the beers you serve are sweeter than your desserts. Rich and big stouts are our favorites, and tend to work very well. Try Brooklyn's Black Chocolate Stout, Great Divide's Yeti Imperial Stout or Oak Aged Yeti, Stone's Russian Imperial Stout or Victory's Storm King Stout.

Digestif (after dinner)

Time to kick back and let that food digest. No doubt you're pretty bloated at this point, so the moment calls for something smooth and numbing. Enter barleywine-style ales, or a similarly complex, malty and alcoholic beer. Simply decant some into a snifter, take a sip, and appreciate life (and your swollen gut). Suggestions: Berkshire's Holidale, Stone's Old Guardian Barley Wine Style Ale, Sierra Nevada's Bigfoot Barley Wine Style Ale, Dogfish Head's Immort Ale or Raison d'Extra.

Now, our examples are certainly not the last word in pairing beer with food, but they should give you a head start. In time, you'll find that nearly every beer pairs with most types of food, though some combinations work far better than others. Just remember to be experimental with your pairings, and make sure to have fun doing it. And with that, we'll leave you with a 16th-century English proverb: Wine is but single broth; ale is meat, drink and cloth.

[This column previously was published on issue 7.44]

FOR MORE BEER EDUCATION: BEERADVOCATE.COM

RESPECT BEER.

Beer Events

Thanksgiving Beer Pairing Tasting

November 15

Turkey Day is upon us again. Come on down to the Wine Gallery in Brookline for tips on what to drink to complement turkey, taters, stuffing and all the fixings on Thanksgiving.

[Wine Gallery, 375 Boylston St., Brookline Hills, Brookline. 617.277.5522. 5pm-7pm/free. wine-gallery.com]

A Year of Beer (Tasting Extravaganza)

November 24

Dave, the brewer of the Gardner Ale House, has been steathily saving kegs of each one of their seasonal beers since last year, and it's time to drink them ... all at once! They'll put twelve of their own house beers on tap. For the first time ever, all taps will pour just their own beer, and each a different one. An optional small glass will be served at half price for those who want to taste more beer. Different samplers available for those of different palates: a light sampler, a dark sampler and a seasonal sampler.

[Gardner Ale House, 74 Parker St., Gardner. 978.669.0122. 5pm. gardnerale.com]