Food pairing
Beer with feijoada
Black beans stewed with salted and smoked pork cuts, dense and deeply savoury, served with orange and greens.
A long stew of black beans with several cured pork cuts, and the cure is the dominant flavour: salt, smoke and rendered fat over an earthy, starchy base. Very heavy, and uniformly so.
The traditional accompaniments say what the dish needs — sliced orange for acidity, collard greens for bitterness. A beer providing both is doing the same work, and the standard Brazilian answer of a very cold light lager is doing something else again: cutting through by dilution and carbonation rather than by flavour.
Feijoada narrows the field sharply, and one answer stands clear of the rest. Most beer falls down on at least one thing this dish demands. The attribute doing most of the work is salt.
What to drink
Baltic porter — outstanding
Deep malt character matches the savoury weight of the dish instead of sitting apart from it.
Caution: A richer dish than this beer can clear from the palate.
Belgian dark strong ale — strong
Malt sweetness rounds off the salt rather than compounding it.
Caution: Expect the beer to refresh rather than to stand up to the food.
Tropical stout — strong
Deep malt character matches the savoury weight of the dish instead of sitting apart from it.
Caution: Expect the beer to refresh rather than to stand up to the food.
Doppelbock — strong
Deep malt character matches the savoury weight of the dish instead of sitting apart from it.
Caution: Expect the beer to refresh rather than to stand up to the food.
American barley wine — strong
Deep malt character matches the savoury weight of the dish instead of sitting apart from it.
Bock — strong
Deep malt character matches the savoury weight of the dish instead of sitting apart from it.
Caution: Expect the beer to refresh rather than to stand up to the food.
Wee heavy — strong
Deep malt character matches the savoury weight of the dish instead of sitting apart from it.
Caution: Expect the beer to refresh rather than to stand up to the food.
International pale lager — good pairing
Cured pork and black beans is as heavy and as salty as the catalogue gets, and the traditional accompaniments — orange, collard greens — supply acidity and bitterness the dish itself lacks. The Brazilian answer of a very cold light lager works by carbonation and temperature rather than by flavour, which is a legitimate mechanism and worth naming as one.
Caution: Expect the beer to refresh rather than to stand up to the food.
What not to drink
- Australian sparkling ale — Expect the beer to refresh rather than to stand up to the food.
- Strong bitter — Expect the beer to refresh rather than to stand up to the food.
- Altbier — Expect the beer to refresh rather than to stand up to the food.