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The Honolulu Advertiser
Posted on: Wednesday, October 17, 2001

Beer is the all-purpose ingredient

By Wanda A. Adams
Advertiser Food Editor

Matching wine with food is widely accepted as an art form. But matching beer with food?

Great Diamond Head Beer Festival
 •  5:30 p.m. Friday, on the back lawn of the Waikiki Shell
 •  Sampling of beers, soft drinks and food, live jazz
 •  Tickets: $22, Blaisdell box office, Ticket Plus outlets; $25 at the door
 •  Phone charges: 526-4400
 •  Benefits September 11th Fund
Two chefs who must routinely tailor their menu creations to beers say there is a little bit of art to that, too. Both will share their expertise in tastings at the First Annual Great Diamond Head Beer Festival on Friday.

Chef David Luna, newly arrived at Brew Moon from New Orleans, where he worked at the famed Broussard's restaurant, said he spends a lot of time with brewmaster Brennan Fielding, tasting and talking. He's serving the restaurant's signature fire-roasted ribs — a natural with beer — but also a new creation, a version of Tahitian poisson cru.

Poisson cru is a sort of cross between poke and lu'u: raw ahi "cooked" in lime juice and laced with creamy coconut milk.

"It's something that one of the owners who has spent some time traveling in Tahiti kind of hinted he'd like me to do," Luna said.

"The first thing he does when he gets down here is go for poisson cru and a cold beer."

Types of beer
 •  Lager: Most of the beers Americans know by that name are light, clear, effervescent and free of sediment. Microbrewery lagers generally are less refined and offer more idiosyncratic flavor.
 •  Ale: Stronger and often more bitter than lagers, but still relatively light in character, easily paired with food.
 •  Stout: An English invention, very dark, heavily hopped, with a creamy head, made with dark-roasted barley. A richly flavored ale practically thick enough to chew.
 •  Porter: A high-alcohol, heavy, dark ale made with roasted malt.
 •  Barley wine: A type of ale that's higher in alcohol than others (6-12 percent, where most beers run 4-6 percent); they are made as other beers to start but then the brewer applies winemaking techniques, allowing the barley wine to age in a wooden cask and then in the bottle; grapy, woodsy flavor.
 •  Weizenbier, weisse: A light, fresh beer made with malted wheat and served in summer. Hefeweisen is the Bavarian style, generally darker and richer.
 •  Bock: A slightly sweet, full-bodied German beer, traditionally made in fall and consumed in spring.
 •  Märzen: The classic Oktoberfest beer; an amber to deep copper lager with malty sweetness, toasted malt aroma and flavor; medium-bodied, medium bitterness. Brewed in March, aged until summer, consumed during the warm weather, with remaining kegs traditionally finished off during Oktoberfest.
Luna took a quick lesson from a Tahitian woman, then toyed with the dish a bit, adding scallions, tomatoes, a little grated carrot and Maui onion. It matches well with the restaurant's Munich Gold lager, a light, clear, hop-tinged beer with a hint of bitterness to balance the richness of the dish. Munich Gold recently won a silver medal at the Great American Beer Festival in Colorado.

Luna freely admits that pairing beers with foods is hardly rocket science: "Pretty much everything goes with beer except maybe some desserts, and even then, stout and chocolate is an excellent combination if it's done right."

One way chefs ensure that the food they prepare will go well with beers is to use beer in the preparation. Luna makes a British onion soup (as opposed to French) in which he caramelizes the onions in stout and employs bread crumbs and Stilton cheese instead of French bread and Gruyere on top.

At Gordon Biersch, chef Liam ("Lee") Martin incorporates beer into a dish he calls Drunken Poke, which is one of two he'll be serving at the Beerfest.

Actually, they're doing a drunken poke duo, with both ahi and tako (octopus) in a dressing that combines their Golden Export beer with shoyu, sesame oil, sugar and chili flakes.

This will be served with a salad of greens dressed with a vinaigrette made with their Dunkles dark beer.

The other dish he'll serve at the event he calls a "no-brainer," a "Wurst Sampler," offering a range of German-style sausages (knockwurst, bratwurst and smoked Thuringer) made especially for Gordon Biersch by Spadaro's Sausage, along with sauerkraut, garlic mashed potatoes and Märzen mustard sauce. Märzen ("March" beer) is the best-selling of Gordon Biersch's bottled retail beers and second-best-selling in the restaurant. In the restaurant, Märzen also is incorporated into the spicy, tomato barbecue sauce used on their ribs.

Martin, like Luna, said matching food to beer is easy because there is such a range of beers to choose from. While he'd likely steer clear of very delicate seafood preparations, he considers pretty much any other kind of dish fair game.