Pic(k) of the week: Torched Pils & Pie

Beer and food pairing? If it tastes good: eat it. If it tastes good: drink it. Q.E.D. (That's Latin for quod erat demonstrandum, aka: done!, boom!, snap!, mic drop.)

In the photo, it's a Citra-hopped lager and a Caprese pie, made and served at Torched Hop Brewing Company, a brewpub in the Old Fourth Ward neighborhood of Atlanta, Georgia, on 18 November 2016.

It describes the beer as:

a 100% Citra hopped German Pilsner. Citra hops are now one with lager yeast. This 100% Citra hopped lager is an American twist on a traditional German Pilsner.

Hey, now! That's not a Pilsner and, of course, not a German Pilsner. It is, however, a dank, melony American (Georgian?) lager with a bright, dry finish. A tasty hoppy lager, but not a Pilsner. No need to grab foreign laurels. The folk at RateBeer go even further off-kilter, listing the lager as an India Pale ALE [emphasis mine].

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Several years ago, the now-departed SABMiller put out an unintentionally humorous pamphlet on pairing beer and cheese. In it, the international beer conglomerate provided descriptions of various cheeses, each illustrated with beautiful photographs. For each cheese, the company suggested one beer pairing. But for each, it was always the same beer: Pilsner Urquell, a venerable Czechian beer which the conglomerate had acquired. And a true, if not German, Pilsner. (One could argue that the "original" Pilsner was from Czechian Plzeň, or Pilsen, after which an "er" was appended, registering Bohemian provenance.)

I wish I had saved the pamphlet.

From four decades earlier, here's a 1963 print advertisement from another beer behemoth, Anheuser-Busch, one in a series of 1960s ads entitled “This calls for …”

In this case, the this —Budweiser lager— “calls for cheese 'n crackers.” Although I might would opt for a different beer, the overarching idea stands: beer and cheese are natural 'partners.'

To prove that life's greatest pleasures are simple, set a really ripe farmhouse cheese —a well-mannered fruity Cheddar or blue Stilton for preference— alongside freshly baked wholemeal bread, a spoonful of home-made chutney, and a foaming pint of well-hopped, CASK-CONDITIONED [emphasis mine] English ale. Cheese, bread, and beer — the holy trinity or epicurean ecstasy. In other words, the perfect ploughman's, the definitive pub grub from time immemorial.

—Susan Nowak
The Beer Cookbook

And a pizza pie would do just fine.

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• More photos from Torched Hop: here.
• The Bud ad was originally posted by beer writer Jay Brooks, as one item in "Beer In Ads", a series of reprints of 'classic' beer advertisements he's running at his Brookston Beer Bulletin.
• More on beer and cheese together: here.
• From beer writer Michael Jackson, here's a longer, more thoughtful look at beer-with-food during Thanksgiving.


• Pic(k) of the Week: one in a weekly series of photos, usually posted on Saturdays, and often, but not always, with a good fermentable as the subject.
• Camera: Olympus Pen E-PL1.
• Commercial reproduction requires explicit permission, as per Creative Commons.


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