Beer Battle Dinners are a fun way to explore cuisines, pairings
Jan. 25—Event dinners feel like something that used to happen, in the before times.
But slowly, restaurants have been adding themed dinners, tastings and other events meant to get us out of the house and mingling with — gasp! — other people.
I was invited to a recent beer dinner at The Gnome in St. Paul, which is usually a fun occasion, but the restaurant has upped the ante a bit, in the most unexpectedly fun way.
Two breweries pair their beers with a coursed menu, and the guest doesn't know which beer comes from which brewery. Everyone votes on which pairing was most successful, and at the end of the meal, the brewery with the most votes wins.
That brewery goes on to pair beers with the next month's winner.
The dinner I attended had a New Orleans-themed menu (a welcome bit of warmth in the middle of January), and Pryes Brewing and Finnegans Brewery competed for our votes.
There were six courses (technically seven if you count the delicious cheese spread that kicked things off), so six chances for the brewers to win our votes.
We ate everything from barbecue shrimp to gumbo, jambalaya and maque choux, with a couple of hot beignets to close things out. Flavors ranged from bold and spicy to salty and sweet. And though I expected the beer pairings for each to be similar, they often went completely different ways.
For instance, with the first course, barbecue shrimp, Pryes went with a somewhat predictable (and delicious) pilsner. Finnegans came out of left field with a rhubarb gold ale, and the tart, earthy flavors really cut through the spice of the dish for me. It won the vote of our whole table.
And the second course, a New Orleans gumbo, was a rich, umami-filled stew, and Pryes went for the tart this time with its Royal Peach Sour. It offered interesting, contrasting flavors to the dish, but Finnegans wowed me with its Baltic Porter pairing. The light, chocolatey beer really complemented the soup and kept me coming back for more sips and bites.
In the fifth course, some New Orleans grillades (meat cutlets) and grits, Finnegans went the classic route and offered us a rich stout toward the end of the meal, but it was Pryes' Miraculum, its signature IPA, that won the round for me. Possibly because I was so full at that point that a stout felt like piling on.
In the end, Pryes won the most votes overall, so will face Modist Brewing on Feb. 10. Pryes won by just a few votes, and my guess is that the brewery's Peace Offering Cold Press Stout (a collaboration with local Peace Coffee) paired with hot beignets was the piece de resistance.
Long live the coffee and beignet pairings, and let's hope more fun, creative events like this are in our future.
Tickets are still available for the Modist vs. Pryes dinner and for three more in the series, featuring Toppling Goliath, Bent Paddle and Summit Brewing.
For more information or to get your tickets, which are $90 per person (that includes tax and gratuity), go to thegnomepub.com/events.
