Christmas Day Lunch – time to bring out the beers!

Here’s beer sommelier, Annabel Smith’s beer suggestions for Christmas Day:

Before you open that calorie laden bottle of Prosecco, or hangover inducing Chateauneuf-de-Pape with your turkey dinner this year, take some advice from the Dea Latis crew and reach for the beer.

Beer has no problem with any of the traditional comestibles we devour on Christmas day, and what’s more, it’s better for you, contains less calories and you’ll wake up on Boxing Day feeling far fresher!

We’ll start with a plate of smoked salmon for breakfast. Pour yourself a glass of refreshing, fizzy wheat beer, such as Vedett White, Erdinger Heffeweisse or Franziskaner Weissebier. Make sure it’s in a champagne flute; the carbonation and citrus will slice through the oiliness of the salmon with a knife, refreshing the palate and complementing the fish. For the veggies amongst you, bake a whole Camembert and serve with chunks of bread, accompanied by Leffe Blonde or Affligem Tripel. These beers blow wine out of the water with their sweet breadiness.

With a clear head, you can start on the star attraction – the turkey. Substitute the cranberry sauce with a cheeky glass of Titanic Plum Porter. The fruitiness of this beer is a perfect foil to the delicate flavours of white meat. If pork is your meat of choice, there’s no better beer than Jenning’s Cumberland Ale, it’s got a lovely apple peel aroma and flavour. For the nut roast gals out there, we recommend the gorgeous Brooklyn lager, full of toffee, caramel and sweet notes.

Onto the Christmas pudding, reach for Shepherd Neame Bishop’s Finger or Robinson’s Old Tom – both are full of stewed and dried fruit flavours which complement the richness of the dessert.

Here comes the cheeseboard, laden with Stilton, and we’re going to be drinking Theakston’s Old Peculier or Fullers London Porter. Both there beers tone down the metallic, coppery elements in the cheese. It’s a weird combination but it works so well!

And finally…well Christmas wouldn’t be Christmas without a chocolate or two. Settle back and sip a glass of Liefman’s Kriek to recreate that cherry liqueur experience

Dea Latis stages fifth annual beer and chocolate tasting

As part of its continuing quest to encourage more women to enjoy our national drink, industry group Dea Latis hosted its fifth annual beer and chocolate tasting on Tuesday.
Twenty guests gathered in the Clarence pub on Whitehall to taste six beers, each paired with a chocolate chosen to enhance the flavours in each. Expert guidance to the beer and chocolate matches was provided by Annabel Smith, beer sommelier and Dea Latis founder.
Smith said, “We regularly pair beer with a variety of foods, but the chocolate tasting is probably our most popular event. The fact that we’re staging this event for the fifth time reflects not only the strong appeal of sampling beer and chocolate together, but also the growing awareness of Dea Latis within the beer and pubs industry.”
The beers and chocolates tasted by guests at The Clarence were:
• Molson Coors Blue Moon (ABV 5.4%)with Terry’s Milk Chocolate Orange
• Everards Tiger (ABV 4.2%) with Green & Black’s Butterscotch Milk Chocolate
• Thwaites Tavern Porter (ABV 4.7%) with chocolate cup cakes
• Shepherd Neame Generation Ale (ABV 9%) with Green & Black’s Dark Chocolate with Hazelnut & Raisins
• Adnams Sole Bay (ABV 10%) with Montezumas Peeling Amorous White Chocolate
• Liefman’s Kriek lambic cherry beer (ABV 4.2%) with Thornton’s Dark Chilli Chocolate

And the runaway winner chosen as the best match was the Liefman’s Kriek lambic cherry beer with Thornton’s Dark Chilli Chocolate.

 Beer and chocolate: the science behind a perfect match
Essentially, beer and chocolate share the same basic taste, which is a balance of bitterness – derived from the cocoa beans in chocolate, the hops in beer – and sweetness – from the chocolate’s sugar and the malted barley in beer. They also deliver a similar mouthfeel: the chocolate melts in the mouth, while the alcohol in beer creates a warming mouthfeel. So when they’re consumed together, the tastes and textures complement each other. Add to that the carbonation in beer, which cuts through the fattiness of the chocolate and you have a truly perfect match.