Beer Pairing 2007

The beer pairing dinner started out as a celebration of one of my favorite holidays, St. Patrick's Day. In the past we had always celebrated St. Patrick's Day in one way or another, but this time we decided to do something different. We obviously have a love for food and pairing drinks with them and this was when we decided that it would be fun to have friends over to help us celebrate the marriage of food and drinks, specifically beer in this case.
The first beer dinner was held at our backyard, overlooking Switzer Canyon, in our previous home. For those of you who were there, you know how great that backyard was and how much I miss it. The backyard had this beautiful long deck where we set up a communal table with heaters and blankets and scarves. It was a great way for our friends to get to know one another, eat amazing food and to enjoy dining al fresco.

This was 2 years ago so I don't really remember that well what the courses were or with what they were paired. I do remember a bit so here it goes: Jason made cajun style shrimp and we served it in oyster shells paired with a nice crisp lager to wash up that spiciness. Josh made a delicious seared ahi salad with a hot toasted sesame oil dressing. I believe it was paired with an IPA but not sure which one. I made an Alaskan amber marinated salmon. This is one of my favorite dishes. It marinates for 24 hours in soy sauce, cilantro, garlic, ginger, and Alaskan Amber Alt amber. By the time you open up the bag you get this nice spicy aroma of ginger. This was paired with the Alaskan Alt amber. i know we also had a frisee salad served in frico parmesan cups....what a fun project that was! And for dessert, we had chocolate lava cakes, which seem to have become a tradition of finishing off with a chocolate dessert paired with Rogue's Chocolate Stout, made with real imported dark chocolate.

After dinner we all stayed outside and continued to drink the fine assortment of beer we had left. The night ended extremely late with the last course being served somewhere around midnight! Since then we've been working on our timing :)

For the pairing, I had visited Holiday Wine Cellar, which is hands down the best place to buy alcohol in San Diego (especially beer), and stocked up on beers from all over the West Coast. I am a huge Rogue fan and picked up the Chocolate Stout, and the Soba Ale. We also had Pure Hoppiness from Alpine, Hoptown IPA from Hoptown, Chronic from Lagunitas, Red Seal Ale and Blue Star from North Coast, Sierra Nevada, Downtown Brown from Lost Coast, Guinness, and some other good ones that I'm forgetting. It was such a soul filled evening and since then Farra and I vowed to make it an annual celebration....