When drinking beer—it’s the third most popular beverage in the world, behind water and tea—any old brand, for the most part, will do. But when drinking beer at Beer Table, a tiny, ambitious establishment in south Park Slope, any old brand might include the Bayerischer Bahnhof Berliner Weisse, from Germany (described on the menu as “lemon zest, hazy, delicious dishwater”), or Pretty Things Baby Tree, from Cambridge, Massachusetts (“dried plums, brown sugar, dark fruit, almost tart”). The married owners, Justin and Tricia Philips, built on Justin’s origins in beer importing and sunk their savings into this boutique bar a few years ago, and their exuberance shows; the menu includes a daily-changing list of twenty-five obscure international micro-batches in bottles, a few on tap, and a thoughtful selection of beer-friendly food.

Great tufts of mugwort, an ancient beer ingredient, which the owners scavenged from Prospect Park for a brewing experiment, are suspended from a high ceiling, next to light fixtures made of bare bulbs inside mason glass. Occasionally a server pulls a jar of dehydrated tomatoes or apples—to be repurposed from décor to appetizer plate—from a wall also stacked with, what else, bottles of beer. The staff, it seems, have memorized a beer enthusiast’s encyclopedia. A waitress explains that brewers run the gamut from extremely meticulous to highly winging it. One Belgian brewery, for example, is “just one guy. The rumor is he stole his yeast. It’s mutated because of the way he maintained it. At first his beers were tart; now they’re sweet.” And what about the Schlenkerla Oak Smoke, from Germany? “For six hundred years, they used beechwood for smoking the malt. Then one day someone said, ‘Why not oak?’ Those are good. I drink so many of those, I should know.” She is right.

The food is designed for pairing. A minuscule kitchen turns out piquant snacks like addictive pickled eggs with salt and jalepeño powder and luscious Grafton Cheddar melted on white toast; main dishes might include thick-cut maple-glazed bacon with roasted fingerling potatoes or butter-bean stew topped with a hefty dollop of mayo. “Put a salad on the menu,” a thin, lovely woman pleaded. But she was up for dessert—butterscotch pudding with cocoa nibs, ricotta toast, and a blondie. And to go with those, the volatile, beguiling Vapeur Cochonnette (“coriander, roast chicory, anise, pepper, candi sugar”). After knocking back a few, it’s hard to resist dreaming up your own beer descriptions, as one table did: “Prunes, diatomaceous earth, macaroni and cheese. Pine shavings, but a winter pine.” (Open daily for dinner until midnight and Sundays for brunch. Entrées $9-$12.) ♦