Many diners put considerable thought into the best wines to pair with their meals. Hayley Jensen, beer sommelier at Taproom No. 307, a bar/restaurant in New York City, believes a carefully chosen beer can also enhance the flavor of a dish.

When picking beer for a meal, Ms. Jensen starts by examining the tastes and textures in the dish first. Stronger tastes often call for fuller-flavored beers, for example.

With spicy cuisines like Indian and Thai, she likes India pale ales and other "hoppy" beers, whose flavor is somewhat bitter, herb-tinged and complex. "You want a real hoppiness to combat that spice," Ms. Jensen says. Such beers also work with burgers and steaks that have been touched up with jalapeños or tangy mustards. She cites Butternuts Porkslap, a pale ale with ginger that she says "really complements zesty sauces."

Also, Ms. Jensen sometimes pairs spicy food with beers that are "citrusy" or have coriander or ginger scents. For example, Ms. Jensen likes to pair the Allagash White beer, a Belgian-style witbier from Allagash Brewing Co. in Portland, Maine, with Asian-inflected dishes, because the beer has tinges of orange and coriander that stand up well to sesame or ginger. "A tasteless lager would just be washed away by the bolder flavors," she notes.

With heavier meats or roasted foods that have a slight char, Ms. Jensen likes to choose beers that have a rich, "roasted," earthy flavor. Rye beers are her favorites for such dishes because they tend to be "full-bodied and zesty," says Ms. Jensen. For instance, she used to pair a Cane and Ebel Rye Ale from Two Brothers Brewing Co. in Warrenville, Ill., for a dish of pork sausage with mushrooms, onion, bacon and lentils at DBGB Kitchen and Bar, where she once worked, because the beer has "a pepperiness that tasted like a quick grind of black pepper."