Next Round: Craft beer savors some elegant exposure

Mike Snider | USA TODAY

WASHINGTON -- Craft beer is moving on up.

Don't worry, it's not becoming too cool for your neighborhood pub or other relaxing spots like easy chairs, porches, motor boats, picnics, campfires or hiking trails.

But the powers that be behind the craft beer revolution want you – and potential converts – to know that beer is at home in fancier digs, too.

This past weekend, the Brewers Association held its eighth annual Savor: An American Craft Beer & Food Experience event at the National Building Museum here.

Tickets cost $135 or $155 per person to attend either Friday or Saturday night; the additional $20 gained entry into an hour-long "salon" session for tasting and discussing beer.

On Friday night, most women wore cocktail dresses, while the majority of men wore jackets or suits – some with ties – with most of the rest wearing nice button-down shirts.

They entered a monolithic building, restored from the original U.S. Pension Bureau that had been erected after the Civil War to handle the administration of benefits, primarily to war veterans.

"Very elegant," was how Boston Beer Co. founder Jim Koch described the crowd. I sat in on a salon that he conducted with Samuel Adams brewer and director of brewery programs Jennifer Glanville. They had us taste Samuel Adams Boston Lager and a series of wines – a cabernet sauvignon, zinfandel and a port – with a sampling of beef, chocolate and cheese.

One strength of beer, Koch said, was that wine drinkers usually sipped water with wine while eating. "You can enjoy a drink of beer with each bite," he said.

With the beef, Boston Lager "achieved a nice matching of intensities," Koch said. "Nothing knocked out the flavor of the other side of the pairing, but the wine did knock out the beef."

The beer complemented the chocolate and cheese, Koch said, while also cleansing the palate and preparing the way for the next bite of both. The wine was fine, too, but the message was to consider beer's ability for food pairings.

There were beer and food pairings aplenty in the museum hall where 75 breweries were each pouring two different beers with a different small dish to nosh on. At each end of the hall, festivalgoers lined up to either slurp oysters at an oyster bar or to partake of artisan cheeses.

A lover of India pale ales, I found Coronado Brewing Co., station offering grilled octopus with its Islander IPA with a 7% level of alcohol by volume (ABV). The bitterness of the beer assuaged the chewy, enduring seafood taste. And at New Holland Brewing Co.'s station, the Michigan brewer paired its Mad Hatter IPA (also 7% ABV) with a beignet made with gouda cheese, apple and burnt honey. The result tasted so good that perhaps Dunkin' Donuts should take note.

Of course, it wasn't all IPAs. There were plenty of tasty coffee-flavored beers including Tampa's Cigar City Brewing's Caffe American Stout (9.2%, paired with chocolate) and Cubano Espresso, a lighter brown ale with great aromatics (with molasses & coffee-rubbed pork loin.)

Denver-area residents are lucky to have ready access to Mexican Chocolate Stout from Copper Kettle Brewing Co., a robust spicy 7% brew that accented the beef cheek and oxtail stew it was paired with.

My local favorite brewery, Mad Fox Brewing Co. of Falls Church, Va., had pheasant sausage to go with its complex Oaked Reynard Black Saison and the beignets with its tart Oaked Diabolik Ale.

Like most of the breweries on hand, Mad Fox participated in a lottery for the chance to be serving at Savor. CEO and executive brewer Bill Madden said that the event "says something about where the industry is going now. We have finally arrived. Everybody is dressed up nicely here. I love it."

Savor grew out of the success of the Great American Beer Festival, which the Brewers Association also conducts, held annually in Denver.

East coast brewers like Samuel Adams' Koch and Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head Craft Brewery in Milton, Del., lobbied for an event closer to home.

But neither the brewers nor the association wanted to replicate the logistics-heavy Great American Beer Festival. Instead, they settled on a way to highlight beer's ability to pair with food. And the location in a major media market has helped get that message across.

I got it and maybe you should try it, too. Next time you are cooking steak or eating chocolate, go ahead and sip that beer. The taste might just surprise you -- in a good way.

Next Round takes a regular look at new and recently released craft beers. If there's one on your radar, or if you have suggestions or questions, contact Mike Snider via e-mail. And follow him on Twitter: @MikeSnider.



