"The best pairing with a nice medium rare burger and tomato and lettuce has to be the Sierra Nevada Pale Ale. It possesses a full piney pineapple aroma and flavor preceding a gentle bready, even a tad roasty, malt mid palate and finishing with a bitter crackle that can cut through the bite of a fresh onion and ketchup.

Condiments do matter, though, and for burgers some classic condiments might be sautéed onions and or mushrooms, in which case you want a beer with more body to take up the gauntlet. One could go with a nice Brown Ale here, Samuel Smiths Nut Brown with it's rich nutty caramel or perhaps the more bready and husky Lancaster Four Grain which is almost a bun in a glass. Speaking of darker beers, when dealing with bacon and blue cheese, or even caramelized onions a good rich Alaskan Baltic Porter then becomes the order of the day, carrying a dark fruit and molasses-like touch equal in power to the aromatic blue cheese and smoky bacon."— Alex Crowe (The Restaurant School at Walnut Hill College)