For the debut of Series 10 we ask, what is your perfect pairing? Whether it be food, drink, or activities we are certain it is great. Jason and Craig bring great to you in the form of beer. Learn what a single fruit addition does to a great brew. What ingredients make up the optimal base to pair with raspberries? With good beer comes good food pairings and we will tell you what you can make. Featuring Berry Jammin' from Beer Tree Brew out of Port Crane, NY.
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Craig;
The Buffalo Brews podcast. So after nine series of barely getting started, we now reach double digits.
Jason:
I know it's a very, uh, it's very interesting and exciting time. I'm just, you know, I'm like, all right, it has been 10 and we're, by the time this airs, like, you know, we're looking at almost two years of it now. And, uh, you know, what went from a message of, Hey, Jason, I've got an idea.
Do you want to have a beer and talk about it? And I was probably running around frantic behind the bar, trying to talk as well as, uh, you know, service everybody. So it's like, it's always interesting what I'm able to pull together and, and, you know, it's been fun doing it so far.
So I'm really glad that we're continuing and have made it to, because we're times four plus two, no matter what, since that six, uh, episode series. So we're, by the time we're done with this, we'll have 42 recorded. And, uh, I'm excited that this was double digits is the first, uh, the mark and the next milestone I think is 50 episodes.
Craig;
Yeah. That we, we, I think we get past, um, series 12 and that would put us in, in a gold record category.
Jason:
There we go. Or, you know, we just do an eight part series next one and knock it out in one shot.
Craig;
Right. That's right.
Jason:
No, I don't know. We'd have to do that on a day off.
Craig;
So when you, uh, when you think about perfect pairings outside of outside of what we're going to talk about today, what do you, what do you, what do you think of with perfect pairings?
Jason:
So like the two big ones in Buffalo, um, you know, we're talking food and beverage. You gotta go with two Buffalo favorites, right? So beer with chicken wings and then beer with like a fish fry.
And to me, the fish fry is a little easier because it's usually pretty straightforward if you're getting the beer battered fish fry, whether they have coleslaw or max salad, or hopefully both. And then you've got your French fries with some malt vinegar, if you choose, depending on their fries. Is it a steak fry or is it a thinner fry?
Could it be a curly fry? But you know, those are, there's not as much variation. So to me, you know, you always, cause, uh, you know, we, we, we do the deep fried headache and it's a lighter fish.
So to me, that's perfect for a pilsner or a lager, something with just enough snappy, uh, kind of hot bitterness at the end, maybe like an Italian pilsner to stand up to it. Or since, you know, you've got that golden batter, something more like an amber Czech style or Czech pilsner. Um, that, that to me, or even like the German, like Oktoberfests and Martzens and stuff like that go perfect with the fry, uh, the French fries as well as the, you know, deep fried, uh, crispy haddock.
So that is like lager territory. And then chicken wings, you know, it's an interesting one because when you want to do a pairing with food and beverage, you want to think about, you know, all the components involved and the sauce could be a huge one. So there's a difference between barbecue wings, whether they're smoked, whether they're barbecues, just, you know, sweet barbecue sauce, or it's finished on the, you know, the grill.
And it's one of those charbroil, uh, from the pit type wings versus a garlic butter, garlic, honey, garlic parm. Then you have your obviously Buffalo mild, medium, and hot. So I just always with the hot stuff, stay away from anything too hoppy because the bitterness, you know, the, uh, components that make a beer bitter will also increase and intensify the, uh, heat from, uh, you know, chili peppers and, um, that aspect of it.
So to me, it's based on that, but just to like be general and basic about it, if we were to think of just like a Buffalo medium with blue cheese, obviously, you know, to me, I would pair again, a lager goes with it nicely, but since it's got that little bit of heat to it from the medium, you're cooling it down already with that blue cheese dunk. But I would want something maybe with like a little bit more sweetness to it. So I can see kind of like a nice, like a brown ale.
That's not too roasty. That just has like a touch of that, like caramel sweetness. But again, it would be perfect for just like a darker amber lager that has that crisp carbonation to cut through the fat as well as just that multi under, you know, under just backbone to cut through that spice and then just cleanse your palate for another bite and another dunk of blue cheese dressing.
Craig;
There it is. That, that, that is a perfect Buffalo pairing.
Jason:
Yeah. You know, I got, if we're doing perfect pairings and we're talking local, that's, you know, that's what I'm thinking. And then, you know, there's tons of things that are quintessential pairings and we're just, just barely getting started.
Craig;
Barely getting started. Well, series 10 is just that we're doing perfect pairings and you're going to kick us off right here. I was hoping you were going to start with this one.
So we've got something good to kick this off with.
Jason:
Yeah. So, you know, first I kind of want to like lay the groundwork of what my thought was, because getting to double digits, I mean, I'm usually paralleling these podcasts with classes that I have to offer at Magic Bear because those are kind of just already good rounded concepts that allow for natural conversation. And to me, they lend themselves perfectly to doing a podcast with you.
So we did the cultures, you know, the Blissfully Belgians that get the most approach, the UK in a day. Those are all classes, as well as previous podcasts. We do the styles, you know, the IPs for days we always joke about because it was six beers, the shot for stouts, your sour power.
Those are all classes. Then we have our pairings. So we haven't really done pairings.
And in Magic Bear, I do a cheesy about beer where we do cheese and beer. There's this month coming up, we have a cure for what Al's use. So it's cured meats or charcuterie with beer.
And then we do the sweeter side, which is chocolate and beer. But each one of those, we talk about the basic principles of pairing beer and food or just kind of beverage and food in general. And then we put theory into practice with an actual pairing.
And we do, you know, four beverages paired with four tasting items. And we talk about the nuances and why I paired what I paired. So I was like, all right, well, how do I do that for a podcast?
And I was hesitant at first to kind of delve into this. And then I thought on the shelves when I was looking for, I think, the last series that we did, I just started seeing some beers that were basically kind of like what I call a two-tone cocktail where, you know, if you have your Vodka, Soda and Lime, it's basically Vodka and Lime or Vodka and Tea or you have your like a Gin Martini and you're just just really doing it with a twist at the end. It's it's not too much added, but it just it's just enough that goes hand in hand.
And I was seeing these, you know, like the seltzers that are just one one fruit note and, you know, Vodka Cranberry. I just need Vodka with a splash of cranberry because it's basically a perfect pairing. Well, there's some beers out there.
And today we're going to start with Raspberry Jammon from Beer Tree Brew. And I think we did do one from them last series with the Old Man Splitfoot Barley Wine. But they just it shows the diversity of styles from them.
So they're a brewery out of Johnson City. They've got, I think, Port Crane in Binghamton or some satellite locations and production breweries that they have. But basically, this is their year round Raspberry Wheat.
And when I looked at this beer and then with the other episodes, those beer, it's kind of like just that perfect pairing of you can just take like an American wheat or a, you know, Hofbrauhaus down the road. They do a Hefeweizen always, but then you can make it a blood orange Hefeweizen by adding some blood orange syrup. And there's just certain things that go very well with a base beer style.
Think about our Shock Top. They always put an orange slice in it. And same thing with Blue Moon, because those citrus notes are like a perfect pairing for that orange.
And it looks fancy and whatnot. So Raspberry Jamon, to me, I was like, OK, this is a single fruit addition to a base style that I believe we've already talked about. And now we're going to kind of talk about it under the premise of this is a very good pairing for the base beer and a single adjunct.
There's not 42 things going in here to cause it to be, you know, Dr. Pepper or Jaeger Meister.
Craig;
There you go.
Jason:
We just had the Genesee always does like Ruby Red Kohlsch and they did their one in the wintertime. It was the vanilla, basically the Dr. Pepper beer we were calling it. It was like the Cherry Cola, like Cherry Vanilla Kohlsch.
And to me, it was, yeah, I mean, the vanilla, I can see it, the cherry, whatever it was, black raspberry, I get it. But together, it just kind of was a little too much and took us off our base. Sure.
So that's an example of something where I'm like, all right, maybe if we just did like one note, but there was just maybe one too many in that one. And this Raspberry Jamon just struck my eye as something that I've had before that I think is a very good showcase for when you properly pair with within the beer. Then we can talk about things that these beers would pair with, but it's more about the base beer and the adjunct that they chose.
So any questions or anything you'd like to add to that?
Craig;
Well, you know, just talking about when you go to Beer Tree Brew and they talk about the beer themselves. I mean, they condition us on hundreds of pounds of raspberry puree. So imagine just to get a nice, soft wheat berry flavor that we're going to get here.
But it takes this much to make, you know, I think they work on 15 gallon or a 15 barrel system, 15 gallon barrel, but something you cook on your stove.
Jason:
Yeah, we'll put that down in an episode.
Craig;
Yeah. But yeah, knowing that they do that and it takes hundreds of pounds to make that work just for one 15 barrel batch. And then the other thing I picked up from them is that this was done with half wheat and half malted barley.
So I mean, I think we're going to get balance on top of being an American wheat ale. I think we're going to get great balance with this as well. And I love the fact that it's just like you said, one adjunct.
Jason:
Yeah, and they they've done so wheat beers just lend themselves nicely to like a piece like a fruit edition. Right. I mean, obviously there's Ellicottville blueberry wheat, there's Sam Adams cherry wheat, wheat beers, the wheat in that grain bilm and in that grist, it adds a little bit more acidity.
So the base beer itself is already kind of a tart beer, not, you know, mouth puckering tart. But as we talked about it when we went over it in the Wonderfully Wheat, I, you know, discussed how there's just this refreshing aspect of wheat beers. And, you know, if you're having a glass of lemonade or if you're having, you know, some sort of seltzer, a squeeze of lemon, a squeeze of lime or a little bit of fruit syrup added to something that's very just simple and refreshing on its own, just keeps it refreshing without going over the top and then just adds this delicious little nuanced flavor to it where it's like, oh, OK, now instead of just having seltzer water, I've got raspberry seltzer water. And instead of just a wheat beer, which on its own be great during the summertime or any time of year as a refreshing beverage, that raspberry just kind of settles in nicely.
We have kind of a wheat adds also just a softer mouthfeel, OK, where that barley, if it was pure barley, you kind of just have this really crisp, almost dry, I want to talk about like mouthfeel finish to it. And the, you know, the berry edition would definitely stand out and shine, but it might be overpowering. And, you know, a couple of things I want to touch on and we'll go in depth more and more as we do each episode because I don't have to revisit each time.
We want to talk about what makes a good pairing in food and beverage because literally, you know, we have a beverage and we kind of added a little bit of, you know, if we think of the raspberry is as a food pairing to the beer, which, you know, to me, it's just an additional ingredient of the beer. But we're going to kind of look at it as we're pairing raspberries with wheat beer, if that makes sense. We'll do that with each beer that we try.
So the number one thing that you want to do and if you come away with anything from this podcast is to align intensities. OK, first think holistically about the beer and then what you want to add to it or the food and what beer you're going to pair to it. Like I talked about those chicken wings.
What's the sauce? Are they baked wings, smoked wings, deep fried wings? Do you know if the place does like an extra crispy wing?
Is there is there a normal kind of, you know, you don't have to ask for extra crispy because they're already extra crispy type of establishment. And you think about that and that helps you decide how intense you need to get if we're aligning intensities. Now, there's a difference between just getting like a dry rubbed barbecue wing versus a sauced barbecue wing versus a sauced smoked barbecue wing that's then thrown on the grill and gotten some char to it and your little char-b-que wing.
All of those things would be what I think about as that holistic view to pair something properly so that I'm matching intensities with my beverage. So if we think holistically about the beer, we talked about a little bit higher acidity with the wheat, a little bit more of a fluffier mouthfeel. You know, wheat beers tend to have that little bit of hazy characteristic, a little bit thicker on the palate, just as like, you know, not not thick as in, excuse me, viscosity, but just like I said, like a softer, more round mouthfeel than you would a crisp lager or, you know, maybe a blonde ale that would be comparable.
Then barley, they're using light colored, you know, light kilned and roasted barley notes. So there's no real match that I have to play with there to try and like when I talked about, you know, that deep fried beer battered fish fry, like I need to have something a little bit more intense to stand up to that. So I don't I don't need anything too intense.
And and raspberry on its own is a little acidic, you know, definitely add some sweetness, but by no means do I think it's an intense flavor unless you had it like super concentrated. So I think it's a nice alignment when it comes to intensities. And since it is such a soft, easy drinking base beer, it does then allow the raspberry to shine and stand out without overpowering it because of its own acidity, as well as wheat beers are typically higher carbonated.
So I think that carbonation types kind of balances a little bit with that sweet addition of the raspberry as well. So those are all the things I think kind of going on that align intensities. And then, you know, the next step, I think I'll save some of the other principles for, you know, make you make you listen to all of the all of the episodes in this series.
Because right now, what I think these guys are really focusing on is aligning the intensities. And with that, I think I'm going to crack it open so we can look at it.
Craig;
All right.
Jason:
Kind of do our little bit of a review and and see if what I'm talking about actually makes sense when we drink it.
Craig;
Have you ever had this beer before? I have not. I've had actually very few beer tree brew beers.
Jason:
Well, I'm glad we're changing that.
Craig;
Yeah.
Jason:
Well, just as we pour, I mean, I don't know if you've picked it up. I'm closer to the beer, but I just handed one year away. Any aroma strike you just yet?
Lightly, yes. Yeah, I'm getting just these wafts of just fresh, juicy raspberries, you know, nothing nothing that smells overripe. I mean, literally why?
I mean, I don't know. I'm sure people that listen know I have young children. And if you do have young children this day and age, you know, you got to you got to have like an extra fun just for the berries.
I mean, my kids grow and you can't have the same berries too often. So every week and I'm buying organic because I'm like, all right, you can you can afford the organic, do the organic for your kids. And when they're old enough, they can make their own bad decisions.
And I just know I do. So, I mean, plenty of times I've got blueberries and I got to switch to blackberries and strawberries and raspberries and just keeping things fresh. So, you know, when those raspberries are sitting in the fridge and I'm pulling them out, give them a little rinse and hand them off to the kids as a part of their breakfast.
You know, I get this nice, rich note that I'm getting now. So definitely aroma that strikes you from the pour. And when we look at it, I mean, definitely an opaque beer, super hazy from being a wheat.
It's it's definitely got a we'll call it a pinkish reddish hue. Yeah. But it is not like you wouldn't look at and just be like, oh, my God, that's so raspberry in color.
It's not a clear red raspberry. You could tell this is, you know, an unfiltered take on the wheat beer. Whereas, you know, I think like I talked about that cherry wheat and the blueberry wheats that I've had before.
It's like a crystal clear beer that then has this, you know, lingering blueberry or cherry flavor to it. So looking at this, it looks more like, hey, we added some raspberries to a wheat beer versus we just, you know, we just got some extract in there and, you know, we're flavoring this beer. So take a look at it up to the light and while it's in the air, I'll bring it down to cheers you.
Yeah. But no real change in color. Like when you just look through it with a little bit more depth, I'm looking bottom up versus side to side gets a little bit darker because it's harder for the light to shine through.
I also don't have the lights turned on in here. I have the can lights, but not the chandelier.
Craig;
A little bright outside. So I had to shut the door, shut the old barn door here.
Jason:
But yeah, I mean, it doesn't look extremely like I don't want to say it looks displeasing, but it's kind of a murky, you know, the haze on it.
Craig;
Yeah.
Jason:
It looks a little like just it's not a golden wheat that just like glows in the sunshine. You could definitely like knowing that it's a raspberry wheat, it makes sense. But if I was just looking at this on the bar top, I mean, it looks like a fruited sour or something that's going to have, you know, a big presence to it.
So let's take a little cheers and take a sip and see where we're at. Cheers. So, yeah, why don't you give me your first impressions?
You're the first one, first time trying.
Craig;
Well, this is light. I like this. So I get the wheat notes right off the bat and also the barley.
So I like that it's half wheat, half barley. And like you said, murky is the way to go with this. It's the way that the raspberry presents here.
It's light, very refreshing.
Jason:
Yes, super, super refreshing.
Craig;
You bring up things like a blue moon or a shock top or something like that, you know, maybe a little more open or less opaque, I should say, than those would be. But this is really, I mean, for raspberry, I wouldn't think that it would come off like this. I thought it would be honestly a little bit stronger, harsher, maybe the word.
I know I like this. Very refreshing.
Jason:
Yeah. You know, on the first take, it's hard to get past the aroma, right? Like most of what we consider flavor comes from the aroma.
Right. So when you're getting that, you know, and we're drinking our Belgium tulips as always, you're getting that first sniff of raspberry. So the first taste you're going to at least hope is a lot of raspberry.
And it is sometimes you get those aromas, but it doesn't follow through on the taste. What I like about it is they're not it's not super sweet, nor is it super tart. No, it's not tart.
You know, you can get some of those raspberries that are just a little under ripened. And, you know, what's nice about this is it doesn't taste like overripe, super sweet and it doesn't taste underripe where, you know, there's a kind of a harsh tartness to it or like a tannic vibe almost. Decent amount of carbonation as anticipated with the wheat beer and the carbonation, you know, that a nice foam, you get a little swirl, it kicks up a little bit more of the head and the CO2 that that helps with the aroma.
Just those that carbonation is just pushing it up and kind of funnels it towards your nose. The glass shape also helps that as well. And then that nice little prickle on your palate from the carbonation, all of those things lend themselves very nicely for kind of delivering that raspberry flavor.
And then I'm going to take another sip and kind of talk about the finish of it. You know, no real like there's a hint of bitterness to it, but not in a sense of like lingering, just in a sense that like, yes, this is it's balanced so that it doesn't it finishes raspberry. It doesn't finish sweet.
So you're left with a raspberry flavor, but not this super sweetness, you know, so not that it's finishing dry. It's just not finishing, you know, super sweet, which I like. And the tartness of it, I think, comes probably a little bit more from the base wheat than it does the raspberry.
Craig;
And you get a little bit of that on the on the back end as opposed to your initial sips. But like you said, soft. I like how soft it is.
Jason:
Yeah, I mean, this is a dangerous beer. It is, you know, wintertime, not as dangerous because it's one of those easy go to's. If you look at a draft board and you see something and I sell a lot of what I calls single fruit edition, non-sour beers, basically your berry wheats.
Right. But we do have stuff like Blood Orange Kolsch's and Blood Orange this and and Citrus Note stuff. Right now, I mean, talking cursive, we had them in here not too long ago and I have their Keep Calm and Orange On, which is like an orange creamsicle.
So it's kind of similar to that Genesee beer I was talking about with the vanilla in there. But they have that orange and vanilla. But I like the way talking cursive always is true to the base style.
It still finishes tasting like a beer. This guy, you know, it tastes a little bit more. You know, if I didn't tell you we were drinking beer, you know, the raspberry in this, you know, it's it for those that don't drink a lot of beer or don't like that.
I don't I don't really just like the way beer tastes. They usually lean towards beers like this because it doesn't have that cereal grain, you know, all barley malt kind of the grain is the showcase of the beer like pilsners and the majority of loggers do. The showcase here is obviously the raspberry.
So I think a lot of people that shy away from beer flavored beers, not in a negative way, they're just, hey, I like something with a little bit more fruit or I like something with a little bit more going on because they're not they're not a just hop and grain focused palate. They're they're they're just they need a little bit more. And I sell a lot of beers on line three because that's what we offer.
And I think it catches the eye, whether it's, you know, like I said, the blueberry, the raspberry, the blackberry, I mean, steel bound. Anytime I bring in blue balls, which is their blueberry wheat. Just the name blue balls.
And then they see it's a blueberry wheat. Yep, I'll have that. And it just, you know, always sells well.
Ruby red coach will be putting that on. I just saw that it's available now. So the summer is starting 50 degrees and it's summertime.
Craig;
I know. What a beautiful what a beautiful day out here finally breaking out of this cold for a couple.
Jason:
Yeah. Last time we record it was like 17 degrees and I was not where we're 50. We're adding 40 degrees to that.
So they wonder why everybody has a cold. Yeah, it's just these rapid shifts in temperature. But this is one when you drink it, you're ready for the sunshine.
You feel like a sun ripened raspberry on the bush and you find yourself drinking a few of these because it's not too sweet. So I do feel that this is a very good pairing by Beardtree. We have their blackberry jam in a can and on draft once and that isn't their year round.
That was another good one. Simple, just let's add some berries to our base wheat and let the berries shine because it's paired well enough so that it's not overpowering. And we've really just nailed it with an aligning of intensities.
And it's not overly raspberry, which is very, very welcome.
Craig;
You know, we got a few minutes left in this episode here. I mean, we would be remiss if we didn't bring up perfect pairings and bringing up, of course, food.
Jason:
So, yeah. This is one where it's like, OK, what does raspberry bring to it? There's some there's some tartness, there's some sweetness.
I think of, OK, what could raspberry be paired with? This is one of those beers that's great with a salad, I always say, or even, you know, around like brunch time and breakfast, you know, hefeweizens, wheat beers. Those are very good because they're almost mimosa like with their like slight citrus notes and effervescence.
So this would be a very good breakfast beer. I, you know, two things that come to mind are just kind of at brunch. If you're having this with pancakes, waffles, you know, the malt in the, you know, the malt kind of profile of the beer matches very well to like a pancake or a waffle.
Just the the maltiness of that. And then you just raspberry puree or raspberry topping go on top, some a stack of flapjacks or something like that. And then enough carbonation to kind of cut through that.
So I can see that being a very good pairing. Just having this at brunch. It's also to me, the other two big things are, you know, some salads, a nice citrus note, and that a city sometimes helps with like bitter greens.
If there's like a arugula or something in there and then, you know, you've seen plenty of salads that put in fresh strawberries or like like, you know, sliced almonds and strawberries and like a blue cheese crumble. Like all of those things I go go very nicely in the acidity in here would pair with it and the high carbonation would kind of cut through any of those salad additions or bitter greens. And then, you know, just like a raspberry vinaigrette almost over the top of a nice salad I can see.
And then finally, like a raspberry barbecue sauce, your little bit of acidity, your high carbonation. I could see this, you know, being paired with like a pulled pork sandwich or some barbecue ribs because, you know, wheat beers also make me feel about like the beer garden in the backyard and stuff like that. So I can I could just see the higher carbonation and the acidity and the sweetness of this really kind of going hand in hand with, you know, the carbonation kind of cutting and contrasting with the fattiness of like ribs or pulled pork.
But then you could do a really nice and, you know, again, we'll talk a little bit about the other two prongs of my three-pronged approach to pairing and what some people call the ABCs. We talked about aligning intensities, but we'll get into the other stuff in the other episodes. And, you know, this really can kind of as a segue, we can kind of bridge the gap from a barbecue sauce with raspberry or a vinaigrette with raspberry to this beer that has raspberry.
So that will be the next thing that we kind of talk about in episode two of this series.
Craig;
The perfect start to a perfect pairing. I like it. Yeah.
All right. Then then that would be in two weeks. We bring you episode 10.2 and this is Perfect Pairings. And I am Jason and he is Craig Altubello. He is the the curator, the master and commander of of all things Magic Bear Beer Cellar here in Larkinville.
Jason:
Just doing my best to get you a good beer. So come on down, grab a beer and appreciate all you guys listening to me for so long. All right.
Cheers, my friend. Cheers.
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