Keep Your Grape Juice; I Want Beer with My Dinner

Gluttony is such an overrated Cardinal Sin. If God din't want me to enjoy my food and drink, he wouldn't have given me a mouth.

With that, this week's Random Ten Beers Paired with Food!

1) Founders Devil Dancer with black pepper-crusted New York strip steak. The huge, spicey hops in this beer serves as a perfect match for the hard pepper crust. The sweetness in the residual flavor of the malts serves as a great counterpoint to the char on the steak from the grill.

2) Brooklyn Brewing Co. Brown Ale with Memphis-style BBQ ribs. True Southern BBQ, dry-rubbed, smokey and fall-off-the-bone tender, matches with tear-jerking perfection with this beer. The hops help cleanse the palate between bites, and the malt sweetness is perfectly marries to the smokey dry rub on the ribs.

3) Duvel. This Belgian Strong Ale is amazing as your appetizer beer. Poured into snifters, the thick, rocky head and fruity sweetness blend well with your cheese-and-crackers, your salmon bits, or just ALONE.

4) Victory Brewing Company Golden Monkey. This is a Belgian-style Tripel, which again is amazing as your apertif. Drink this with Bleu Cheese, sharp cheddar, or gorgonzola cheese. Amazing point-counterpoint.

5) Got a pig roast? Shred a bunch of that pork onto your plate and wash it down with Fuller's ESB. The pronounced, toasted malt blends so well with the natural sweetness of smoked/roasted pig that it seems this is why the beer was brewed.

6) Young's Double Chocolate Stout with a thick slice of death-by-chocolate pie. Like drinking chocolate milk with chocolate pie.

7) It's summer time. You're out on your deck or patio. Before you lies a giant boiled lobster, begging to be eaten. Ice tea is no good here. But Weihenstephaner Hefeweissbier provides that cold, sweet tang you're looking for; dry, tart and spicey. It blends so well with the natural sweetness of lobster that it seems those shellfish are native in Germany.

8) The best way I can think of to honor the deer that laid it's life down for me last November is to enjoy it with Ayinger Celebrator Doppelbock. Full-bodied, chocolatey and just a tad of floral hops picks up on the gaminess of the venison steak and send my tastebuds into bliss.

9) Big, huge greasy wurst, a massive side of sourkraut and a huge stein of Hacker-Pschorr Oktoberfest is gluttony through and through. The huge, robust malt in the beer is big enough to fight the spice and grease of the sausages. In fact, this beer with any "German" cuisine is a match made in....Germany.

10) Fragrant basmati rice beside a huge platter of pungent, spicey lamb curry is just waiting to go hand-in-hand with Bell's Two Hearted Ale. This tough American-style IPA has enough hops in it to cut right through all of the clove spice and curry to cleanse the palate so that each bite of food stands alone as the best you've ever had. The residual sweetness of the beer, as the dinner continues and the beer warms a little, is just what lamb asks for. The hops list the greasiness of the lamb off the palate as well to help uncover more flavors from the curry sauce itself normally hidden under that layer of grease (but such good grease) on the tongue. This is where it's at. You can die after this, a fulfilled person.