Burgers Aren't Just For Summer - Burger and Beer Pairing with B. Good
Some of you may remember the first time we worked with B. Good in our article, “Burgers and Beers, Need We Say More?” where we paired B. Good burgers with craft beer. Well fast forward a couple years, and we’re still in love with their food. Since we last wrote about their burgers, they’ve gone even more local and expanded their menu to include a lot more vegetables. They work to source whatever food then can from local sources when it’s in season. They’ve even gone as far as growing a small amount of their own vegetables atop a parking garage in downtown Boston to supply some of their stores for a couple of days...as Jeff is a former rooftop gardener, we love it!
“But it’s not summer burger season anymore...” you may say. Well, we say burgers aren’t just for summer! A great burger is a delicious thing year round, so we should celebrate them year round. And, also, B. Good is more than just burgers now, so we’re looking at more than just burgers...So read on and see how we pair their Local Strawberry Goat Cheese Salad, their year round El Guapo burger and their seasonal Autumn Sal Bacado burger! (For behind the scenes pictures of us putting these pairings together with Jon from B. Good, check our Facebook page here!)
Local Strawberry Goat Cheese Salad & Dogfish Head Festina Peche
B. Good’s strawberry goat cheese salad is a plate full of deliciousness with local strawberries, baby spinach, locally-made goat cheese, candied walnuts, caramelized onions and balsamic vinaigrette. With this much going on, it’s tough to find a beer to pair! We think, however, that you’ll find that the Dogfish Head Festina Peche nails it on the head. The beer is modeled after a German style of beer called berliner weisse, which is a tart and acidic, lower alcohol wheat beer. Dogfish Head has added some peaches to this one to make it their own.
The most obvious flavors are the fruit in the beer and in the salad. These two go together nicely to get you started on the right foot with this combo. It goes much deeper, though. The beer itself, aside from being tart, is rather dry so the candied walnuts and caramelized onions really serve to bring a bit of sweetness and earthiness to balance that and round out the flavors. Meanwhile, the acidity of the brew cuts right through the super creamy goat cheese, while the cheese tempers the acidic bite...you get delicious and creamy goat cheese with a great blend of peaches and a mellow, dampened tingling from the beer. The balsamic vinaigrette manages to play nicely with everything and do what a salad dressing should: not get in the way, just enhance the experience!
Our favorite thing about this pairing has to be how the goat cheese and acid in the beer interact in this one...it’s just crazy good!
El Guapo & Notch Session Pils
The El Guapo is a beef burger (in this case) with bacon, homemade jalapeno ranch, lettuce, tomato, onion and, which we got optionally, jalapeno slices and cheddar cheese. It’s spicy and tasty! The Notch Session Pils is an unfiltered Czech-style Pilsner, which means it’s a littler maltier than the pilsners that Americans are used to. This one has a decent bit of hops in it, though, which lowers any apparent sweetness. Plus, it comes in right below 4% abv, meaning you can drink it all night long!
With so much going on with this burger and so much heat, you can’t have much alcohol. That’s just a recipe for burning! Check, this pairing is set on that. Also, you need to cut through that creamy, spicy ranch sauce. Check, crisp pils cuts right through it AND the grease and salt from the bacon! Lastly, you need something simple enough that it won’t get in the way of everything going on with the burger. Done! Sometimes a great burger just calls for a delicious, yet subtle, beer and that’s what the Notch Session Pils is.
Our favorite thing about this pairing is how the Pils just comes in and cleans your tongue of the salt from the bacon, really letting you taste everything else even better.
Sal Bacado & Jolly Pumpkin Weizen Bam
Lastly, we have the Sal Bacado burger, a beef burger (as we asked for it) with local corn salsa, bacon and avocado. We’ve paired it with Jolly Pumpkin’s Weizen Bam, their take of a Saison/Hefeweizen blend barrel aged with wild yeast. It’s a tad funky, with the yeast characteristics you’d expect from BOTH a Hefeweizen and a Saison. It’s dry, effervescent and super bubbly!
Between the bacon and the salsa, this burger is fairly salty. The first thing the Weizen Bam does is help to manage that, which allows other flavors to shine. Also, the guacamole is super creamy and this lower alcohol, effervescent brew slices through that and really releases the flavors which would otherwise just coat your tongue. The funk and yeast of the beer also play a great antagonistic role against the earthier flavors of the roasted corn salsa and char on the burger...they’re not flavors you’d think would go together, but somehow they work fantastically! Honestly, this is one of those pairings that was either going to sing or flop, and it’s hitting the high note spot on!
Our favorite thing about this one? How unexpectedly well the roast/char and the yeast came together. Without that, this would have just been a bit average.
What do you think? Do you have a great restaurant we should try to work with for food pairings? Do you have a B. Good burger and beer pairing you like? Let us know your thoughts on Twitter, Facebook or in the comments below! Cheers!
