Craft Beer and BBQ Ribs - Six Sauces, Six Beers

BBQ and beer go hand it hand, but craft beer and BBQ are even better! The good folks over at Pig of the Month reached out to us and asked if we could help create some beer pairings to go with each of their BBQ sauces, a task we were more than happy to take on. They sent out two racks of ribs along with six of their sauces. We waited for a nice sunny evening, heated up the ribs and got to work...though calling this “work” is a bit of a stretch. With 20 beers on hand as options we tested pairings until we got the perfect beer for each sauce. We’ve provided our recommended beer along with a recommended style so you can recreate this at home. OK, enough talk, lets get on to the good stuff!

Love Me Tender Memphis BBQ Sauce
DCB Pairing: Oskar Blues Old Chubb 
Beer Style: Scotch Ale

This sauce has the deepest smokey flavor, it’s slow cooked and had a nice roundness to the spices. We wanted to pair a beer that had solid malt to it that would enhance some of the subtle smokey flavors while still allowing the sauce to shine. Oskar Blues Old Chubb has been a favorite of ours for years and the flavors in this beer were a perfect match. The smoked peat flavor in the beer helped enhance the richness already in the sauce. This beer is also a little sweeter than most which played well against the acidity of the sauce. This ended up being one of our favorite pairings of the night. For anyone looking at this saying “you picked a canned beer?” You bet we did! More and more great craft beer is in cans so don’t be scared of it.

Colonel Mustard Carolina Mustard Sauce BBQ Sauce
DCB Pairing: Sixpoint Sweet Action
Beer Style: Cream Ale

This mustard sauce is different than many we’ve had, at the front it almost has a honey mustard flavor and then rounds out with a bit of spiciness. We actually went through 4 beers before finding the right match on this one. Once we tried this sauce with the Sixpoint Sweet Action we knew we had the right beer. Cream ales tend to have just a hint more sweetness than a regular ale and are less bitter than a pale ale or an IPA, that balance of malt and hops are what made this beer pair so well. It allowed the sauce to stand up on it’s own while providing subtle compliments to the sweetness and spiciness.

Get Lei’d Hawaiian BBQ Saunce 
DCB Pairing: Left Hand Milk Sout
Beer Style: Milk Stout

This sauce has a lot going on. There’s a sweetness from pineapple juice and notes of onion, garlic and ginger. But there’s also a nice soy sauce flavor in the background. We picked Left Hand Milk Stout because the dark, roasted malts helped accentuate the the deeper flavors of the soy while also complimenting the char on the ribs. This pairing was a big winner for us. Also, milk stouts are sweeter than a dry stout like a Guinness which helped make this paring just right in our eyes.

Key West in a Bottle Citrus Grilling Sauce
DCB Pairing: Great Divide Collette
Beer Style: Saison

As soon as we tasted the pepper in this sauce we new a Saison was going to be a perfect fit. Saison as a style was originally made for farm workers in Belgium as a way to quench thirst after a long day. It’s brewed at higher temperatures than most other beers and has lots of spicy notes that come from the yeast during the brewing process. It’s light and refreshing and helped accentuate both the citrus and pepper flavors in this sauce. While we didn’t have time to try it we think this pairing would be amazing with grilled chicken as well as ribs.

Cattle King Brisket and BBQ Sauce
DCB Pairing: Breckenridge Oatmeal Stout
Beer Style: Oatmeal Stout

This sauce was actually slightly sweeter than we expected but in a really pleasing way. The drier flavors in this stout helped balance out the sweetness and add some additional depth. Because this is an oatmeal stout there’s a nice fullness to the flavor and mouthfeel the allowed the spices on the ribs to really stand out.

Miss Scarlet’s Zesty Carolina Red Sauce
DCB Pairing: Notch Session Pils
Beer Style: Pilsner

We were recently down in North Carolina and got schooled on the the two types of sauce: vinegar and ketchup. This is a damn tasty example of ketchup-style sauce. It’s a more subtle sauce than many of the others and as a result we needed a beer that let the sauce to stand up. The nice biscuit malt flavors in this beer paired perfectly with the sweetness of the sauce. There were just enough hops to provide a bitter counterpoint to the sweetness of the ketchup. This is a pairing you just want to keep on eating.

We hope you all enjoy these pairings as much as we did. Cheers!