THE BEERS COMMONLY DRUNK with Indian food can be listed on the back of a beer mat: an Indian brew like Kingfisher for those who like to go ethnic and prefer a light beer with heavy food, or a regular chilled lager to take the heat off the spices. While these are both fine choices, they are not particularly inspired. To complement the flavour of hot Indian dishes, I like beers that are strong enough to stand up to the spices, rather than light lagers that simply lie down and go along. What I love are hoppy English ales and bitters - beers with as much body and character as the food. The spicier the food, the more hops you need. The hoppy aromas arouse the appetite and the bitterness tempers the spice without killing the taste, while accentuating the flavours. For more mellow Indian dishes there are plenty of flavoursome beers that provide good company. I visited chef Rajiv Gulshan of Veda (8 Arbuthnot Road, Central, tel: 2868 5885) for an experiment in matching good beers with Indian food. Our pre-dinner beer that evening was Cobra, a smooth, light, low-gas lager popular in British curry houses, but available in Hong Kong only at Veda. It didn't have much personality or flavour but made for a pleasant opener. With the starter we cracked open a bottle of Hoegaarden.This cloudy, tartly refreshing wheat beer quickly made friends with the samosas and soft chicken tikka marinated with green cardamom and mace. But it went even better with the black cod tikka - juicy fish medallions cooked with carom seeds and kasundi, a mustard from east India. For the main course, we opened a bottle of Hen's Tooth, a rich but well-balanced English ale matured in oak vats. It created a tantalising combination with the south Indian chicken ishtew cooked with curry leaves and coconut milk, and the East Indian prawn curry with mustard seeds, turmeric and coconut. With dishes like these I'd also recommend other English ales that are widely available in Hong Kong - Boddingtons and Old Speckled Hen, or, if you can find them, London Pride or Fuller's Extra Special Bitter. The best was the Bridgeport IPA, a golden ale from Oregon with a bewitching floral aroma. At first sip it was surprisingly mild, but soon the hoppy bitterness took over and mingled beautifully with the dish of the evening: Gulshan's special lamb shanks cooked with star anise and fennel and flambeed at the table with potent rum. This was a marriage made in heaven. Unfortunately I had forgotten to bring a beer for dessert, so we had wine instead. I would have liked a Belgian Lambic beer like Lindeman's framboise (raspberry) or kriek (cherry). Made with crushed fruit and fermented with wild yeast, these Lambics would have gone well with the dessert platter of saffron kulfi, gulab jamun, mango cheesecake and guava sorbets. And afterwards, a small glass of the port-like Belgian trappist beer Chimay Blue would have been perfect. It would be nice to see some of these beers on the menu at Veda and other Indian restaurants in Hong Kong They would certainly make for a more pleasurable dining experience. The beers mentioned here are available at The Beer Bay (Discovery Bay Plaza, tel: 2987 8023), Oliver's (2/F, Prince's Building, Central, tel: 2810 7710) and city'super (Times Square, tel: 2506 2888). beer@arghasen.com