Five places in Hong Kong that match food with beer

Food and wine pairings are a dime a dozen these days. What’s fashionable now is matching food with beer, a drink that can be just as complex and varied as wine, but doesn’t always receive the same respect. Thanks to breweries rediscovering old techniques and experimenting with new methods, the world of beer has seen some serious diversification in recent years.

“There’s so much variety in beer. There’s such a huge range of flavours, aromas, texture and levels of effervescence; the spectrum is even broader than wine,” says James Ling, general manager of Mong Kok bar, TAP – The Ale Project, and the new Tai Hang gastropub, Second Draft.

Philip Hafstad, a certified cicerone, beer trainer and beer sommelier at longstanding pub The Globe, says, “Beer can range from 2 per cent alcohol up to 15 per cent alcohol, from the palest white beers to the darkest ink-black beers. Flavours can be sweet, bitter, sour, fruity, nutty, toasty, smoky and funky, for example, giving you so many options to pair beer with food. Some food that beer can handle exceptionally well where wine falls short are spicy foods from around Asia and desserts.”

When pairing, he advises, “Look at the intensity of the food and try to choose a beer with similar intensity level based on alcohol, bitterness, sweetness and so on. You don’t want to pair a light Belgian witbier with smoky ribs, for example. See if you can find any flavours in the beer that might match some in your food.”