Update on Food/Beer

Just have a quick update on food/beer since I posted about it yesterday. Opened up a Stone Sublimely Self-Righteous last night. Generally not a fan of Stone beers, but had this around for a while and decided to go for it. Again, for the third night in a row, had something spicy. This time Jambalaya. Figured that Stone... hops... spicy... that will work!

Yeah.... it didn't. The Sublimely Self Righteous has decent hops, don't get me wrong (90 IBUs), but the alcohol clocked in at 8.7%, which I think is where issues occurred. Just didn't work too well together. The beer itself packed a wallop alright, which I didn't expect because, like I said, it was sitting around a while. The hops probably mellowed a bit from that, but were still pretty strong. Thankfully, for me, they were not the normal piney hop profile that stone uses. Now, that is odd, because looking at BA reviews, piney is a definite part of the profile. I am wondering if that again is from the aging I had on the beer (I think I ended up picking this up over a year ago, maybe longer?).

But, getting back to the pairing, the beer was definitely in your face with the alcohol and I think that that just didn't work too well. Maybe going to have to try something on the opposite end of bitter sometime. Maybe a nice Hefe with spicy food next time around (I could use a break tonight from the spices).

Anyway, I will be hopefully updating this more and more as I find good and bad combinations out there.