Pickles in beer?

As a longtime home canner and even longer pickle enthusiast, this combination struck a flavorful note. What do beer and pickles have in common? Why do they go so well together? And, can you actually make pickles with beer? Since beer flavors and the ingredients in beer offer so many different tastes, and knowing that you can pickle an almost unlimited variety of vegetables, fruits, and other foods…the tasty conundrum is how do you go about it? Enter: Brooklyn Brine Co. and Dogfish Head Craft Brewed Ales

Beer and Food Extra: Principles of Matching

All pairings boil down to a few considerations, primarily: what kind of flavor profile do both the pickle and the beer offer? What kind of flavor experience do I want to have? What is the pickle made from; vegetable, fruit, other? And what are the major flavors in the beer I want to complement and enhance with the pickle?
Craft Beer and Pickle Pairings

Doppelbock | spicy pepper pickles
Kolsch or pilsner | dill pickles
Kriek lambic | Pickled beets
Nut brown | curried carrot pickles
Wit | pickled ginger
Porter | preserved roasted red peppers

Craft Beer and Pickled Fruit Pairings

Abbey ale | pickled spiced lemon rinds
Belgian-style ale | sweet watermelon rind pickles
Hefeweizen | spiced orange slices

The International Gherkin

While researching this topic, I learned that beer and pickles is a universal idea. Restaurateur and Chef Sanaa Abourzek shares that going for “beer and pickles is a common social outing in places like Syria, Lebanon, Jordan and Italy.” Beer and pickles both have somewhat fluid boundaries for what defines them and their making in different parts of the world. It’s great to see such common goodies as beer and pickles bring the globe together!

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Revvy said:

It mentions in this article about pickles and beer pairings that straight up dill pickles pair really well with a pilsner. So it's not in retrospect too far a stretch to see how folks would serve them in there.



A lot of us have been experimenting with IPA pickles lately.

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Revvy said:

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Only thing I can think of is Cheladas in Mexico, which are kind of like Beer Bloody Marys and they sometimes have pickled vegetables and peppers, but not gerkins....

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