Beer and brats: Find the perfect pairing

There’s a reason sausage and beer are staples at tailgating parties, backyard barbecues, St. Patrick’s Day feasts and Oktoberfest.

Sausages get richness and flavor from fat, says Neil Witte, training and technical support manager for Boulevard Brewing Co. and one of nine master cicerones in the world.

“Certain qualities in beer cut through that,” Witte says, “such as acidity, bitterness, sharp roast character and carbonation.”

Each sip of cold beer cleanses the palate and leaves you ready for that next juicy bite. Beer also can affect the flavor of sausage.

For example, a dark, roasty porter can make smoked or char-marked links taste smokier. A fruity saison enhances the flavor of sausage studded with apple, cherry or pineapple. Sweet, malty beers balance out the hot spiciness of andouille or chorizo. Bitter, hoppy IPAs have the opposite effect — they make spicy foods tingle on the tongue.

“You could probably find a sausage to go with any beer, and vice versa,” Witte says.

The first step to a solid beer pairing is matching the intensity of the brew with the food, says Erica Schulte, a certified cicerone and director of beer at Westport Ale House.

“Lighter meats go well with lighter beers,” Schulte says. “You wouldn’t want to pair a big stout with chicken and asparagus — it would be too much.”

The same goes for sausage: A spicy Italian link would drown out the subtle flavor of a crisp pale lager such as a pilsner, which would make an excellent match for a mild pork and veal bratwurst.

Sausages made with chicken or turkey have less fat and a lighter, more delicate taste. Schulte likes those with gose, a tart and quenching German-style beer traditionally brewed with coriander and salt. Lamb calls for something bolder, such as a stout spiced with curry, and elk sausage would pair well with a Belgian-style saison.

“I think saisons are one of the best beers to pair with sausages,” Schulte says. “They’re very carbonated, dry and peppery.”

Alex Pope, co-owner of the Local Pig in the East Bottoms and Westport, likes saisons with his butcher shop’s porcini and Parmesan pork sausages. The beer’s slight funkiness, which comes from wild yeast, plays up the flavor of the mushrooms in the sausage.

Pope prefers a bolder quadrupel, or quad ale with the Local Pig’s bourbon-apple pork sausage. The Belgian ale is sweet and strong, just like the sausage.

Pope is divided when it comes to chorizo, a bold, red pork sausage spiked with serrano chilies, garlic and other spices. He amps up chorizo rojo’s heat with a hoppy IPA, but with chorizo verde, which gets its green color from cilantro and spinach, he goes in a sweeter direction.

“Cider has floral notes and a residual sweetness that pairs well with the heat” of chorizo verde, Pope says.

When pairing beer with sausage, don’t forget to factor in toppings.

At Bier Station, the Waldo bar that recently made Draft Magazine’s list of Top 100 American Beer Bars for the second year in a row, pork sausages made by Affäre chef/owner Martin Heuser are topped with everything from spicy mustard to funky brie cheese, wasabi mayo and Joe’s Kansas City barbecue sauce. Those flavorful add-ons definitely play a role in the drink pairings recommended by Bier Station owner John Couture.

Couture likes spicy mustard-topped sausage with a sweet, nutty brown ale. Turkey and cranberry links topped with brie and diced green apple call for something light and fruity, such as a Hefeweizen. And smoked sausage topped with smoked provolone cheese and barbecue sauce begs for a just-as-smoky German rauchbier.

“I like that smoke-on-smoke idea,” Couture says, “but everyone’s palate is going to be different.”

Looking for an all-purpose beer to pair with sausage? Grunauer bartender Scott Beskow swears by a crisp-tasting Czech lager called Staropramen, which you can find in local liquor stores. But he says it’s hard to go wrong with any beer and sausage pairing.

“You can pair any beer with any sausage and it would taste pretty good,” Beskow says. “It’s a natural pairing.”

The ultimate sausage and beer pairing is the one you like best, Witte says: “Find something you like and go for it.”

This story was originally published February 17, 2015 at 6:00 AM with the headline "Beer and brats: Find the perfect pairing."