(View entire post here)

Getting together with friends and family over the holidays can be full of conflicting feelings: You love your relatives, you want them to go home immediately.  You appreciate the wisdom of your parents, you want them to stop telling you where you went wrong.  You're happy to blow off steam at the annual office Christmas party, you don't want to see Suzy from accounting get drunk and remove her top.  Holiday gatherings often fill one with the desire to find another strong drink or the door, or both.  And if you are giving in to ritual, you may want to host your own gathering, but feel a bit uninspired while watching the cranberry sauce slowly slide out of the can into the pot. 

Enter beer.

A breath of fresh air in the cold weather.  An offering that will make your holiday party stand out among all others.  Pairing beer with classic holiday dishes keeps the boredom out and enhances the food as well as any wine or spirit could.  In fact, slipping some craft beer in next to traditional dishes is a great way to educate your guests' palates.  And this time of year is full of fall/winter ales that hold all of the flavors of the season: Pumpkin, nutmeg, fig, pine trees, etc.  Here are a few pairing suggestions we offer as a way around the ordinary holiday happenings.  

We're not haters.  Just because we're beer lovers doesn't mean that we dislike wine.  (Lovers, not fighters...) We're big fans of fermented grape-juice.  We admire wine's nuance and mystique.  We have bottles of Bordeaux aging alongside our beer collections.  The bottom line, however, is that beer just happens to be more versatile in flavor profiles.  It simply offers a wider breadth of flavors than wine. (We're prepared for some angry letters.)  There are some beers as sour as a kumquat or fresh yogurt, there are beers with pine tree resin flavors that coat the tongue.  There are beers that taste like a shot of espresso and others brewed with coriander and juniper.  Beer's many flavors and styles are liberating and pair well with a plethora of foods.  This is why we knew that part of our book had to be devoted to beer's relationship with food - why we discuss the beauty of the beer dinner - and why we called upon chefs to share recipes that use beer as an ingredient.  Beer belongs with food.  If you're just delving into the craft beer world and are beginning to move your beer pairings beyond bar menu items like Buffalo wings and chili cheese fries, be prepared to taste food again for the first time. 

Here are five foods that we feel pair best with beer.  Skeptics, it's time to zip it, and let your taste buds decide.  Beer lovers be prepared for validation.

1) Grilled Artichokes - Notoriously difficult to pair with wine, artichokes make most wines taste sweet due to a complex compound (cynarin) that affects our taste buds.  Indeed, the flavors of an artichoke are difficult to describe, but a Saison can be a perfect pairing with its citrus and spicy notes that enhance the artichoke's flavors.  Just imagine a squeeze of lemon and a dash of pepper.

People ask us all the time, while wearing thinly veiled expressions of shock and bewilderment, how it is that two young [sic] women became beer experts?  We are, in turn, often surprised by this amazement, but have discovered, through many heart to heart discussions with these people, a somewhat universal, preconceived notion of how one becomes a beer expert.  It goes a little something like this:  Two small babies are sitting in an empty wading pool playing with their Malibu Barbies (heads only) in the dusty backyard of a shotgun shack.  They see their Uncle Billy Bob/Billy Ray/Bobby Joe, staggering in his sweat-stained, wife-beater t-shirt, take a big swig of Coors Lite and then smash the can on his forehead.  Right then and there, the two dirty babies look at each other knowingly, both thinking the same thing... when we grow up, we wanna be beer experts!

While it's true, we were "different" girls - the kind who liked football and muscle cars (Christina), and who dressed up as The Phantom of the Opera for Halloween (Hallie) - when we imagined what our future lives would hold, our dreams were filled with the classics: ballet shoes and Academy Awards, not bottles of artisanal craft beer.  Beer wasn't even a glimmer in our wide eyes.  We didn't seek it out, and it certainly wasn't something we expected.  

(View entire post here) 

Christina Perozzi and Hallie Beaune are our guest bloggers during the week of November 2nd. If you have any questions for them, add a comment to any of their posts.

Here is more information on The Naked Pint:

Move over, Merlot. Craft beer has finally found a place at the fine dining table.

Renowned beer sommeliers Hallie Beaune and Christina Perozzi offer a down-to-earth guide to craft and artisanal brews that celebrates beer for what it truly is: sophisticated, complex, and flavorful.

Beaune and Perozzi cover everything from beer basics to the science behind beer, food and beer pairings, home brewing, and tips for perfecting one's palate. This edgy, no-nonsense guide exposes hidden truths, debunks every misconception, and reveals the power that comes with knowing an ale from a lager.