HB&B Blog — Dark Lager

The Beer Lover's Table: A Special Beer-and-Cheese-Pairing Edition

Beer Lover's Table Burning Sky Claire Bullen Dark Lager St Mars of the Desert

The Beer Lover's Table: A Special Beer-and-Cheese-Pairing Edition

The process of moving house is mostly terrible, but there’s one plus: While most of your kitchenware is still secreted within piles of cardboard boxes, there’s no better excuse to have cheese for dinner. I’ve been a fan of the cheese-plate-as-meal since I first worked as a cheesemonger in New York over a decade ago; it was to my delight that I later discovered, after relocating to the UK and attending several beer-and-cheese pairing events (hosted by friend, author and “freelance cheesemonger” Ned Palmer), just how well cheese and beer go together. Whenever the time calls, then – when I...

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Fundamentals #115 — Utopian Doppelbock Strong Lager

Dark Lager Devon Doppelbock Fundamentals Lager Matthew Curtis Utopian

Fundamentals #115 — Utopian Doppelbock Strong Lager

For the last few years, beer folks like myself – assorted writers, bloggers, podcasters and influencers, not to mention retailers like HB&B – have been trying to make lager happen. When craft beer came along (and by “craft beer”, I mean the most recent, post-2000s wave), some breweries were adamant that drinking lager meant you were a bad person. I won’t repeat some of the blurb churned out by these breweries during these times, but over the years I’ve come to realise that actually, this was inappropriate, and downright classist. Lager is great, all lagers are valid and, as a genre,...

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The Beer Lover's Table: Birria Tacos and Utopian Brewing Dark Lager

Beer Lover's Table Claire Bullen Dark Lager Devon Lager Utopian

The Beer Lover's Table: Birria Tacos and Utopian Brewing Dark Lager

This probably isn’t the first time you’ve come across birria tacos recently. In that strange way that the internet collectively seems to nominate one dish for obsession every few months, birria is now everyone’s digital infatuation. Not that I’m above the fray – birria fever has gripped me, too. As with all internet-famous recipes, it helps that the dish looks good: crispy, golden-fried tacos stuffed with juicy chunks of beef, plunged into meaty broth covered with a bright red slick of chilli-infused oil. However, as Tejal Rao notes in a recent NY Times article, “The Birria Boom is Complicated”, that’s...

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Fundamentals #85 — Utopian Brewing Černé Speciální Dark Lager

Dark lager Devon Fundamentals Lager Matthew Curtis Utopian

Fundamentals #85 — Utopian Brewing Černé Speciální Dark Lager

As soon as lockdown is over I’m booking tickets to Prague and spending a couple of days absorbing as much světlý ležák as the Czech capital will allow. I’m fortunate in my life that I’ve been able to travel around much of Europe, but despite my love of travelling, I am an uneasy tourist. In all honesty, I’m a control freak, and being in an unfamiliar place leaves me at odds with myself, despite my inherent wanderlust. Prague, though, is different somehow. Although I’ve only been there a handful of times, it’s never taken me too long to settle in....

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The Beer Lover’s Table: New Zealand-Style Buffalo Chicken Pies and Burnt Mill x Donzoko Dark Second Dark Lager

Beer Lover's Table Burnt Mill Claire Bullen Dark Lager Donzoko Lager

The Beer Lover’s Table: New Zealand-Style Buffalo Chicken Pies and Burnt Mill x Donzoko Dark Second Dark Lager

This column begins with a humblebrag: this pairing was inspired by a beer and a snack that I enjoyed at Hill Farmstead Brewery in Vermont in January. After New Year’s, my brother and I planned a beer-themed road trip through New England, and Hill Farmstead was, naturally, our first priority. And so we journeyed up on a snowy Saturday morning, up through the mountains in our sturdy pickup truck. We sampled saisons and hoppy styles and the brewery’s immaculate Marie Helles, but the beer that has lodged in my mind was a dark lager, which I drank standing on the...

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