HB&B Blog — North Brewing Co
The Beer Lover's Table: Chana Masala and Duration x North Gracefully Facedown West Coast Double IPA
Beer Lover's Table Claire Bullen Double IPA Duration Brewing IPA Norfolk North Brewing Co
In the past, when I’ve been asked which food-and-beer pairing I’m most proud of, the first that comes to mind is one from our book, The Beer Lover’s Table – the cover recipe, in fact – for prawn and mango coconut curry, paired with a hazy, tropical double IPA. New England IPAs and their ilk can be difficult to have alongside food – they’re so potent, so rich and bold, that they overwhelm many dishes. The secret is to find food that matches their intensity, ideally with some complementary flavours; maybe it isn’t so revelatory after all that fruity, pungent curries are...
The Beer Lover's Table: Chicago-Style Stuffed Pizza and Utopian Brewing Now We Are Two Export Kellerbier
Beer Lover's Table Claire Bullen Double IPA Duration Brewing Norfolk North Brewing Co
According to New York Times writer Sam Sifton’s oft-quoted Pizza Cognition Theory, “The first slice of pizza a child sees and tastes (and somehow appreciates on something more than a childlike, mmmgoood, thanks-mom level), becomes, for him, pizza. He relegates all subsequent slices, if they are different in some manner from that first triangle of dough and cheese and tomato and oil and herbs and spices, to a status that we can characterise as not pizza.” In other words: Your first slice of pizza will always be the One True Pizza to you. As a child of the Chicago suburbs, my...
Fundamentals #65 — North Brewing Co x Thornbridge Doppelbock
Dark Lager Doppelbock Fundamentals Lager Matthew Curtis North Brewing Co Thornbridge
Doppelbock is back. There, I’ve said it. Now if enough of us band together and repeat this enough on our Twitter and Instagram accounts (although not Facebook, as we know, nothing on that site is actually true any longer), then it will become a thing again. That’s how social media works, right? In all seriousness, this deep, complex and comforting German beer style never really went away. This style is to malt lovers what the double IPA is to hop fans, taking the bock strong lager archetype and penning an indulgent, overlong poem to the sumptuousness of malt. Hops play...
Fundamentals #41: North Brewing Co x Ritual Lab Triple Fruited Gose Blueberry + Apricot + Blackberry
Fundamentals Leeds Matthew Curtis North Brewing Co Sour beer
The last time I reviewed a beer from Leeds’ North Brewing Co. I diligently – some might even say successfully – compared the New England IPA to that most visceral of musical genres, post-punk. Sometimes you just need the melancholic gratification that only racing drums and angular guitars can provide. But other times, you just wanna jam it out, endlessly. So you light up some Nag Champa (hell, feel free to light up whatever’s your preference so long as you’re sharing), stick on Can’s epic Ege Bamyasi and reach for a can of gose. That’s right folks, gose is the...
Fundamentals #26 — North Brewing Co. Transmission IPA
Fundamentals IPA Matthew Curtis North Brewing Co
One of my favourite historic pieces of music television is the clip of Joy Division performing Transmission on BBC2’s Something Else back in 1979. The performance is bookended by an interview with the band’s then manager, Tony Wilson, alongside drummer Stephen Morris. In the clip, Wilson laments how the Manchester-based band’s track doesn’t have a universal appeal, due to it being “unsettling… slightly sinister and gothic”, despite its “hypnotic melody”. For many beer drinkers, modern beer – in particular the opaquely hazy and enticingly juicy IPAs that have shot to fame over the previous 24 months – may hold similarly...