Where it went wrong for beer

There was a fascinating debate last week in the pages of The Guardian over which wine to drink with a dish of lentils. The paper's wine writer, Malcolm Gluck, struggled to find a suitable wine and finally recommended one so expensive that the choice annoyed several letter writers, one of whom accused Gluck of being a snob. The debate overlooked one important consideration: that both Gluck and his critics would have been more sensibly employed considering which beer would go best with a dish of lentils. In the late 1980s, in the dog days of the old communist regime in Czechoslovakia, I asked in a bar in Prague whether there was any alternative to the ubiquitous Czech dish of pork and dumplings. I was eventually presented with a plate heaving with steaming lentils topped by a fried egg. I washed down the food with several glasses of Pilsner Urquell, the original golden lager from the Czech city of Pilsen. I can testify, as a result, that a classic Czech beer is the ideal companion for lentils. (I'm not certain there is any known alcohol that goes well with a fried egg, with the possible exception of a few drops of Sarson's finest.) Fittingly, while the lentils-and-wine debate was raging in The Guardian, I recorded an in-terview with fellow MA columnist Andrew Jefford for the BBC Radio 4 Food Programme on the subject of why beer is no longer seen as a suitable companion for food on the dining table. I recalled that, when I was growing up in the East End of London in the post-war world, my father would enjoy a glass or two of mild or pale ale with his Sunday roast. If that was the norm in those days, Andrew asked, where did it all go wrong? There are several answers. From the 1960s onwards, more assertive and upwardly mobile younger members of the working class saw no reason why wine should be restricted to the ranks of the middle and upper classes. They were encouraged in this by "wine snobbism", an attitude developed by newspapers and television programmes that suggested that wine was consumed by respectable people while beer was drunk by undesirables and ne'er-do-wells. This has now reached epidemic proportions. The deluge of TV food programmes and weekend newspaper colour sections serve to underscore the attitude that wine is the only possible companion for good food. As a result there is now a widespread belief that the British drink more wine than beer, whereas in fact we consume four times as much beer as wine and remain a leading brewing nation. I left Andrew Jefford and hurried to a tasting of Fuller's Vintage Ales at the Chiswick brewery, an event that proved beyond debate that Britain remains a great brewing country and that fine beer is as deserving of a place on the dining table as wine. Fuller's has brewed an annual Vintage Ale since 1997. It has a redoubtable strength of 8.5% and is a bottle-conditioned version of the brewery's famous winter ale, Golden Pride. The beer is brewed with enormous dedication to ingredients and recipe. Each year, head brewer John Keeling searches for the finest malts and hops of the harvest to fashion a new version of the beer. As a result, each year's vintage is truly a one-off and original beer. For example, 2002 was made with Golden Promise malt and Goldings hops, while 2001 was produced with Maris Otter malt and a complex blend of five hops. The 2000 vintage was brewed with Optic malt and four hops, 1999 came again from Optic malt with three hops, 1998 was created with Alexis malt and three hops, while the first brew, 1997, was made with three malts and Challenger, Northdown and Target hops. The beers will improve in bottle and each vintage gave fascinating and deeply complex aromas and flavours that ranged from fresh tobacco through over-ripe fruit to toffee and tangerines. With the strength of wine, Vintage Ale would grace any dining table. It might overpower the common lentil and ­ call me a beer snob ­ is far too good to accompany a mere fried egg. www.protzonbeer.com