Beer and Food focus: What's stopping you then?

To beer evangelists the world over, it's the Holy Grail. Michelin-starred chefs love it, it gets women drinking beer and it converts wine critics to the delights of the hop. For some years now, matching beer with food has been widely hailed as The Future, with no dissenting voice to be heard.

There's just one problem: it's virtually impossible to find a pub that puts the theory into practice. Why, in a nation full of gastropubs, at a time when there are more flavourful cask ales and eclectic foreign speciality beers available than ever before, to a consumer base that is seemingly more interested in flavour than ever before, are you more likely to find a beer recommendation for your dish in an expensive restaurant than you are in beer's traditional home - the pub?

Is it all just hype? Does it really work? Are consumers simply too resistant to the concept? Is it too difficult for pubs to implement?

The first two questions are answered easily enough: attend any beer and food matching event and you will be persuaded that beer is, at the very least, equal to wine as a partner to food.

Grown men weep tears of joy at how well a mature cheddar surrenders itself to Worthington White Shield. Women swear on their lives that from now on they will only wash down a fruity dessert with a Framboise. Believe the hype.

But it's one thing to rhapsodise at a carefully planned event with beers and dishes chosen by an expert; quite another to make beer and food pairings a successful commercial reality. For a cash-poor, time-poor landlord, there are significant obstacles.

"It's one of the most frustrating things I see in our business," says Aubrey Johnson, founder of speciality beer bar Lowlander. "People come in and start on beer - try a Kriek or a wheat beer for the first time, then when they sit down to order food they ask for the wine list."

"People in this country are indoctrinated to think that wine is smart and aspirational whereas beer is just beer," agrees Rupert Ponsonby, arguably Britain's most successful beer and food evangelist.

When every quality British newspaper has at least a weekly wine column, but not a single one has regular beer coverage, it's a problem that runs deep.

"The beer industry needs to do the same job wine did 15 years ago when it helped people make informed choices on grape variety," believes Johnson.

With improvements to presentation such as branded glassware, and a creeping growth in the amount of beer coverage around, this job is happening. But it's happening slowly.

The principles of beer and food pairing may be simple, but it takes a certain amount of confidence to put them into practice - for both staff and the consumer.

Thomas Rigby's in Liverpool, which has won several awards for its food and stocks a stunning array of beers, tried matching recommendations on menus for three years and then stopped.

"People loved it when we had tutored tastings, but then the next time they came in for a meal and were on their own, they'd just go back to wine," says licensee Fiona Watkin. "The recommendations on menus intrigued some people, but others were cynical, asking if we were recommending stuff that we wanted to get rid of."

Of course, staff training helps to overcome issues such as these. "It's vital - staff need to buy into the whole thing," says Ben Lockwood of the White Horse in Parson's Green, South West London, which has beer recommendations against most of the dishes on its menu. "Customers ask staff to suggest a beer to go with one of our daily specials, which don't have recommendations, and this builds up a great rapport and makes it more enjoyable for everyone."

The White Horse sends staff on the Beer Academy's 'Making Beer and Food Dance' training course, which teaches them how to talk about beer and food in a way that enthuses others.

Ponsonby's advice is to start small. "Take a simple thing, like cheese, or just do it with your specials," he says. "Source locally and you'll drum up interest in the local press. Get your regulars to help you decide what the final matches are from a shortlist - pairing is subjective, and it'll give them some ownership over it, make things easier for you and really help generate a buzz."

Why would you sell a bottle of beer to someone and make £2 on it when you could flog them a bottle of wine and make £10? It's a fair question, and one that Ponsonby is often asked. "If you stock the right range you can sell beer for five, six, seven quid a bottle," he says, "and whereas a couple will probably buy one bottle of wine for a meal, they're probably going to buy several beers.

"Look at Michel Roux - his restaurant's full and he has an amazing wine list. Why does he feel he needs beer matches? Because he makes money out of it, and he's offering something different, something new, and gets fantastic publicity from it."

Perhaps the most significant issue though is that most pubs are told by a pubco what beers they have to buy, and where to buy them from. And the way that pubcos work, this range needs to be small and will, in the main, be quite basic. So the Beer Academy is now taking the fight to pubco level.

"We did a tasting with one major pub group recently," says Ponsonby. "We asked them beforehand which they thought went best with food - beer, wine or cider - they all said wine. After the tasting they all said beer."

So yes, beer and food pairing requires a bit of work. But help is available, and the rewards can be huge. At a time when the pub needs every idea it can think of to keep pulling in the punters, can you afford not to give it a try? n

• For details of the 'Making Beer and Food Dance' course, visit http://beeracademy.co.uk. Pete Brown is an award-winning beer writer and author. He is a regular contributor to The Publican.