The Lighter Side of Beer

I'm still a newbie to the online community so am especially delighted to be asked to take part in an exciting  new idea: Beer Swap.which is a bit like Swishing for beer (unless any of the beer community have any size 7 stilettos they'd like to swap???)

The idea is simple, yet brilliant - people often Tweet about great local beers that the rest of us can't get hold of so you package up 4 of your local beers, send them to someone else and they send you 4 of their local beers back in return, genius!!

Everybody involved in  Beer Swap sends their name and address to the organisers (Andy Mogg – @chilliupnorth and Mark Dredge – @markdredge) who then assign each beer swapper a partner and then we all get to try some fantastic new beers we might otherwise miss out on.

I think this is a fantastic use of Social Media, a great way to trial beer and promises to be good fun too.

To me this is a perfect example of the sexist way women can be portrayed in beer adverts, and it's pretty shocking in this day and age!! From a team that claim to be 'about breaking rules, taking risks, upsetting trends and unsettling institutions but first and foremost, great tasting beer' to see them objectify women in this way makes me CROSS - surely they could have made their point without using a woman in her bra???

I may have mentioned before that I work for the The BitterSweet Partnership  which was launched because the beer industry has ignored women for far too long. We know that lots of women already love beer, but our research showed that almost 8 out of 10 women (77%) say they seldom or never drink it.

42% of women polled said changing beer advertising is one of the biggest things that could be done to make it more appealing to them, looking at something like this makes it obvious it's a change that can't come soon enough...

Fancy a beer cocktail? I know I do...Cosmo Online just featured BitterSweet Partnership's Alsace Bellini cocktail, made using Kasteel Cru, the lovely lager brewed using a champagne yeast.

I know that beer cocktails divide a lot of people but I think that anything that gets more women trying beer has to be a good thing so hope you'll give these ago. For videos of our lovely Jez showing you how to make beer cocktails (including the Summer Breeze or Chocolate Moon), look at http://www.youtube.com/bittersweetpartner and for more information on women, beer and BitterSweet Partnership, go to www.bittersweetpartership.com

Enjoy

I am a huge fan of beer and food matching, I've never really understood why so many people don't think that beer is a great accompaniment to food and more often than not, an easier match than wine.

That said regular beer and food matching takes a level of organisational capability way beyond my domestic (slut) capabilities and usual food matching in my house involves eating whatever's on the plate matched with whatever's in the fridge, often with some disastrous results. But sometimes, just sometimes, and purely by accident you land on something that really works* and for me it was a Grolsch Weizen matched with a Salmon and Prawn Bake, mmmmmmmm.

Grolsch Weizen is a super beer but it's one of those great beers that I often forget about so it's always a pleasant surprise when I rediscover it ( I say rediscover I had a case in the car for someone else and I figured they wouldn't miss one would they?)

This is a classic wheat beer in my opinion, it has a gorgeous spicy aroma with coriander overtones and the merest hint of orange peel. On pouring you get a huge white foamy head and it tastes of melon, muted lemon-lime and banana with a bitter finish and malty aftertaste, a great balance of sweet and sour that makes it very drinkable and very refreshing for a wheat beer.

And with no more thought than having them both in the house at the same time this is a match that worked really, really well. The seafood and cheese sauce matched perfectly with the sweet malt in the beer and the high carbonation was great at really cleansing the palate to make every mouthful of fish pie taste as fresh and flavoursome as the first.

Why not give it a try!

And for the foodies out there I've attached the fish pie recipe too....................

*it's not just me, it happened here too