Hip Hops: The perfect partner for Louisville’s global cuisine? It’s Louisville Beer Week 2023

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Hip Hops: The perfect partner for Louisville’s global cuisine? It’s Louisville Beer Week 2023

On May 2nd at Shippingport Brewing Company, the lads over at Louisville Ale Trail revealed a “going global” theme for Louisville Beer Week 2023, and I must admit this is a conceptual pathway near and dear to my three-sizes-too-small Grinchian heart.

In point of fact, the interplay of beer and global cuisine has fascinated me for a very long time, and I’ve written previously on the topic. For those who’ve already read the essay in December of 2021, kindly forgive the indulgence of a rerun.

It will have to do for the moment, apart from pointing out that while beer as an accompaniment to global cuisine is an intersection of numerous considerations, the major consideration remains finding a route to escape the straitjacket of default expectations.

As I’m sure has occurred to the team at Louisville Ale Trail, the universal beer pairing assumption with global cuisine almost always lands on golden lager beer from that same general vicinity.

That’s a low common denominator, and if you’re interested in tasting the difference, head over to Israel’s Delicias de Mexico in New Albany, where our local favorite tries his best to keep Sierra Nevada Pale Ale on draft. Corn-choked lager with a lime wedge simply cannot compete, but how often is such a comparison possible?

However this is why it’s a good idea to at least try raising consciousness through Louisville Beer Week. I’m both eager and curious to see where this leads, so congratulations to Louisville Ale Trail for aiming high.

And now, a repeat of my modest proposal: Just because a nation has a beer, it isn’t necessarily the best beer for pairing with a nation’s food.

Hip Hops: When pairing beer with food, the trick is to transcend “nationalism”

Every major industrialized nation has A BEER (you can’t be a Real Country unless you have A BEER and an airline—it helps if you have some kind of a football team, or some nuclear weapons, but at the very least you need A BEER).
— Frank Zappa

With apologies to the late Mr. Z, allow me to advance a modest proposal with regard to a nation’s beer, particularly as it pairs with the same nation’s food.

Just because a nation has a beer, it isn’t necessarily the best beer for pairing with a nation’s food.

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