Beer 52 x Volcano Coffee Works
The similarities between craft beer and independent coffee are numerous making it unclear where the symbiosis between the two industries began. What is clear though is that whether it be about the celebration of variety in taste provenance and seasonality or, even the values shared by businesses who believe in providing an alternative to the mainstream, wherever you find coffee you find beer and wherever you find beer you find coffee (and even beer made from coffee).
Baristas love beer, we love beer and Beer 52, love delivering awesome beers to beer lovers around the country.
We thought it’d be a fun exercise to sit down with Claire Wallace, our Volcano Q-Grade tasting expert, and ask her to taste beers and then pair them with coffees that she thought would have complimentary effects on the taste experience. See below for how we got on.
Peninsula Hop On - Pale ale
Find the Peninsula Hop-On pale ale to be super sweet and malty and flavour notes that lean towards maple syrup. The body, however, is quite light and it’s very low on bitter base notes. I’d suggest pairing with with our Fullsteam espresso blend. This blend from Colombia has chocolate sweetness that would fill out the base notes of the beer while the stone fruit notes in the coffee would be enhanced as they meld with the mid-note maple syrup flavours I found in the beer.
Although this is an espresso roast (usually stronger darker roasts) the finish of the beer is quite light so I think the two would compliment each other to be quite balanced.
Seven brothers Sabro IPA
Wow - this is bursting with tropical fruit notes. I taste coconut na passionfruit fruit juicy with a light body and some floral hop notes coming through also.
This immediately brings to mind the coffee equivalent which is coffees from East African countries like Kenya and Ethiopia. These coffees usually have taste notes that are distinctly floral and tea-like in their body with fruit notes that can cover things like peach, apricot and even berries.
I definitely wouldn’t want to overpower the the beer so would pair it with the light-filter-roasted Kadamai from Ethiopia which has a delicate peachy floral taste profile.
Mexican Lager Two Tribes Mariachi
The first thing that jumps out at me is citrus here. it’s quite dry/ acidic and citrusy and subtly spicy in the direction of pepper; I’m thinking that instead of trying to enhance the notes that are already there it might be interesting to pair this one with it’s counterpoint in coffee form- something super sweet for a bit of ying and yang.
Our Brazilian Sul de Minas is this coffee. It’s super sweet and has a nutty chocolatey base but is quite low on acidity and not too bright. Pairing these two together could almost create something like a Mexican hot chocolate sort of flavour which would be delicious. It’s could almost be like a DIY stout.
