This last Saturday, I got up bright and early, grabbed donuts for the car from Dynamo, and headed down to Monterrey with my friend Zak & Shmaltz Brewing to help pour beers for the Monterey Beer Festival.

After icing the beer and setting up the table, I got a chance to grab some lunch before the event really got going. There was a BBQ Oysters booth setup, and they were lightly grilling them, them slathering them in melted butter and garlic.  

 

 

 

But what to beer to go with them?  Conveniently, between the oyster grill and the Smaltz Brewing table, was the Beach Chalet Brewery Table. So I stopped and asked Aron, the Brewmaster there what would go best with the BBQ Oysters.

 

 

 

He recommended his own Rip Tide Red (on the far left tap above).

 

 

It was delicious.  The oysters were perfectly warmed but not to the point of rubbery, very briny, and awash in golden butter. Also, the were the largest oysters I’d ever seen.  The pictures don’t make clear that these were prehistoric, giant, man-eating oysters.  I was mildly concerned about there being sand in them, or a sunken pirate ship (I found neither).  We also had some cocktail sauce with them. 

The beer was a great match: the toasty flavors of the beer brought out the char from the bbq, and stood up to the rich butter and spicy garlic.  It had a hint of sweetness that married it all together with the oysters and played nicely with the salt. 

Then, it was into the breach as we served 3500+ people samples of He’Brew and Coney Island Lagers for 4 hours.

Tags: Beach Chalet, Oysters, Pairings, Red Ale, Traif

This entry was posted on Sunday, August 3rd, 2008 at 4:12 am and is filed under Pairings. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.