If you look around elsewhere on this site, you will not look long before you arrive at some common sense advice of what to drink and eat while enjoying a football game with friends. Pale ale or best bitter with beef, amber lager or brown ale with pizza, serving punch to cut down on the drink prep time…all wise and reasonable recommendations.
What’s missing from that story, however, is the ubiquitous salty snack. Because let’s face it, there’s little better when television sports are on that handfuls of chips, pretzels, cheese doodles and such like. But pick wrong beer to drink alongside and – please believe me on this front – you risk ruining a perfectly good pint.
The reason for this is that salt does not play well with sweet maltiness, so if you alternate, for example, sips of a sweetish Belgian dubbel with handfuls of salt and vinegar chips, that dubbel will soon wind up tasting flat, acrid or even sour. Swap a hoppy beer for the malty one, though, and your pale ale, pilsner or IPA will not only refresh your palate between snacks, it will also hold its own against the salt. And everything will wind up tasting pretty much the way it’s supposed to.
