Glyn’s already beaten me to blogging about last night’s IPA Is Dead at the Dean Swift but to be fair I’ve been up to my neck in building super computers for developers, dying telephone systems and a (somewhat) unexpected trip to The Rake this evening.
As you may have gathered from my rant post t’other day beer and food matching is a bit passion of mine. Good beer = win. Good food = win. Together = fantastic. So the BrewDog IPA Is Dead dinner totally ticked all the right boxes.
If you haven’t been there the Dean Swift is a relatively new/reopened pub amongst the converted warehouse spaces in Shad Thames, just behind Tower Bridge. The beer range is really good – three interesting cask ales, usually one from Dark Star, standard fayre on keg mixed with BrewDog and a couple of interesting foreign choices, including a beer brewed for them by Huyghe, and the fridges are full of great beers – particularly a large number of beers from the Kernel brewery. I went to the Draft House round the corner beforehand and the Dean Swift proves that good beer needn’t cost the earth by being a reasonably priced pub (there are some lessons to be learnt Draft House). The Dean Swift does some legendary food too. It’s become a regular haunt on Sundays for the quiz and I look forward to the food all day Sunday so I’ve been looking forward to the IPA Is Dead dinner for the last couple of weeks.
The theme was BrewDog IPAs – the four limited edition IPA Is Dead, new Punk IPA (aka Punk X) and Hardcore IPA (aka TesCore). Tom from BrewDog talked us through the beers and a bit of history of the brewery. It wasn’t the first time I’ve heard the Mother Theresa anecdote and I suspect it won’t be the last. But the banter was all good fun and added to the experience.
I won’t go into great detail about the beer and food matches, Glyn’s done that but the highlights were of the beers were the Sorachi Ace, which I’d had the night before in bottle and is quite different – it’s a bit minty with a hint of green tea. It’s an amazing Japanese hop I hope to see it used (compatently) in more beers in the future. I’d say that match was my favourite too and really inventive. My least favourite was the Nelson Sauvin, not to say it was bad/not good but of the IPA Is Dead range I think it’s the *least awesome*. That said the match was spot on with a lamb tangine. I wasn’t entirely convinced by the cheese and Hardcore IPA pairing but seeing as I love cheese and Hardcore IPA independently so I’ll forgive them that.
So yeah, a really fun night. The food was great, the beer was great, the pub was laid out fantastically and the staff were amazing. I look forward to more of the same.
The Matchings
