Pairing Do-si-dos

Confident, but not hopefully overconfident, I decided to diverge from the article's Elvis-inspired pairing for Do-si-dos. They claim peanut butter is a challenging one to pair and suggested with a drier finish beer, Franziskaner Hefe-Weisse Dunkel, due in part to its effervescence and the yeast's banana-like characteristics.

While I'm a fan of peanut butter and banana sandwiches, banana is not something I enjoy in my beer. Using that as a starting point and thinking along the sandwich lines I pondered peanut butter and jelly sandwiches. Then it was down to the "cellar" to search for "jelly." Without many fruit beers to choose from I grabbed a bottle of Block 15 Kriek and crossed my fingers.

The beer all on its own is a stunner with great fruit flavor, not sweet and degree of tartness perfectly dialed in. The cookies, an oatmeal sandwich cookie with peanut butter filling, have plenty of peanut butter flavor. I won't say the two are a perfect match; there may be other fruit beers that would make a better pairing but I was pretty happy with it. I was also bolstered by Mag commenting, "That's good. That's really good." Certainly the effervescence of the beer helped to lighten the heaviness of the peanut butter and oatmeal and with my personal dislike of the banana yeast flavors of a weisse this is a better choice for my palate.

If you haven't been keeping track that's three pairings down, two more to go: Samoas and Savannah Smiles. Stay tuned.