PUB ALES & PUB GRUB
Try these beers with popular pub dishes. The paler ales are great with fish and chips, curries and pub snacks, like Tom Kerridge’s prawn cakes with dill mayo (p54). The amber ales go best with burgers, pizza or veggie lasagne. Darker bitters are as good with a ploughman’s as they are with a Sunday roast.
A pint of cask ale is the defining British pub beer experience, and has been for hundreds of years. What’s changed, though, is the kinds of ales Brits have drunk. Travel back to the early 1800s and most beer was quite strong (6% or so), dark and matured for months or years in huge wooden vats, where it developed an aged, vinous character. Tastes began to change towards fresher, unaged, lighter beers, which were described as ‘mild’ or ‘bitter’ in comparison, and it’s from there that the names of two of Britain’s most popular beer types emerged.