Portland Craft Beer and French Pastry Pairings: The Mistakes I Made

The day I declared that my final project for the semester would be a craft beer and French pastry pairing course, the professor's expression was hard to read. I still don't know whether it was intrigue or concern. As it turned out, concern was the right call.

The Trap of Bitterness

The first combination I tried was a West Coast IPA from a local Portland brewery paired with a mille-feuille. The logic was simple: I figured the hop bitterness would create a nice contrast with the buttery puff pastry. The moment I took a bite and washed it down with the beer, what happened in my mouth wasn't contrast. It was a collision. The grapefruit-like bitterness of the IPA completely overwhelmed the delicate custard of the mille-feuille. It was as if the custard wasn't even there, and all that lingered was a metallic bitterness.

If I could do it again, I'd cut IPA from butter-based pastries entirely. I learned the hard way that any beer with a bitterness level (IBU) above 40 should never sit alongside a dessert where fat is the star: cream, custard, butter. I should have gone with something like a fruit tart that has some acidity to it.

Overconfidence in Stout

Burned by the IPA, I swung to the opposite end of the spectrum: a chocolate stout with an opera cake. Chocolate on chocolate seemed like a safe bet. But this one failed in a different way. Both were just too rich. The roasted flavors of the stout and the ganache in the opera cake piled on top of each other, leaving my palate heavy and flat. By the third bite, it was impossible to tell the flavors apart. A classmate who was tasting with me said it was "like drinking coffee while eating coffee cake," and that was spot on.

What I took away from this is that when you pair flavors from the same family, a difference in intensity is essential. If I did it over, I'd swap the chocolate stout for a dry Irish stout, or switch the cake to something lighter like a milk chocolate mousse. One side has to take half a step back for the other to shine.

What Surprisingly Worked, and How I Still Managed to Ruin It

There was one combination that actually showed promise: a Belgian witbier with a lemon tart. The coriander and orange peel notes in the witbier met the acidity of the lemon curd and genuinely lifted each other up. I remember writing "Finally!" in my tasting notes.

The problem was temperature. I served the lemon tart straight out of the fridge, and the cold tart killed the witbier's aroma. Once the tart came closer to room temperature, the pairing came alive, but by then, my presentation in front of the professor was already over. Dialing in serving temperature is a basic principle in wine pairing, and it was my mistake to blow past it just because it was beer.

Notes for a Second Attempt

Ever since that project, every time I grab a dessert from a Portland food truck, I catch myself thinking, "What beer would go with this?" The combination I'm most excited about on my do-over list is a saison with crème brûlée. Just imagining what happens when the peppery spice of a saison meets that caramelized sugar crust makes me want to run straight to the kitchen.

The single biggest lesson I learned from my failed pairings is that complementary flavors beat similar ones every time. I've already decided on my project topic for next semester: same subject, different approach. Here's hoping the professor's expression will be different this time.