In our new regular feature, Perfect Pairings, we take the best of food/drink and music and put them together for suggested combinations.
We can think of no better way to start than with beer and food writer Adem Tepedelen giving us five craft beer and heavy metal pairings, as seen in his recent book, The Brewtal Truth Guide to Extreme Beers: An All-Excess Pass to Brewing’s Outer Limits, available now on Lyons Press.
Ozzy Osbourne Bark at the Moon and Alameda Yellow Wolf
Metal genre: Classic
Beer style: Imperial IPA
Ingredients: Enough hops to grow hair on your chest, Ozzy’s finest howl and a shit-ton of Jake E. Lee riffs.
Tasting notes: Hope you like bitter, because the ostentatious amount of humulus lupulus (that’s hops) packed in this big brew might give you bitter beer face for weeks. The two sappy ballads on this album might well do the same. This beer is not for the timid. It will go from fruity smelling and fragrant to aggressive and palate-attacking in the amount of time it takes for the Ozzman to transform into a hairy beasty.
Why they go together best: Like the cover of this album, Alameda’s Yellow Wolf might give you a false impression as to what awaits you. Sure, it smells of fresh pine and exotic tropical fruits, but the punch of hops on the palate is knee-buckling and brutal. In a similar case of bait and switch, Ozzy’s Bark at the Moon (see the wolf theme going, here?) looks pretty bad-ass and wicked on the cover, but after the rousing title track the rest of the album is a whole different beast.
-Adem Tepedelen
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