Pairing Whiskey with Beer

I seemed to be discovering that if a whiskey such as Caskmates has a cocoa and hops flavor, drinking a stout with a similar profile emphasizes the taste not only due to the complementary flavors. As the alcohol and intense flavors of whiskey continue to evaporate off the surface of the tongue and throat, they are exhaled into the back of the nose following a sip of beer and help carry the flavor of the beer, too. In other words, you get a real rush of flavor.

This is probably something already discovered by those drinking stouts enhanced by bourbon barrel-aging – alongside a few sips of bourbon.

In some cases, the whiskey tends to just enhance the beer. This would explain why even an American wheat tastes so flavorful after a sip of Caskmates. To take another example, the highlight of vanilla, which is the American oak flavor intensely imparted by Defiant, is brought to life by the Innis & Gunn Original. In these cases it seemed that the beer was enhanced considerably more than the whiskey.

It’s clearly more cerebral if the taste in the whiskey and the paired beer are similar in the manner of Caskmates and a rich Russian Imperial Stout, because one enhances the enjoyment of the other so noticeably.

The folks at Jameson, who are very interested in making the connection to the craft beer drinker, seem to have caught on to this, too. Starting with a small batch in 2016, Jameson intends to follow Caskmates with a whiskey influenced by an IPA that was made in Jameson barrels at KelSo Beer in Brooklyn.

KelSo owner Kelly Taylor, who began his brewing life in hop-heavy San Diego, made a floral IPA with highlights of spice and vanilla two years ago using six Jameson barrels. That beer was shared via kegs through the brewery’s distribution network in New York City and the barrels were sent back to Jameson’s distillery in Cork for experimentation with an IPA-influenced whiskey.

To me, the idea of making a whiskey influenced by an IPA through the wood of a barrel is interesting, because the lush, malty and bitter Lagunitas IPA, when paired with either of the whiskeys I experimented with, simply overwhelmed the connection. But what if you had a whiskey that accentuates the flavors of an IPA followed by a healthy swig of a lusty American IPA? That could be a one-two “barley-maker” punch worth trying.

As the winter wanes, meanwhile, consider enhancing the flavor of some of your favorite beers with a well-chosen pairing of some good sipping whiskey.

All bottle photos courtesy breweries/distilleries.