Please Welcome Jackalope Brewing Company!

Happy Tuesday, Friends! I would like you to give a warm welcome to our newest contributors, Jackalope Brewing Company! These fine ladies are keeping themselves busy down in Nashville getting their new brewery up and running, but have been gracious enough to stop by here every other week to cook up some adult beverage inspiration for you. We love, love, love them, and we just know you will, too.

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Hi You + Me* Readers!  Please allow us to introduce ourselves; we’re Bailey and Robyn, the ladies of Jackalope Brewing Company, a brand spanking new craft brewery in Nashville, Tennessee.  We love You + Me* for all of their helpful hints in gifting, cooking, and general amazingness -- in fact, we’d like to take this space to formally ask Miya and Elisabeth to be the creative directors of our lives.  We could use the help. So now I’m sure you’re wondering: what are you going to bring to the game, Jackalope?  The answer:  Alcohol. Every couple of weeks, we’re going to let you all know about what’s new and exciting in the land of adult beverages, make some suggestions of festive concoctions, or let you know about one of favorite things: food and drink pairings!  Now let’s get this ball rolling!  Thanksgiving is just around the corner, which makes us at Jackalope very excited, mostly because we love stuffing and pie.  We know that a lot of people think of wine when they’re breaking bread with their family, but we’d like to propose another option.

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Beer!  Yes, we’re biased because of the whole owning a brewery thing, but hear us out.  Beer has gotten a bad rap over the years (thanks a lot, Bud Light Lime), but there are more varieties of beer than there are of wine, and so much room for creativity that beer is becoming a real contender for the ultimate beverage to pair with food.  So let us present you with some brew suggestions for your Turkey Day festivities.

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We know that before the Thanksgiving meal comes the Thanksgiving cooking.  If you’re like us, you believe there is some particular magic about having something festive to sip on while in a kitchen full of ingredients.  To get in the holiday mood, we are partial to pumpkin ales (in fact, we’ve brewed Jackalope’s very first pumpkin ale, which debuted this weekend at Robyn’s birthday party), and there are some great ones out there:  Dogfish Head Punkin Ale, Smuttynose Pumpkin Ale, and Elysian Brewing Company’s The Great Pumpkin, to name a few. 

Pumpkin beer is the easy festive answer for a pre-dinner brew, but what to drink during the meal itself?  To make a Thanksgiving feast truly special, try having different beers on hand to go with the different courses. Let’s start with a good rule to live by: dessert first.  Pie can be just as important as turkey on Thanksgiving, and if you’re a pecan type, I would suggest a creamy, toasty, stout such as Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout, Young’s Double Chocolate Stout, or if you really want to go big, Brooklyn Brewery’s Black Chocolate Stout (watch out on this one, at 10% ABV it might make that post-dinner touch-football game a clumsy one). Stick to the sweeter stouts, rather than those with a strong hops profile, as the bitterness could overpower the flavor of the pie, and that would be a very, very big shame. For pumpkin pie, a winter warmer, such as Highland Brewing’s Highland Cold Mountain Winter Ale or the Jubelale from the Deschutes Brewery can bring out the pie’s spicy goodness while making you feel all warm and cozy inside.  

Next up, the main course.  For the traditional stuffed roast turkey, I would go one of two routes.  Either a crisp, refreshing pilsner such as Victory Brewing Company’s Prima Pils, with an effervescence that will enhance the turkey flavors, or a robust brown ale, such as Goose Island’s Naughty Goose, or Dogfish Head’s Indian Brown Ale, which would highlight the heartiness of the meal.

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Now, understanding the importance of stretching your stomach out before the getting to the main event, you may have a cheese and hors d’oeuvres course to get the whole thing started.  While there are enough cheese and beer pairings to literally write an entire book about, if you want to get the celebration off on the right foot, start with a Bière de Champagne (aka Bière Brute).  When this Belgian beer is brewed, it goes through the same finishing method that Champagne does, where the bottle is racked upside down for many weeks, the neck of the bottle is frozen, and the yeast is collected, leaving the brew crystal clear and sparkling.  While Bière de Champagne can be harder to come by than other beers, try Deus (Brut Des Flandres) from Brouwerij Bosteels or Malheur Bière Brut (Brut Reserve) from Brouwerij De Landtsheer. 

So there you have it, Jackalope’s guide to Thanksgiving beer.  These are our suggestions, but this is holiday beer drinking, not calculus, so go ahead and try some of your own experiments.  As a good rule of thumb, you want to match your beer and food flavor strengths so that one doesn’t overpower the other.  The other most important rule – have fun!

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We hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving, and thanks again to You +Me* for giving us a platform to talk endlessly about our favorite drinks!

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Alright, friends, that concludes our little beer lesson from Robyn and Bailey (they're so great, right?); we'll see you right back here tomorrow. Oh, and speaking of Thanksgiving, we would be tickled if you would share what you're grateful for in our first annual Thanksgiving Slideshow! And not to rush you, but time is running out to sign up for our Spread the Cheer gift exchange!

Comments

[Steve]

Wow, great ideas. Thanks Jackalope girls. I'm always looking for new ideas for the family. Now I have 750 new things to think about.

[elisabeth]

We're so excited to have you girls on board!

[Pretty Mommy]

This post is making me so thirsty...oh how I heart beer - I guess I'll have to send over to my Mr since I can't indulge...