Craft Beer and Food Collaborations
Food and beer pairings have been exciting consumers for years, and craft beer and food collaborations present a fruitful opportunity for manufacturers. Craft beverages are perfect for unique pairing adventures, offering various styles from seriously complex stouts to crisp, light lagers.
What Are Beer and Food Pairings?
A primary goal of pairings is to create a harmonious flavor balance. This balance can be achieved through complementary or contrasting profiles while showcasing particular characteristics of the food and beverages, such as richness, spiciness, or sweetness. One element shouldn’t overpower another; the combination should enhance the experience.
Intuitively complimentary craft beer and food pairings include hoppy India Pale Ales (IPAs) and spicy dishes, and malty brown ales with roasted foods. Other classic pairings combine a stout with chocolate dishes, a Belgian tripel with cheese, and a wheat beer with seafood.
Often, restaurants offer beer and food pairings as part of taste menus, with different courses artfully paired with selected craft beers. Breweries and food providers may also host events or festivals where consumers can enjoy pairings and learn about beer and food combining. Collaborators frequently rely on seasonal, local ingredients, further connecting the beverage with the edibles. The liaison can boost awareness and uptake of both offerings and brands.
In addition, partnerships help brands tell their story, which today’s consumer wants to know. As a result, collaboration has become a potent brewery strategy for establishing meaningful target-audience connections and spurring growth.
What Are Beer and Food Collaborations?
By aligning with strategy and value-aligned brands, craft beer makers can gain exposure and promote and strengthen their personalities in the right markets in resonant ways.
A collaboration involves brewers and chefs working together to innovate, experiment, and create product harmony, usually yielding something unexpected and exciting. Previous beer-culinary innovations include craft beers with coffee beans, BBQ sauces, mustards, and beef jerky. Some inspirational recent beer-food collaboration examples include:
- SIPPIN SNAX Gourmet Bar Snack and Samuel Adams Brewing the American Dream collaborated to yield Samuel Adams Boston Lager Craft Peanuts. These perfectly seasoned roasted peanuts are an ideal Samuel Adams Boston Lager partner.
- Boston-based Brewer’s Foods, the creators of the Upcycled Pretzel Flatbread Crackers, is fighting food waste by repurposing craft brewery spent grain, benefiting all and the environment.
- Zavala’s Barbecue Distribution’s Backyard BBQ Box is sponsored by Lone Star Brewing, with each box containing seasoning, sauces, educational content, and exclusive Lone Star Beer Merchandise.
- New Belgium and Ben & Jerry’s co-created Salted Caramel Brown-ie Ale paired with a companion ice cream. All sales proceeds went to the non-profit Protect Our Winters (POW), founded by snowboarder Jeremy Jones to help fight climate change.
Open-minded collaboration takes imagination, commitment, and, sometimes, compromise. However, the right campaign is a win/win for manufacturers and consumers. As a further incentive, according to License Global, 43% of licensing agents want to curate a co-branded food-beverage collaboration in 2023-41.
At the same time, aligning goals with consumer needs means keeping product ingredients natural and healthy, or at least not harmful, with clean, honest labels. To enhance or add flavor and aroma to collaboration innovations, rely on Advanced Biotech’s pure and EU-certified taste and odor extracts.
Advanced Biotech – Your Quality Ingredients Partner
Our comprehensive range of natural aromatics, oleoresins, pyrazines, heterocyclics and sulfurs, thiazoles, distillates, and other sustainable extracts will keep your collaboration creative and consumer-centric. Whether creating a complementary savory snack, a low or no-alcohol craft beer, or a limited edition confectionary such as beer-flavored extrudes, rely on us. Please contact us for more information.