This Is My Blood: Fool's Gold

Here are some things to remember when trying to pair beers with desserts, according to Randy Mosher in Tasting Beer:

1) The ABV% should be at least 6%, if not higher. Sugar wallops the tongue, so your beer should too to even the score.

2) Bitter and sweet go well together. A bitter beer can balance an overly sweet dessert, and a sweet dessert can balance an overly bitter beer.

3) Chocolate pairs well with darker beers. It may just be that beers with notes of chocolate go well with actual chocolate, but other dark beers, like imperials with notes of roasted coffee and what have you, work well too.

4) Fruit beers go well with fruit desserts. Clearly. But who the hell eats fruit desserts? Honestly...

I'm not sure if my pairing tonight followed any of the rules, per se. Probably the first guideline, because Fool's Gold is 8%. But I mainly chose this pairing tonight because I love the combination of chocolate and peanut butter—who doesn't? Especially around Easter?!—and I thought this "peanut butter imperial hefeweizen" might go well with some homemade chocolate frosted cake.

Once again, I was fooled by the word "imperial," and assumed that this was going to be a dark beer (guideline #3), but Fool's Gold was a straw-yellow. The aroma was powerfully reeked of peanut butter. I chose "reeked" as the word there, because this was not a good smell. Pam and I have been trying to figure out what was so off about it. The best I can come up with is that it didn't smell like peanut butter, but more like a peanut butter-flavored protein shake, fake and powdery and kinda gross.

The taste wasn't as bad, and in this realm it was more like the hefeweizen it was advertised to be, with slight hints of banana underneath the more mellow roasted peanut flavor. I wouldn't go as far as saying that this beer was disgusting, but it was not good enough for me to even consider whether it paired well with anything.

I have no complaints about the cake.

NOTES

BEER: Fool's Gold

GENRE: German Hefeweizen

ABV: 8.0%

BREWED BY: Rusty Rail Brewing Company

LOCATION: Mifflinburg, PA

PURCHASED AT: IGA

PAIRED WITH: yellow cake with chocolate frosting (make with ingredients from Lidl)

GRADE: 1.5 pukes out of 5

BEER COUNT: 145