The Best Beers to Pair With Camping Foods - Mandatory

2022-07-01 22:55:01 By : Ms. judy zhu

Summer is here and with that comes a lot of outdoor activities. Days at the beach, afternoons spent at a lake, evenings on a deck or back patio, and for the real-deal outdoor kids: weekends spent camping. If you’re the type of person who prefers to slumber in a sleeping bag, in a tent, in the middle of the woods, while you listen to coyotes howling way closer than you’d be comfortable with, camping is for you.

And, if you’re going to go camping, you probably shouldn’t order pizza to be delivered to your campsite (at least not every night). This means you’ll have to create a menu for breakfast, lunch, and dinner that will last for a few days in a cooler filled with ice (and eventually just chilly water) but is also pretty simple to make. Nobody wants to make an elaborate meal after spending a day hiking in the Adirondacks (or wherever else you choose to camp).

While multiple meals take a lot of intense planning, the beverages that go with some of these meals are just as important. And no, we’re not talking about bottled water, various juices, and soda. We’re talking about the only important camping beverage: beer.

Picking the right beer to pair with camping foods isn’t easy. Lucky for you, we’re here to help. Keep reading to see all of our favorite beers paired with your favorite camping foods.

While we don’t often drink beer with breakfast, the rules are different when you’re on vacation. Plus, “breakfast” is in this bourbon barrel-aged stout’s name. The chocolate, coffee, and toasted barley flavors are just as satisfying (maybe even more so) as a cup of coffee with eggs and bacon.

While there’s no post-shift time during a camping trip, the same idea works for cracking open a crispy, refreshing beer after a long day spent outdoors. This thirst-quenching, crushable beer is the perfect complement to savory, salty, meaty, grilled (hopefully charred) hot dogs.

No camping trip is complete without trail mix. We make ours with various nuts, raisins, and M&M’s. The salty, nutty flavor, and the sweet raisins and chocolate candy pair well with the light, refreshing, sweet, easy-drinking flavor of Lager of the Lakes.

If you’re upping your camping game, you’ll earmark one evening for something special like ribeye steaks. The slightly bitter, fruity, citrus-driven flavor of Cigar City Jai Alai pairs well with the fatty, savory flavor of a great ribeye.

There’s a good chance your camping menu will be littered with grilled foods. They’re easy, tasty, and pair well with beer. A cheesy, meaty, umami burger pairs well with a dark, roasted, malty, slightly sweet porter like Great Lakes Edmund Fitzgerald.

One of the best camping meals of all time is chili. Once your fire is crackling and burning bright, there’s no easier, more satisfying meal than a slightly spicy, meaty, bean-filled bowl of chili around the campfire. The perfect beer to pair with it is Deschutes Mirror Pond. The slightly bitter, hoppy, floral flavor helps to cut through the spicy heat.

Grilled corn, when slathered in butter and sprinkled with salt, is a magical mix of salty, sweet, and savory flavors. These flavors demand to be paired with a crisp, sweet, crushable lager. In our opinion, there are few summery lagers that fit the bill better than Narragansett.

There are few foods more synonymous with camping than s’mores. And this combination of toasted marshmallow, milk chocolate, and graham cracker goes perfectly with the malty, coffee, slightly bitter chocolate flavor of this oatmeal stout.