98 YEARS OLD AND STILL LONGING FOR TEA- TIME...
INVITED, at rather short notice and on an unreliable telephone line, to afternoon tea the other day, I hastily accepted. Tea, after all, is one of mankind’s greatest inventions, an afternoon tea all the more so. I should, perhaps, have been a little suspicious of the fact that it was not scheduled until 6.30pm which is a trifle late for tea in my opinion, but I went along all the same.
On arrival, I was somewhat taken aback to see the event labelled as “There’s A Beer For That Afternoon Tea” comprising a beer and teatime goodies matching session.
The idea, I learnt, was to show that beer can be as versatile as wine in its ability to match with various foodstuffs and that the growing number and excellence of British craft beers now offers the true connoisseur the chance to choose just the right beer to go with any teatime sandwich or sweet treat.
Tactfully, I did not mention that I had hoped for a cup of tea and dutifully sipped from a glass of something called Hoegaarden while nibbling on an egg mayonnaise and mustard cress sandwich. It was definitely palatable, though I would have thought that a cup of Ceylon Broken Orange Pekoe would have been an improvement.
We moved on to some smoked salmon and cream cheese on granary bread which was matched with Cascade Single Hops. When the very pleasant beer- swilling young lady hosting the event asked what I thought of it, I replied honestly that I generally prefer a cascade of Laurent- Perrier Ultra Brut with my smoked salmon and cream cheese, which prompted her to turn her attention towards someone else.
The Cheddar cheese and celery with a chive mayo on granary bread, went rather well, I must admit, with a glass of Fullers Vintage Ale, but I thought the glass labelled “Innis & Gunn Origin” would have gone better with the honey roasted ham with mustard mayonnaise if they had used Dijon mustard rather than English.
When we went on to the Sweet Treats, we began with a beer called Thornbridge Wild Swan which was matched with a Mini Vanilla Macaroon, then a Mini Pistachio Macaroon with Theakstons Old Peculier. These raised a host of questions in my mind: How do you make beer out of wild swans? If it isn’t made out of wild swans, why do the Trade Descriptions people let them get away with it? And why can’t Theakstons spell ‘ Peculiar’?
I took a nibble of a mini chocolate eclair filled with whipped cream and washed it down with a swig of Meantime Chocolate Porter but found the experience so unpleasant that I promptly forgot all the questions I had been asking. It may be a great act of charity to beer drinkers to introduce a bit of cocoa into their drink, but I could only see it as a criminal waste of chocolate. One more mismatch and one direct hit later ( the Viennese Whirls went very well with the Meantime Raspberry Wheat) I was ready to reach my conclusions: 1) I shall never become a proper beer- lover; 2) Perfect mismatches can be as much a sign of versatility as ideal matches; and 3) It would have been much better with tea.