Sweet Water Beer Dinner

The focus of the Proximity Project is local, regional, and seasonal fare. For my first entry I will be going back just a few months to March, when I organized a beer dinner. I was surprised that many people were not familiar with beer dinners, so for the few of you wondering: a beer dinner is just like a wine dinner but substituting beer. The idea is to pair food with beer. Ideally, you want a brewery representative present to talk about their beer, the company history, and to provide tasting notes. We were lucky to have Melissa, from the brewery, with us that evening.

Sweet Water Brewing Company out of Atlanta Georgia was the beer sponsor for the evening. We featured three of their beers: Sweet Water 420, IPA, and Blue. In additional to the regional beer, we wanted every course to have its featured food item produced locally. In addition, we used the beers in the making of the first two courses.

For the first course we made Crispy Japanese style North Carolina Shrimp served over arugula salad with 420 lemon reduction and a goat cheese, from Bosky Acres Farm - in Waxhaw, NC. The dish was actually served with three shrimp, in the center of the arugula salad - tails up. Unfortunately we started eating before the pictures were taken.

The second course was an IPA Brined Pork Chop, from Grateful Growers Farm - in Denver, NC, with apricot and IPA chutney served with herbed butter Israeli couscous.

Our final course was a desert which was paired with the Sweet Water Blue. Warm Blueberry Bread Pudding made with Bread Smith's blueberry bread and served with homemade vanilla ice cream.

I will not be sharing recipes for these dishes at this time. But I promise to add them at a later date.

If you are interested in hosting a beer dinner of your own I am available for event planning and consulting. You may contact me at marketing@proximityproject.net