wine matching & recipe ideas

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Weissbier (PGI) sorbet from An Appetite for Ale by Fiona Beckett and Will Beckett

Wheat beers make sensational sorbets, but if you’re to preserve their unique character, they need careful handling – you’re freezing a mix that contains a fair amount of alcohol and sugar, which is not going to freeze as hard as a conventional ice cream. If you use less beer and more fruit juice or purée, you’ll lose that delicious sour fruit flavour. So. Freeze the container you’re going to spoon the mix into and the glasses you serve it in. You’ll also get a better result with a sorbetiere or ice cream maker.

I tasted a sorbet like this at a fabulous beer dinner at a brilliant restaurant called Fingerprint in Hersching, just outside Munich. You get all the aromatic character of the beer, which makes it a brilliantly impressive palate cleanser or a refreshing end to a spicy meal. The quantities I’ve given for the sugar syrup will make enough for two batches of sorbet. You can keep the leftover syrup in a sealed container or a jar for a couple of weeks in the fridge.

Serves 4-6

Ingredients

250g caster sugar

3 tbsp liquid glucose

330 ml bottle of weissbier

If you’re using an ice cream maker, put the bowl in the freezer for the time recommended by the manufacturer (usually at least 18 hours). Put the sugar in a saucepan with the liquid glucose. Add 200ml of water and place the pan over a very low heat until the sugar has completely dissolved, stirring occasionally. Bring to the boil without stirring and boil hard for 3 minutes, again without stirring. Take off the heat, cool and refrigerate. Put the beer in the fridge, too.

When the beer and syrup are both chilled, pour the beer into a measuring jug and add syrup up to the 450ml mark. Mix well. Pour the mixture into an ice cream machine and churn until frozen. Scoop into a lidded plastic container, put the lid on and freeze for at least two hours until firm. (The level of alcohol means that it won’t go completely hard.)

Serve on its own as a palate cleanser, with other sorbets or with exotic fruits.

If you don’t have an ice cream maker, you can freeze the base mixture and whizz it 3 or 4 times in a food processor during the freezing process instead. However, you won’t get as much volume or such a smooth result.

• An Appetite for Ale is published by CAMRA w: www.camra.org.uk

Everyone knows cheese and wine are the perfect partners, but which drinks should you recommend to accompany the most popular PFN cheeses? LYNDA SEARBY asked the experts.

Epoisse & Gewürztraminer

❝ Epoisse – a rind washed cheese from Burgundy – goes perfectly with a Gewürztraminer from Alsace. Epoisse stinks to high heaven when it’s mature but when it’s young it’s got a good nose and complements the floral bouquet of the Gewürztraminer. We did a tasting with this combo last year and it was the star of the show.❞

Terry Roberts, general manager, Chandos Deli