Sunday roast dinners. They are quite simply the best way to enjoy a Sunday after a long ass week. Right now, it’s way too warm for one of these plate-loader bad boys. They are the ultimate comfort food indulgence by a long shot. Including beer with these types of meals is a must to ensure the decadence level is adequately reached.

When I think of Sunday roast dinners, I think of some roast rib of beef, or a fantastic roast pork with crackling. And there are three accompaniments for either of these (or turkey/ham/lamb/venison) that if they’re not included, it’s not a roast dinner;

• Roast Potatoes cooked in duck/goose/beef fat
• Real Gravy (not f**king bisto!!!!!!!!)
• Yorkshire pudding

Everything else after that is a bonus, & frankly ‘filler’. But it is these key components that for me make the Sunday roast dinner experience. And to go with these, nothing beats some malty beers to get that comfort feeling dialed up to 11, Spinal-Tap stylee. Oddly, I’m going to avoid things like IPA’s, lagers, pale ales as styles for these. No, nothing is wrong with me. I haven’t hit my head. It’s gonna be okay, you can come back out of your pillow fort for the rest of the article.

 

Amber, Brown and Red Ales

Now there’ll be some who will argue these are one in the same effectively. No, they’re not. And I’ll argue this with Jesus Christ if I have to. In my experience, most amber ales I’ve had have been closer to pale ales than red ales. With that aside,I’d like to recommend the following red/amber/brown ales which are available in Ireland:

• Brew Dog 5 AM Saint: This for me is THE daddy of this style group available in Ireland. Nothing has yet come close to this. Always a winner every single time with roast pork, or turkey
• Galway Bay Bay Ale: This is a fantastically rich beer that with roast beef for me is an absolutely great sidekick.
• Eight Degrees Sunburnt Red Ale: This is THE beer for roast lamb. I honestly cannot put my finger on it for the life of me, but when you’ve got that classic garlic/rosemary thing going on in a roast leg of lamb, this beer just gets the job done.
• Anchor Brekles Brown: With so few decent brown ales on the market to regularly get stuck into (which is a motherf**king shame as brown ales are woefully under-rated as a style), this one with a roast venison haunch served with some kind of jus or sauce like blackberries or a red current sauce is just the business.

Dunkels, Bocks, BIPA’s, Stouts and Porters

• Trouble Brewing Dark Arts Porter: For roast beef, this is the perfect dark beer especially if it’s a fatty roast rib of beef that’s got some crustification going on around the outer fat. It just nails it to the god damned floor.
• Schneider Weisse Unser Aventinus (Tap 6): For roast pork, this is a mouth-wateringly good beer that with some great crackling just is unctuous. If there’s some mustard with the pork that’s got a little heat, this just rocks.
• Westmalle Dubbel: If you’re going dark for Roast Turkey, this is the beer to crack open with it. The herbaceous fruitiness goes so well with the bready nature of turkey they just wanna be friends.
• Black IPA by Blacks of Kinsale: For roast lamb that has the whole tart-fruity-sauce going on, this beer is where it’s at. It’s a perfect canvas to smear that wonderfully sweet lamb on with a side helping of a tart fruit sauce like redcurrant, or a port-based one. The bitterness just cuts through the sweet of the meat & the fat in a wonderful manner.
• Victory Brewing Storm King Imperial Stout: With a roast venison, you’ve cracked out some hefty cash for it & if it’s going to have a big beer, it needs to be really big (not BrewDog Tokyo* big – because that’s f**king insane, but imperial big) & right now, they really don’t get big & available like this bad boy from PA state in the USA. If you’ve got some celeriac mash going on with your roast venison, this bad boy wants to make sweet sweet love to it in a three-way mouthful of meat, mash-n-beer.

 

Let me know what your favorite roast dinner beers are, & why – leave a comment below,  on twitter or on facebook. Next week, as we wind down towards August I’ll look at perfect autumnal Sunday beer pairings.