At a good dinner, people often automatically reach for wine, whereas beer has more knobs to turn. It contains bitterness, carbonation, roasted malt, fruitiness from the hops, and sometimes spices. That actually makes pairing it with food easier than with wine. You don't need to take a course for it. Three principles will get you a long way.

Principle 1: strengthen

Find the flavor shared by the dish and the beer and pair them. Roasted malt next to grilled meat. Chocolate next to an imperial stout. Caramel next to a fried onion sauce. Malto Maple Madness from X-Brewing is a textbook example of that: maple syrup, dark chocolate, and roasted malt in the glass, and waffles with maple syrup on the plate. That is not a contrast, that is an echo.

Principle 2: Contrasting

The reverse works just as well. Something sweet against something salty, something fresh against something fatty. A crisp, slightly sour beer next to a creamy goat cheese makes both livelier. And a sweet, dark quadrupel next to a pungent blue cheese is a classic for a reason.

Principle 3: sweep clean

This is the trump card beer has over wine. Carbonation and bitterness cleanse your tongue of grease, so that every bite tastes like the first. That is why a robust IPA works so well with fried food, a burger, or aged cheese. The beer cleans up what the dish leaves behind.

What works with what

Light and fresh with light food. Wheat beer, Weizen, and blond beer pair well with salad, fish, chicken, and fresh cheese. The spiciness of coriander and orange peel in a wheat beer ties in perfectly with the lemon and herbs on the plate. Witgoud White beer from Leidse Goud or an approachable blonde as Ons Japie from Struuk They do well here.

Tripel with aged cheese. A Tripel has enough body to stand up to a strong cheese and enough fruit not to flatten it. The Poldergoud of Bospolder Brouwerij listed with aged cheese on its own product page, served at around nine degrees.

Smoke by smoke. If you have smoked meat or something from the barbecue, a beer with a smoky layer is a real treat. Polderstorm, a Schwarzbier enriched with Islay Storm single malt, brings peat smoke that fits right in. Do not serve too cold, otherwise the smoke will linger in the glass.

Spicy food calls for something malty. This is where things go wrong most often. Bitterness intensifies the heat of peppers, so a heavy IPA with a spicy curry actually makes the fire bigger. A slightly sweet, malty beer with a soft body dampens the heat much better. So, a blond or a dubbel, but not a double IPA.

The only rule you really need to remember

Match the intensity. A delicate dish is overpowered by a twelve percent barleywine, and a light blond disappears alongside a hearty stew. If you are close in terms of strength, the rest can hardly go wrong.

If you want to know what the numbers on the label say about that strength, read our article about IBU, EBC and the alcohol percentage. And it states which beer goes with which glass. here.