Take the best part of the holidays, COOKIES, and combine it with the best beer! Now you will be on Santa’s Nice List.

We will be exploring LRB’s favorites with our favorite holiday cookies. What do you think you would get with combining Courthouse Cookie Ale with a traditional Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie, or World Court Mocha Blond Stout with Mike’s favorite White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookies? — Well let’s find out!

In general, there are no rules about how to pair beer with food because everyone’s taste is different and there are no “right” answers. However, there are a few guidelines and the three Cs to consider:

Complement – It’s important that you match the intensity of both the beer and the food. You don’t want one to overpower the other. Another way to say this is to match strength with strength. You can also look for similar aromas and flavors in both the beer and the food.
Contrast – Use the different tastes in the food and beer to mix together and bring out unique characteristics in both your pint and on your plate.
Cleanse – Carbonation, alcohol, and bitterness are effective tools to cutting richness on your taste buds.

So lets get to the cookies!

Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie

As the LRB crew were discussing their favorite cookies, it was clear that the Chocolate Chip Cookie is a staple. It’s easy to make and makes everyone happy. As a kid when I would see the Oatmeal Cookie I was so excited until I bit into it an realized it had raisins – bummer! But the Oatmeal Cookie was always almost as good as a Chocolate Chip Cookie, in fact parts of it were better. I loved the brown sugar, homemade flavor of the oats, and the chewy texture. Well now as adults we can take the best of both these cookies and put them together in a magical combination – The Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie (with no silly raisins).

So what LRB beer would you pair with the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie?
For me the best is the Courthouse Cookie Ale. The toasty oats and malts in the beer play well with the sweetness in the cookie, but what makes it really stand out are the raisins and cinnamon flavor in the beer bring out more of the chocolate flavors in the cookie.

Going another route is to pair the Oatmeal Chocolate Chip Cookie with our Sequestered Orange Cranberry Saison. The flavors of the Sequestered Orange Cranberry Saison is robust enough to take on the sweet and chewy cookies but the tart finish creates a light mouthfeel. The carbonation helps clean the heavy sweetness from your pallet. Also you have the play of orange with chocolate – classic flavors.

Gingersnap Cookie

Ginger, cinnamon, and molasses – hello Gingersnap Cookies! Put these by a roaring fire and you have the perfect holiday evening. With all these spices you need a beer with a backbone. We have two beers we are pairing with these delightful cookies.

Barrister Bitter is an English Style Pale Ale with a sweetness and rich malt base. The herbal English variety hop character provides a balance between the sweet and spice in the cookie. The Barrister Bitter will provide a counterpoint to the Gingersnap. Another great thing about our

The Exhibit: Gingerbread Porter was brewed with winter in mind and the beer’s seasonal spices will complement the gingersnap cookie. The similarity of flavors will play well together, and the sturdiness of the Porter holds up well to everything going on. I think it might be wrong to drink this beer without a gingersnap cookie. 😉

Sugar Cookie

The Winter snow and Christmas fairies might bring the perfect lightly toasted sweetness of a Sugar Cookie to mind. So dancing with these cookies is a Probation Pilsner. It’s a light body lager with a slightly sweet malt and toasted, biscuit-like character. The malts pull out the bready base of the cookie as the yeasty fruit and spice flavors work to tone down the sweetness of the sugar.

White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookie

When we were discussing what were our favorite cookies, Mike’s face lit up when we said White Chocolate Macadamia Nut Cookie. Crisp, buttery edges with soft centers loaded with creamy white chocolate and salty macadamia nuts make them one Mike’s favorite cookies. It’s not hard to find a beer to pair with this creamy goodness.

We paired it with our World Court Mocha Blonde Stout because of the complementing flavors. This is stout that has coffee aroma and finishes with a hit of white chocolate.

It would be wrong not to go with a standard milk and cookies but we want Motion to Strike Milk Stout and Cookies. This beer and the cookie but have the smooth creamy intensity to complement each other.

Chocolate Covered Bacon

If you know anything about Legal Remedy Brewing, you know our food is as crafty as our beer – and we love bacon. So we had to get bacon into our lineup somehow! So we candied it with brown sugar and dipped it into chocolate! Even Santa can’t resist. Of course this is a big, sweet, rich flavor so you need a beer that will help clean your palate so you are ready for another bite.

Accomplice American IPA has the bitterness and alcohol that will cut through the sweet, salty, and fat of the chocolate covered bacon. However it has a touch of sweetness in the malt to complement the flavors.

So let us know what your favorite cookie and LRB Beer pairing is!

-Cassie