Founders Palate Exploration Series
Our Education Department often hosts traditional beer pairing dinners where we explore how certain flavors enhance and interact with our line-up of beers. These are a great introduction to the world of beer pairing, but we recently challenged ourselves to come up with a more advanced way of encouraging beer lovers to expand their palate.
At the end of the day, every palate is different and acknowledging that opens up a whole new world of pairing possibilities. Discussing this raised the question: why can’t a pairing session be all about exploring your own unique palate? Instead of just encouraging people to eat and drink what we think is delicious, why don’t we push people to tell US what is delicious? Through this line of thinking we designed the Founders Palate Exploration Series.
The idea is fairly simple: each session is conducted with a partner and focuses on a specific food “genre.” We’ve hosted past events with our friends at The Cheese Lady (cheese for days) as well as Robinette’s Apple Haus (think donuts, fudge, candied apples and cookies).
Up next? A cured meats event, hosted in partnership with Apertivo on February 25 at 6pm. Join us by purchasing tickets here.
Here’s what you can expect:
After introductions are made, each morsel before you is described in detail while one of the Founders Education Ambassadors pours a selection of five or six beers and sets them all in front of you at once. Once food descriptions have been given, we describe each of the beers for you and give you some flavor notes to work with. And then you eat and drink.
And that’s it.
Essentially, we provide you with a variety of flavor options to mix and match and try and love (or hate) and, in the end, to discuss. This has quickly turned into one of our favorite events to host, not only because as dedicated employees we, of course, take it upon ourselves to eat and drink everything provided along with our guests, but also because of the immediate sense of camaraderie that blossoms around a table of twenty people who had, minutes before, been strangers.
An event we originally envisioned as being a nice tool for chefs or people in the beer industry to come and hone their palates a bit and perhaps try some things they normally wouldn’t has turned into something else. It has become an opportunity for anybody to come and discover the beauty of a perfect pairing, and to have that pairing be something they themselves discovered, and so will hopefully forever remember. It has become a way to take an intimidating idea like beer and food pairing and make it accessible, fun and, in the end, educational. If you enjoy food, or beer, or even better both we highly recommend joining us for the night. It’s a guaranteed good time, and you’ll leave knowing a little more about beer, food and, who knows, maybe even yourself.