Fox Farm New Again Farmhouse Ale and Lyman Orchard High Top Apple Pie

 The Beer: New Again is a Farmhouse ale from Fox Farm. Ever since I first got my feet wet in craft beer, I loved the taste and idea behind farmhouse ales. Always full of flavor and can make you feel ties to the agrarian roots of brewing. New again is a great example of a unique style being a slightly tart, bottle conditioned beer with light bready notes.

The “Cookie”: Thanksgiving, Christmas, even the 4th of July, who doesn’t like apple pie? Picked up at a local grocery store but sourced from Lyman Orchard in Middlefield, CT, the high top apple pie is a standard pastry that graces many family tables around the holidays. Many people are just as familiar with Lyman as they are with apple pies, and seeing this on the shelf made it an easy impulse buy. The crust is light and flakey, the filling is sweet and spiced with tender apples. A scoop of high quality vanilla ice cream (like from Farmer’s Cow) makes this one of the most satisfying treats - there’s a reason it is so closely associated with every holiday.

The Pairing: I can picture a battered table in an old farmhouse laden with earthenware mugs filled with frothy beer, placed around a glorious apple pie. Maybe through the window you can see the moon reflecting off the snow on Christmas Eve. Maybe the smell of the pie mixes with the lingering air of roast turkey and all the fixings on a Thanksgiving, the fizz of the beer drowned out by loud after dinner conversation. Or the ice cream being melted by a warm breeze carried through an open window on the day of a summer cookout. Despite waxing poetic, these two things just go together in the best way that any of our beer and cookies experiments have. The pie is sweet, buttery and spiced and the beer has a tartness that prevents the pie and ice cream from cloying.