30 Mile Sofa King Juicy and Madeleines

30 mile is a great spot for a beer and cookie adventure. Check out our brewery visit post if you missed it. 

The Beer: New England IPA is the up and comer of beer styles, so old school hop heads despise it and it sometimes gets a bad rap. You know what they say, “haters gonna hate.” but there is nothing to hate about this fresh tasty brew. Hazy in color, and a ton of fruit juice notes. Some citrus, a mild bitter, a little malt, a really tasty beer.

There is much discussion of who makes the best NEIPA, with intangibles and emotion similar to great feuds like New Haven pizza. We certainly don’t want to get in the middle, (at least for now) but this beer easily holds its own.

The Cookie: Madeline’s are French pastries that are somewhere between a cookie and muffin. Sometimes they are covered in chocolate and sometimes they are coated in powdered sugar.

My friend Meg has some baking skills and she rocked these yummy bites. They had a great lemon pop, soft inside, slightly crisp on the outside. So good. 

The Pairing:  The cake-y soft nature of the Madeline make it a pleasant sweet for a drink pairing. Like drinking milk with a piece of cake, a pint of IPA with a Madeline just works. The lemon zest in the Madeline marries with the citrus notes in the beer and the texture of crunch and soft are just great together. I would say though that the Madeline is not a dunkable kind of sweet. This pairing definitely calls for the bite and sip technique.