A few years back, we at Holiday Wine Cellar hosted a home brew competition. The deal was that the winner would get to brew the winning beer with Ballast Point Brewery and we would sell it exclusively at our store. The winner ended up being Alex Tweet, who went on to work at Ballast Point and Modern Times Brewery and is now part of a new brewing operation in Berkeley, CA called Fieldwork Brewing Co. The beer that won the competition is called Indra Kunindra, a Curry Export Stout, and is now being brewed seasonally by Ballast Point.
Ballast Point Indra Kunindra
This is one of the first beers that I tried when I moved to San Diego from Long Island, NY. I remember sitting in Ballast Point’s Little Italy tasting room and being completely blown away by the flavor of this beer. Who would have thought that you could throw curry spice, coconut, and kaffir lime leaf into a stout and come out with a good result? I have a bit of a love affair with curry, so, naturally, I had to try this beer with a curry dish.
I utilized my new crock pot that I got as a Christmas gift from my brother and sister-in-law in cooking the chicken curry that I ended up making. I kept it pretty simple, laying down the raw chicken thighs in the bottom of the pot and blanketing them with assorted bell peppers, onions, curry powder, and kefir. The latter ingredient by the way, kefir, is a fermented milk beverage with live active cultures. It’s sort of like greek yogurt in liquid form. This ended up making for a beautiful component to the curry sauce that the chicken was cooked in, adding a wonderful, creamy depth of flavor.
The crock pot, pre-cook
The kefir made the curry sauce
When the time drew near for the pairing, I cooked up some brown jasmine rice and laid my creation over the top of it. I made sure, as I always do, to take a few sips of the beer before I tried the food. I find that food tends to alter the flavor of beer much more than beer alters that of the food, so trying the beer first allows me to get a good grasp of how the beer tastes (even though I already knew this beer well) before my palate is altered from trying the food.
This beer has notes of light roast, curry spice, and a pronounced heat component – a great pairing, I suspected with a good chicken curry. I made sure not to make the curry too spicy, so as not to overwhelm my palate with all that heat. Instead, I let the heat of the beer create a counterpoint to the lack thereof in the curry, allowing for the beer to be the heat source in the pairing.
The Pairing
The chicken turned out to be very rich and tender, with a great curry base to complement it. The pairing: even better. A little side note: the jam and toast (pictured on the right) did not work well with the beer, but the Indra Kunindra just envelops the chicken curry with its flavor and wraps itself around it, as if it were the octopus on the label capturing its next meal. The curry flavors of the beer and the food complement each other so well and the beer’s roasty sweetness is a great addition to the mix. Throw in the component of the rich, tender, dark chicken thighs and you’ve got yourself a pairing to remember.
