Tortilla chips and margaritas. Chocolate and red wine. Caviar and champagne. They’re all excellent food and beverage matchups, but a less talked-about pairing that deserves more attention is tacos and beer.
While it’s hard to go wrong with a Mexican lager (Modelo alongside a suadero taco is difficult to beat), there are a myriad of other options to try if you want to expand your palate. I visited some of my favorite craft breweries that have on-site taquerias to ask what they recommend to their customers.
Molly Reynolds, co-owner of Celestial Beerworks and its in-house truck, Cosmic Cantina, in Dallas, prefers washing down Cosmic’s chipotle and tomato–stewed chicken tinga taco with Celestial’s Satellite, an American light lager. On Reynolds’ recommendation, I ordered the Single Star hazy IPA with a taco al pastor. Celestial specializes in hazy IPAs—cloudy, fizzy, citrus-forward beers that force an involuntary tongue-click “ahh.” “I think the tangy and flavorful al pastor goes very well with all of our hazy IPAs,” she said. “I’d go for a stout with a fajita taco, for sure.”
At Four Corners Brewing Company, also in Dallas, the taqueria, Pacheco Taco N Burger, is situated in the back of the taproom, beyond the bar. The Latino-influenced brewery has plenty of options. There are the flagship beers such as Local Buzz honey ale and the El Chingón IPA. The latter is perpetually stocked in my home fridge. There is also a mind-boggling, ever-rotating selection of small-batch taproom-only beers, such as the Lime y Chile Pinchelada, a lager made with lime and jalapeño. Think of it like a half-prepared michelada, the Mexican beverage combining beer, lime juice, chiles, tomato juice, an umami condiment like Worcestershire sauce, and hot sauce in a glass rimmed with chamoy and Tajín. This beer is punchy perfection for summer afternoons trying to stave off urban heat.
The Pinchelada is best served with a salsa-drowned fatty meat, such as a chorizo or barbacoa taco. “Let’s put spice on spice,” says George Esquivel, co-owner of Four Corners Brewing Company. A pairing like that, chock-full of balanced flavors, is pure refreshment.
Other heavy tacos big on flavor, including carne asada topped with avocados and cheese (like tacos estilo Matamoros), deserve a classic pairing, too. Lagers, such as the Chingón Especial, or an IPA, such as El Chingón, are solid choices. The former was originally served as a taproom-only special named agua de maíz (corn water), a nod to the iconic Mexican beers with a hoppy backbone that are nice to knock back one after another. Tacos al pastor are heavenly with an IPA like El Chingón. Either beer cuts through the spice, cleansing the palate with every sip.
The same beer should similarly go well with powerfully flavored and spiced tacos de guisados. Currently, there are a handful of Chingón variations available at the Four Corners taproom. Esquivel recommends the Chingón Super Series made from cold fermentation with lager yeast, for a guisado such as guajillo and árbol–stuffed asada de puerco (unevenly chopped pork in a thick shawl of red stew). “[The beer] dials back the heat,” notes Esquivel. For roasted fillings or an intense mole, the Block Party porter is the way to go. Think of the beer as a craft version of a Modelo Negra.
Left: Four Corners Brewing Company in Dallas. Photograph by José R. Ralat
Top: A barbacoa taco goes well with a Pinchelada at Four Corners Brewing Company. Photograph by José R. Ralat
More generally, Esquivel recommends American pale ales with tacos. “You get some of the breadiness, but they’re real crisp at the same time,” he says. “There’s a bitterness that brings out and accentuates some of the spices and seasonings of the proteins or salsas.” I agree. The bitter notes accent the tacos without overpowering the flavors. Typically ales have citrus, melon, and resinous notes that complement and boost the flavors of Baja-style fish tacos. Esquivel also notes the importance of the beer’s fizz. “Anything that has really tight carbonation on it is really nice because the fish is always typically really light,” he says. He adds that Four Corners’ Lavender Wit or the flagship Local Buzz, with a honeysuckle aroma and a lip-smacking finish, are great with fish tacos.
At Good Line Beer Company in Lubbock, co-owner Chris Troutman doesn’t hesitate to recommend the Hot Sauce Committee, a low-alcohol Mexican-style larger made with ten pounds of tortilla chips suppled by nearby Jiménez Tortilleria y Taqueria. It’s as crisp as it gets on a summer evening with fajitas on the grill during a backyard get-together.
On Sundays, Jiménez delivers pecan-smoked beef-cheek barbacoa and asado de puerco tacos to Good Line. The Hot Sauce Committee goes well with both. For those with less-than-average spice tolerance, Troutman suggests a roasty Schwarzbier, a German lager with coffee and chocolate notes that mellows heat and ends with the ever-desirable crisp finish. It has the added bonus of wiping the palate clean between bites.
If the Mexican lager isn’t on tap, Troutman says he likes to pour himself a West Coast pilsner. “I feel like it does really well with the smoked barbacoa, and that it doesn’t really overshadow what’s going on with the pecan smoke,” he says. “You kind of have like a whole lot of good flavor and aroma going on without anything really stepping on each other.”
There is a fail-safe combination that you can find in most taprooms: beer flights. “Come in, get a flight, and roam across a lot of territory to find whatever you like,” Esquivel says. That’s the ultimate pairing—whatever you like. It’s your beer, your taco, your way.
- More About:
- Tacos
- Libations
- Beer
- Lubbock
- Dallas
