Moody Tongue Brewing’s new tasting room in Pilsen isn’t for everyone. It’s not for those who prefer to watch TV or snack on fried foods while drinking a pint. In fact, it’s not even for those who want to drink from a pint glass. Or from a tasting flight of small glasses. The beer is served in hand-blown Austrian goblets with stems so delicate they look liable to shatter if you sneeze too hard, and there are no flights. There are oysters, however—served by the dozen or half dozen—and gargantuan slices of 12-layer German chocolate cake. As far as food goes, that’s it.
When I imagine pairing beer with cake I think of heavy stouts and porters, but instead our bartender recommended the smoked Applewood Gold lager and the Steeped Emperor’s Lemon Saison, two beers that he said would cut through the richness of the chocolate (he also suggested the saison with the oysters). The pairings worked pretty well; I preferred the light-bodied, smoky, mildly funky lager to the herbal, citrusy saison. (But then, I’ve never quite gotten out of my head the association my colleague Philip Montoro once made between that beer and a certain cleaning product.) I’m glad I didn’t try the cake with the bourbon-barrel-aged barleywine, a lovely beer that tastes like dates and brown sugar with a dash of bourbon and is much too sweet to pair with dessert. But I would be interested in a pairing with the bourbon-barrel-aged gingerbread imperial stout: its spiced molasses notes and creamy chocolate flavor with a touch of graham cracker combine to create a relatively dry beer that doesn’t hint at its whopping 14.2 percent ABV.
