A NEW #Meat4Beer initiative is encouraging people to celebrate St Andrew’s Day by pairing Scotch beef, lamb and pork with different styles of craft beer.

The joint initiative was launched by Quality Meat Scotland, The Brewers Association of Scotland and Scotland Food and Drink at an event in Glasgow, where chef Justin Maule, of Wild Fig Food, and Fyne Ales managing director Jamie Delap, were tasked to work together to team up tasty dishes featuring Scotch Beef PGI, Scotch Lamb PGI and Specially Selected Pork with craft beers of varying characteristics.

The dishes brought forward included Scotch Beef rib-eye stovies with crisped onions, paired with the rich and malty Cross Borders Heavy; slow braised Scotch Lamb neck with orange, feta and olives, teamed up with the hoppy Pale Keith by Keith Brewery; and Specially Selected Pork fillet with Dijon lentils and aioli, married up with Top Out Brewery’s South Face red IPA.

“We worked closely with Jamie on this menu to find the right flavours to complement each course," said Justin. "We weren’t just interested in how the beers work with the dishes as a whole but how the individual ingredients in each beer and dish impacted one another."

Jamie added: “The joy of discovering craft beers is the extreme diversity, with flavour profiles which vary from one end of the spectrum to the other. There are no hard or fast rules to pairing the meat with beer, but some matches do work better than others and by experimenting with different options people will find a side of the palate they may never have experience before.”

QMS head of communications Carol McLaren said: “Farmers and brewers work very hard to produce top quality beef, lamb and pork and beer and there could be no better way of celebrating Scotland’s larder on St Andrew’s Day than by celebrating both in this way.

“This has been a fantastic collaborative project to work on with The Brewers Association of Scotland and Scotland Food & Drink. Our thanks to Justin and Jamie for working so successfully together to create these fantastic #Meat4Beer pairing suggestions.

“We hope that others will take their lead and have fun discovering their own favourite combinations of craft beer and Scotch Beef, Scotch Lamb and Specially Selected Pork.”