This Underrated Brown Ale Pairs Perfectly With Chicken Wings

Chicken wings and beer are about as classic a combo as you can get, from game-day treats to shared meals out with friends. But even in such a tried-and-true duo, there's room for experimentation. For example, exactly what kind of beer works best with those wings? There are dozens of different styles of beer. You may instinctively reach for a light lager with wings, and that's a tasty match. But could you elevate the meal even more with a varying brew? 

When we rounded up 10 underrated beers for Super Bowl parties, Kevin Horan, beverage manager at Ormsby's tavern in Atlanta, Georgia, recommended a particular beer that would pair like a dream with wings all year round. It's the Cigar City Maduro Brown Ale. Thanks to some darker malts in its grain bill, this style boasts notes of chocolate, caramel, nuts, and toast — it has some of the richness of a porter or stout, but is less intense and heavy. Its malty character is balanced by at least some presence of brighter hop bitterness. Cigar City's brown ale, specifically, also has some creaminess to it due to their use of flaked oats with their malt. Pairing this beer with wings, the slightly sweet malt character tempers the heat from whatever sauce is on them — if it's barbecue, this sweetness will also intensify the notes of the sauce. The carbonation then cleanses the palate so you're ready for the next bite and sip. Together, this brown ale and wings are sweet and spicy, but with heat kept in check.

There are some basic principles for pairing beer and food that you can see at work with this pairing and call on for other wing pairings. You want to match intensities, so neither your beer nor your wings overwhelms the other in flavor. You want to find some similar notes between the two, but you also want to highlight some complementary distinctions. The Cigar City brown ale, for instance — or any other brown ale — can match sweet notes in sweeter sauces and seasonings from buffalo to jerk while using that same sweetness to calm heat and balance elements like acid in vinegar-based sauces like buffalo. 

If you want to venture beyond brown ales, just keep in mind that IPAs and hoppier beers in general aren't ideal for hot wings. The alpha acids in hops, which is what gives them their bitterness, react with capsaicin, the compound that gives chili peppers their heat. The hops' bitterness exacerbates the painfulness of extreme spice, making for a harsher sensory experience. The best beer to pair with chicken wings, then, especially hotter styles like buffalo, is anything maltier like brown ale or a somewhat lighter amber ale, or something crisp and refreshing with a nice bready backbone, even if it's a light one. Think lagers, pilsners, and cream ales. If you want to play up certain spices or fruit notes in wing sauce, like lemon pepper, reach for a grain-forward saison or wheat beer with notes of pepper, coriander, and citrus.