From Ploughman's to Pudding: We Tasted Our Way Through the Menu With Local Ales (So You Don't Have To)

There are worse ways to spend a rainy Tuesday in February than drinking beer and eating your own cooking. That was the thinking, anyway, when the landlord pulled out a chalkboard, wrote ALE EXPERIMENT across the top in his best attempt at fancy lettering, and told the kitchen to shut the door behind us.

The rules were simple. Every beer we currently pour from breweries within a stone's throw of the Ribble Valley — and a couple from just over the hill — paired against a representative dish from each section of the menu. Starters to sweets. Honest verdicts, no diplomatic nonsense. If a pairing was a disaster, we'd say so, because you lot would find out anyway.

The Ploughman's and the Pale Ale

We started, as all good afternoons should, with the ploughman's. A slab of Lancashire crumbly, a fistful of pickled onions, that chutney our kitchen team refuses to write down the recipe for, and bread with a crust like roof tiles.

Against it, a hoppy pale from the microbrewery up the road — the one with the pumps shaped like cows, which the landlord insists isn't a coincidence we should read too much into.

The verdict: a genuine triumph. The bitterness of the hops cut straight through the cheese fat, the citrus notes played nicely with the chutney's sharpness, and the pickled onion — usually a flavour that bullies whatever it's sat next to — was brought quietly into line.

The head chef's notes, verbatim: "Like the ploughman's has had a wash." High praise, from him.

Soup, Bread and a Best Bitter

Next, the soup of the day — a beef and ale number that, yes, contains some of the very beer we were drinking. Meta, we know.

We paired it with the best bitter, a proper mahogany pint with a tight head and no pretensions. This is the beer most of our regulars drink without ever reading the pumps, and it turns out they're onto something. The malty backbone of the bitter mirrored the deep savoury stock in the soup, and the whole thing became greater than the sum of its parts. Comfort squared.

The landlord's verdict: "It's like the beer's gone home." Nobody knew what he meant, but we all agreed.

The Main Event: Pie Meets Bitter, As Nature Intended

Now, we've written about our pies before, and we're not shy about the fact that we take them seriously. But we'd never formally tested the age-old marriage of pie and bitter against the alternatives. So we went at it properly.

Three contenders, one steak and ale pie (with the good pastry — you know the one):

• Best bitter. The classic. The benchmark. The reason the pairing exists.
• Golden ale. The modern challenger.
• A dark stout. The wildcard.

The bitter won, and it wasn't close. There's a reason this combination has survived a century of culinary fashion — the roasted malt flavours echo the braised beef, the gentle carbonation scrubs the gravy from your palate, and each mouthful resets the last. The stout, for the record, was too heavy, turning the whole plate to treacle. The golden ale was pleasant but forgettable, like a nice but distant cousin at a wedding.

The head chef summed it up: "Some pairings are inventions. This one's just correct."

The Fish and the Fizzy Question

Midway through we hit a small crisis of confidence with the beer-battered haddock. Our instinct was a light golden ale, but on the day the match felt flat — the beer vanished entirely behind the batter and the vinegar.

What actually worked was a crisp, lightly sparkling pale from the same brewery, served colder than we'd usually dare. The fizz did the heavy lifting, cutting the oil like a squeegee through a mucky windscreen. The landlord has now quietly changed the chalkboard recommendation. That's the power of science, or at least of drinking on the job.

Sausages, Mash and an Amber Discovery

The sausage and mash — bangers from the butcher in Clitheroe, gravy by the gallon — threw up a surprise. We'd assumed the bitter again, but the amber ale we keep on as a second pint for the adventurous turned out to be the better dance partner. Its caramel sweetness played off the caramelised onions in the gravy, and the slightly higher strength stood up to a dish that doesn't do anything by halves.

The chef looked genuinely annoyed that the amber had beaten his beloved bitter. The landlord looked like a man whose chalkboard was filling up nicely.

Sticky Toffee and the Stout Finale

Finally, the sticky toffee pudding. You know the one. The one people drive over from Whalley for.

Dessert and beer is where most pubs quietly give up, but we pressed on, and we're glad we did. A spoonful of that date-heavy, sauce-drenched beauty followed by a sip of the oatmeal stout was, frankly, a revelation. The stout's roasted coffee notes turned the toffee sauce into something like a proper dessert stout float, and the bitterness kept the sweetness from closing over your head.

The head chef, who had been sceptical all afternoon, put his fork down and said: "Right. That's going on the specials board."

The Final Scorecard

If you want the shorthand version, here it is, as it now appears (in increasingly wobbly handwriting) behind the bar:

• Ploughman's → hoppy pale
• Soup of the day → best bitter
• Steak and ale pie → best bitter, obviously
• Beer-battered haddock → crisp cold pale
• Sausage and mash → amber ale
• Sticky toffee pudding → oatmeal stout

One disaster to report, as promised: we tried the pale ale with the sticky toffee and it tasted, in the landlord's words, "like orange juice after toothpaste." We won't be doing that again, and neither should you.

The full pairing list is now chalked up by the bar, and the landlord is offering to talk you through it whether you asked or not. Come thirsty, come hungry, and if you disagree with our verdicts — well, that's what the corner seats are for. Bring your arguments. We've got the pints.