How to Pick the Right Beer for Every Barbecue Sauce

When the Food & Wine Classic in Charleston kicks off this year, beer educator Anne Becerra will be asking a deceptively simple question: What happens when you start with the sauce?

For years, the conventional wisdom around barbecue and beer has relied on a few familiar pairings — a light lager with ribs, an IPA with spice. They work, but they also flatten the conversation, ignoring the nuances of sauce styles and the diversity of beer. Becerra, one of the country’s most respected voices on beer education, wants to reframe the conversation. “I like to think of beer as an extension of the meal,” she says. “You don’t have to recreate the wheel. If you’d put a sauce on roast duck, you can sub in a beer with those same flavors.”

Her upcoming Charleston seminar — BBQ Sauce & Brews: Pairing Pints with Spicy, Sweet, Tart, and Tangy Sauces — will use six sauces, including South Carolina’s mustard-based Carolina Gold and Korean barbecue, as the starting point for a new way of thinking about pairings. The idea is less about memorizing rules and more about giving people tools to trust their instincts. “Everyone already creates pairings every day,” she explains. “If you dip a French fry in ketchup, you’re doing it. This is just about paying attention to what works and why.”

Chef and author Hank Shaw reminds us that beer is barbecue’s most natural companion, although for him the appeal is partly cultural. “Beer is way more appropriate for barbecue than wine,” he says. “Wine hates vinegar, and vinegar is in so many sauces. With beer, you don’t have that problem.” Shaw, whose new book Borderlands explores the flavors of the U.S.–Mexico border, is quick to point out that the best pairings aren’t always the obvious ones. 

He recalls drinking porters with Kentucky mutton barbecue, where the sauce’s Worcestershire-driven depth matched the beer’s heft, and reaching for a gose or shandy to echo the tang of vinegar-heavy sauces. And sometimes, he insists, the simplest choice is the right one: “If I’m eating barbecue in Texas, I’m probably drinking a Lone Star. In South Carolina, maybe a Budweiser. There’s nothing wrong with a straightforward lager.”

At Jacob’s Pickles in New York City, owner Jacob Hadjigeorgis sees the same principles play out in real time. His menu features two signature sauces — a Kansas City molasses style and a creamy Alabama white — and an expansive beer list designed to guide guests from familiar lagers to more adventurous farmhouse ales or rauchbiers. 

“Our first goal is to find the style of beer they actually like,” he says. “From there, we can steer them toward something that complements the food in a new way — maybe a farmhouse ale that cuts through fried chicken, or a smoky porter that feels tailor-made for saucy ribs.”

Together, these perspectives set the stage for Becerra’s sauce-by-sauce guide — a framework that works as well for festival-goers in Charleston as it does for anyone standing in front of the beer aisle at home.