Harpoon, India Pale Ale (Boston, Massachusetts)

While Harpoon was first incorporated in the summer of 1986, its history begins a year or two earlier when founder Rich Doyle wrote the brewery's business plan while a graduate student at Harvard Business School. Working together, Doyle, co-founder Dan Kenary and their first brewer, Russ Heissner, developed many of Harpoon's initial recipes through test batches brewed in a Brighton apartment bathtub. Seeking to brew beers like the excellent ones they had tasted while traveling in Europe during their college years, Doyle and Kenary quickly emerged as modern microbrewery pioneers, riding on the surge of public interest in small production beer that took place in the late-1980s. Today Harpoon is still brewed in Boston - though a second brewery was purchased in Windsor, Vermont some years ago - and the brewery is still best known for its India Pale Ale, a classic American take on the style, brimming with crisp, citrusy hop flavors. While at the restaurant we like to pair it with Chef David's spicier, Asian-influenced dishes, the clean, refreshing nature of this beer makes it a perfect summer brew to drink with fried seafood or lobster bakes.

Guinness, Stout (Dublin, Ireland)

To call this beer iconic would be an understatement; Guinness is a titan, the most important stout made in the world, and certain ly the most notable beer made in the British Isles. First brewed in 1759 by Arthur Guinness at the St. James Gate Brewery in Dublin - where, it should be noted, the beer is still brewed today - Guinness is a hefty, dark, full-bodied brew, packed with toasty flavors of dark chocolate and French-roast coffee. While suitable for steak or roasts, we like Guinness best with Chef David's famous short ribs.

Sam Adams, Seasonal (United States)

Boston Beer Company - the corporation behind the Sam Adams line of beer - is arguably the most important producer to emerge on the brewing scene since the Busch family launched Budweiser in 1876. Revolutionary at the time, by today's standards, Sam Adams' founder Jim Koch's insistence on using the finest ingredients and best equipment seems somewhat pedestrian. But the beer market was very different in the early 1980s - store shelves were flooded with innocuous lagers made by industrial brewers and while well-intended craft beers could be found, many were contaminated, spoiled or just poorly made. Moreover, Koch brought something new to the table that many his enthusiast-turned-brewer brethren in the craft beer movement did not have: business sense. A brilliant strategist, Koch made several key decisions early on - most notably his decision to contract brew his beers in various regional breweries - that allowed his company to prosper when so many others failed. Now owner of its own breweries - most Sam Adams beer is made in the old Hudepohl-Schoenling brewery in Cincinnati - Boston Beer is now the largest American-owned beer operation in the United States. Their seasonal selection consists of four beers: Noble Pils in the late winter and early spring, Summer Ale during the late spring and summer, Octoberfest during the fall and Winter Lager during the early winter.

Newcastle, Brown Ale (Tadcaster, England)

An old favorite, Newcastle Brown Ale dates back to the mid-1920s when its recipe was first devised by Colonel J. Porter. In 1927 it began production at Tyne Brewery in Newcastle where it remained until 2004 when business considerations caused it to be moved first to Dunston, and then later, in 2007, to its current home at John Smith's brewery in Tadcaster in Northern Yorkshire. A classic English Brown Ale, Newcastle offers sweet malty flavors and a full-bodied mouthfeel that pair brilliantly with our ever-popular Baldwin Burger.

Dogfish Head, 60 Minute India Pale Ale (Milton, Delaware)

From a brewery that we consider to be among the most exciting in America, Dogfish Head's 60 Minute India Pale Ale is strikingly complex, each glass bursting with layers of sweet malt, pungent citrus, fresh herb and hoppy pine flavors. Light on its feet for a beer of this intensity, this is a tour de force of brewing from Dogfish founder Sam Calagione and his team. Founded as a brewpub in Delaware's Rehoboth Beach, the unusual name references a peninsula off Boothbay Harbor, Maine where Calagione vacationed as a youth. As the reputation of the brewpub grew, Calagione expanded his offerings. As he tells it, "[we]e quickly got bored brewing the same things over and over - that's when we started adding all sorts of weird ingredients and getting kind of crazy with the beers!" While far-out creations soon emerged - take, Pangaea, for example, a beer brewed with an ingredient from every continent, including Antarctica! - Dogfish soon developed a reputation as an India Pale Ale specialist. The 60 Minute IPA - the name refers to the sixty minutes of continual-hopping the beer receives during its boil - is our favorite; we simply adore its balance and its flexibility with food. Try it with Chef David's Sake, Lime & Ginger Salmon, or any dish that features his Pistachio-Mint pesto.

Pretty Things, 'Jack d'Or,' Saison Americain
(Westport, Massachusetts)

Perhaps the most original beer we have tasted in years, Jack d'Or is the signature beer of Dann Paquette's Pretty Things project. Brewed in tiny quantities in space Paquette rents at Buzzards Bay brewery in Westport, this is a Saison-styled beer, but only in the loosest sense of the word. Paquette is a freethinker, a brewer too creative and ingenious to be hampered by stylistic limits. Paquette began his brewing career at age 22, working in several of New England's finest craft breweries including Ipswich and Mill City before departing for Yorkshire, England where he brewed at Daleside Brewery in Harrogate. Returning to Massachusetts, he began Pretty Things as a vehicle to "reimagine" the brewing process. Jack D'Or was inspired by Paquette's honeymoon in Belgium and France where he and his wife Martha enjoyed the farmhouse ales or Saisons so popular there. Using the Saison style only as a starting point, Paquette fills out this sometimes uncomplicated brew with a dizzying array of malts, a unique strain of yeast, and two types of hops. The result is infinitely complex, offering a mélange of tree fruit, citrus, spice and herbal flavors that finish clean. A beer that one must taste to believe, it pairs well with any number of dishes, but we love the contrast of its bitter hops with some of Chef David's richer seafood dishes including his Lobster Mac & Cheese and Seafood-Stuffed Sole.

Chimay, Tripel (Chimay, Belgium)

Surely a "grand cru" Belgian brewery, we consider Chimay to be among the very top beer producers in the world. Made exclusively by Trappist monks at the Scourmont Abbey monastery in Hainaut in western Belgium - the same place the beers have been made since the brewery's founding in 1862 - Chimay's beers are reference point brews, offering nearly indescribable precision and concentration of flavor. Chimay uses only the finest ingredients in the beers including water drawn from a well inside the abbey. Moreover, like other Trappist breweries, the monks who run Chimay use the profits from the sale of their beers to support many charitable causes. Their Tripel - so named because triple the amount of malt is added relative to the normal Trappist ale - is perhaps their most approachable beer, certainly it is their driest and hoppiest offering. Exploding from the glass with incredible aromas of pears, honey, baker's yeast, and orange, the Tripel is round and medium-bodied on the palate, its slightly bitter hops exquisitely balanced with fruitcake-like flavors of dried plum, and ginger spice. Chimay's Tripel is so complex we recommend one take some time with it before food arrives. Recommended pairings would include our pork chop or veal long-bone chop and soft, rich cheeses.