Beer and Pizza: Southampton, Fire Island, and Slice

Last Wednesday, I was treated to that classic food and drink pairing, beer and pizza, at Slice in the West Village, sponsored by Fire Island Beer Company and Southampton Publick House. Fire Island Founder and CEO Jeff Glassman was on hand to speak about the beers, as Spencer, one of Southampton’s brewers, couldn’t make it as planned. Jeff was more than up to the task, and I thoroughly enjoyed the chance to speak with him over a few pies and beers.

Jeff and his friends were avid homebrewers — a pretty standard first step toward brewing commercially — for over a decade before taking the plunge. Fire Island has been brewing beer for sale for a little over a year now, tweaking their recipes in small batches at home before settling on formulations that are brewed at Saratoga Brewing, a large contract brewer upstate in Saratoga Springs, in batches ranging from 10 to 30 barrels. From the sound of things, business is good, too, with the addition of a second year-round beer and coming soon, two seasonals: a pumpkin ale for autumn, and a lager in the winter.

Southampton seems to have been around forever, though it’s only been since 1996, and the beers they brew at the brewpub, as well as the twelve-ounce bottles we drank that are contract-brewed, are available all over the city. Good thing too, since they make everything from basic lagers and English-style ales to Belgian styles, barleywine, and a hard-to-find but excellent Berliner Weiss. I try to make it out to the brewpub a few times a year, to drink the pub-only beers and relax with a delicious meal.

Slice offered up four “gourmet, organic” pizzas for our gustatory pleasure at their location on Hudson Street. Miki, who oversees the Slice empire with her twin Radha, was our gracious host and talked about each of the pies as it was delivered straight from the oven to our table. The crusts are of course freshly made, blind baked (ahem) and then loaded and finished in six minutes or less, all prepared to order. The various Slice offerings were paired in a pretty basic way with the beers, though honestly, any beer could have been swapped in at any point. For simplicity’s sake, I’ll call the wares “pizzas,” but a pizza purist might take issue with that term: sure, it’s stuff on a crust baked in a pizza oven, but the crusts are thinner, more crackery, and didn’t display the “classic” New York pizzeria pizza crust. However, they were all tasty, which is really what matters.

Pizza number one, the Radha, consisted of an herb crust slathered in hummus, topped with diced tomato and onion, basil, sundried tomato strips, and kalamata olives. Quite tasty, it was, and the flavor of the olives brought out the tomato and basil while kind of mellowing the onion. This was considered the mildest, least-bold of the pizzas on offer today…

…and so was paired with the Southampton Double White, a Belgian wit (though at 6.6%, nearly the strongest beer on the table), effervescent and spicy, with the coriander showing through nicely and the alcohol hidden. It’s a little too easy drinking for its alcohol content, but no one said we had to drink an entire bottle….

Next up we sampled the Novice Pesto pizza. While the soy parmesan, basil, sundried tomatoes, and homemade basil pesto are billed as vegan, the whole is topped with… Slice’s signature 100% organic mozzarella cheese. As a whole, the basil didn’t overwhelm like I feared, and the mozzarella is as good as any. The crust, though it was the same as the prior pizza, really stood out this time. I’d hesitate to say it “popped,”, but it was really prominent despite this pizza being loaded with toppings.

It was paired with the first Fire Island beer, the Lighthouse Ale. Most appeal-to-the-masses beers, as Lighthouse was described, are light-colored, light-bodied, and light-flavored. Fortunately for craft beer drinkers, Lighthouse is not these things — it’s got a big malty backbone, thanks to using caramunich malt, which adds more than just sweetness to the beer, and while the hop profile remains minimal, overall this is a sessionable, quality beer of which I was happy to drink more than one bottle.

Third, we had the Guru, the first pizza with sauce, here a slow-cooked marinara, barely visible under the three types of mushrooms, “free range” crumbled chicken sausage and pulled chicken, goat cheese and the aforementioned mozzarella.

Paired with the Southampton Keller Pils (5%), this was my favorite pizza, and my favorite beer of the evening. Kellerbier (cellar beer) essentially means an unfiltered beer, straight from the tank to you; most craft beer isn’t filtered anyway, but you expect your lighter lagers to be crisp and clean as well as clear. In bottles, this is exactly what you get, with a clean, haylike malt profile, pleasant bitterness and herbal hop flavor, and a crisp finish that had me reaching for a second bottle before the evening was over. On draft, this is somewhat hazy, so somewhere along the line it’s cleaned up for the bottles.

Last up, “The Bomb” is Slice’s Indian pizza, an herb-crust pie topped with (free-range) chicken tikka masala and, yep, organic mozzarella. Lots of heat on this pizza, and I’m glad we saved it for last.

The Fire Island Red Wagon IPA (7%, and the strongest of the lot) ought to have been more of a hop monster, with Cascade and Crystal hops (and Warrior for bittering) and less of a malt monster, but perhaps I managed an old bottle. This was way too malty for style and seemingly oxidized; maybe the distributor held on to it too long. I’ve had better bottles of the Red Wagon.

Overall? Lots of goodness to be had at this pairing/tasting. Full disclosure: this event is normally $35, which, for several bottles of beer and more than half a pie of gourmet pizza, is a decent price, especially if you are not familiar with Slice, or the breweries featured. There’s a Slice on the Upper East Side, and I foresee a visit very shortly — the pies are tasty, but if pressed to name a favorite, I’d especially like to revisit a whole chicken tikka masala, regardless of the origin of that dish — it’s on a pizza!

Both Southampton and Fire Island bottles are widely available around town, and especially on Long Island; I see them in the $10-$11 range for six-packs. Fresh beer is better beer with these, so try to support the locals since they’re brewing good beer for us!