McClatchy Newspapers

When someone asked Garrett Oliver about the best wine to serve with Thanksgiving turkey, he famously replied: "Beer."

The acclaimed chief brewer at Brooklyn Brewery, author of "The Brewmaster's Table" [Ecco, $19.95] and recently chosen as editor and lead writer for the forthcoming "Oxford Companion to Beer," wasn't just being cute.

Lucy Saunders, author of "The Best of American Beer & Food: Pairing & Cooking with Craft Beer" [Brewers Publications, $22.95], likes to serve brown ale with Thanksgiving dinner and a cherry or apple ale with desserts such as pumpkin or pecan pie.

Choice brown ales on our market include Saint Arnold's Brown Ale and Newcastle Brown Ale; for the dessert course, there's Unibroue Ephemere Apple from Canada and Belgium's Lindeman Kriek, a lambic ale made with cherries.

Saunders says she brines her turkey in brown ale, salt and a bit of pepper.

"I place the bird in a large food-grade bucket and let it brine overnight. To do this at a food-safe temperature, I take a shelf out of the refrigerator," she says.

"Some people don't have the space to do this, so you can baste the bird with a blend of brown ale and a few tablespoons of melted butter instead. Use the pan drippings to make brown ale gravy. Just use a defatter to skim off excess fat.

"If you need to offer vegetarian options, you can baste pan-seared tofu with stout, soy sauce and sesame oil, too."

Beer writer Stan Hieronymus recommends pairing turkey with a seasonal Oktoberfest marzen beer or a German dunkelweizen, a dark wheat beer.

Shiner Dunkelweizen is coming back on the market, and good marzens still available include Rahr Oktoberfest from Fort Worth and Samuel Adams Octoberfest.

The Brewers Association, the trade group of craft brewers, suggests Scotch ales and porters as well as fruitier, herbal selections like Belgian-style dubbel and tripel ales.

But what did the Pilgrims drink at that first harvest feast?

It wasn't beer — but not for lack of desire. There were no hops available in the colonies for decades, explains Paula Marcoux, food and beverage historian at Plimouth Plantation. Attempts to find indigenous substitutes for hops and malted barley — "pumpkin, molasses, and every type of fruit, twig, nut or berry" — were mostly unsuccessful. "These kinds of unwise liberties ensured that a beer-drinking immigrant nation would turn to homegrown cider and imports of wine and spirits to quench its thirst," she wrote.

Beer, safer than water,"was" a staple aboard the Mayflower: two gallons a day for crew members, a gallon for passengers.

"The beer supply was at the center of friction that developed as a result of delays in selecting a settlement site," Marcoux wrote. The Pilgrims upset the crew by taking a month to find a suitable colony site.

Finally, a decision was hurried up, passenger Edward Winslow wrote, "for we could not now take time for further search or consideration, our victuals being much spent, especially our beer, and it now being the 19th of December."