Like most men (and certainly most Marines), Toby loves beer. So when my friend Todd asked if we’d like to take his tickets to a beer pairing event in Georgetown, we were all about it. We were even more excited about the fact that it was at Farmers Fishers Bakers — which we liked as Farmers & Fishers, but we hadn’t been to since it renovated and reopened. Plus, the event was for Earth Day. Can something be a triple win? I say yes.

The attendees were seated together in long tables — we were in the middle, and everyone else had already been seated, so we were pretty squished. But they had buckets of delicious caramel popcorn with peanuts (Cracker Jacks-style) and served us Wolaver’s Organic Wildflower Wheat Ale in a mason jar to start.

The first course was North Carolina white shrimp in a spicy sauce with Otter Creek Spring Bock. I’m allergic to shellfish, so they brought me pretzel sticks with pimento cheese, onion dip and barbecue mustard dip. I am not big on mustard, but the pimento cheese was absolutely perfect and the onion dip was awesome, too.

For the next course, they brought a few pizzas out to the table for us to share, along with Long Trail Ale. The pizza had an awesome red sauce (a little sweet, but with a kick) with mozzarella, ricotta, basil (I think) and sausage… which I didn’t eat, but Toby said was really good. It was definitely some of the best pizza I’ve had in the DC area, similar to the pizza in Italy or other parts of Europe.

Next was a beer-braised beef taco with Long Trail Double Bag Ale. The beef was braised in the beer, which was a nice touch. The corn “tortilla” was spongy and more like really thin (and delicious) cornbread than a tortilla, so I ended up having to use my knife and fork to eat it, but it was really good nonetheless. With a squeeze of lime, it would have been perfect, but I don’t know if maybe that would have counteracted with the beer? The beer was also good and a bit sweet.

Then, when we were already really full… the main course arrived, in the form of “mad pig-style jambalaya.” I don’t usually eat jambalaya, but this was seafood-free. It also didn’t look soupy at all (isn’t jambalaya supposed to be soupy?), but instead was basically like a pork-tastic, rice-poor skillet paella. It had pulled pork, bacon, pork belly and sausage, all on a bed of rice with a bit of corn on top. I only sampled the pulled pork and the bacon, but both were quite good. Toby said the sausage and pork belly were exceptional.

Last, of course, was dessert. The pastry chef prepared two doughnuts for us, along with the most amazing (and spiked!) hot chocolate I’ve ever had. The beer was Long Trail Milk Stout, and I actually liked it quite a bit, despite not being big on dark beers. The doughnuts were also very good; the one on the left is sort of a chocolate cake doughnut with a vanilla glaze, but it wasn’t too dense or dry like most cake doughnuts tend to be. The other is a yeast doughnut glazed with chocolate and decorated with pieces of malt ball. That one was also good but a bit too oily: It would have benefited from sitting on a dry paper towel or drying rack for a minute before being served.

Even though I’m not a beer person (I really don’t like hops), I enjoyed tasting all of the brews. My favorite was the wheat ale — it reminded us of a hefeweizen. Toby also like the wheat ale, but his favorite was the Long Trail Ale. In all, it was a fun evening filled (really filled!) with awesome food and great beer — a perfect way to toast Mother Earth.