Thank you DuClaw Brewing for sponsoring this post and sending me the DuClaw Enjoy Your Time Away. All opinions and the mussels recipe are my own.

Welcome to the February edition of “Cooking with Beer”! Each month DuClaw Brewing sends me a beer and a friend and I create a recipe. It’s a fun time to think outside the box and try a new beer and new food. This month’s beer is “Enjoy Your Time Away”, a smooth IPA with a nice blend of hops. I’m not a hop head. I like my beers dark and sweet. But I approach every beer with an open mind and a willingness to be surprised. Unfortunately though, it’s hard to cook with a straight up IPA. You have to be careful not to reduce it and bring out the bitter. Faced with that challenge, my co-conspirator suggested mussels. To which I responded “as long as I don’t have to eat any of them.”

But eat them, I did. And I enjoyed every single bite. Who knew that all the years I’ve been saying I hate mussels I’ve been wrong! It may have had something to do with the bacon. Mmm, bacon. Because everything is better with bacon. The sauce was also so tasty that I wanted to sop it all up with fresh baked bread. (Maybe my co-conspirator can also bake me bread next time…) Anyways, the mussels were fabulous and the beer paired amazingly well – the combination of salt, fat and bitter was perfection!