Nearly any sane person stepping up to the bar at The Old Brewery in Greenwich would spot the taps for Meantime London, lick his or her lips and think ‘great brews’. The name is already a clue this new establishment has something to do with beer.

Only a certified cafenatic would look between those taps, spot a La Marzocco espresso machine, lick his lips and also think great brews, albeit of another kind. Happily, neither master brewer Alastair Hook nor his guests – a rectangular table of fellow food bloggers eat like a girl, Food Urchin, Scandilicious, a Scot in London and with knife and fork – managed to peer inside my warped mind and so I was able to sit down, clear my head of coffee and savour the pairings of beer and food he had so generously arranged for us. This required little effort: Straight off, the matching of Meantime London Porter and Irish Carlingford rock oysters was for me a taste breakthrough – the smokey minerality of the unexpectedly elegant Porter playing up to the salinity of the oysters. I shared this observation, word-for-word, with Hook and he was no doubt pleased to be opening minds to the possibilites of beer and food matchmaking.

It’s most fortunate that Hook, for all his revered talents, is no mind reader. Otherwise he might have discovered my second blunder of the night. Upon spotting the golden-foam-capped glasses of Meantime Hospital Porter introduced in a dessert pairing to decloy sticky toffee pudding I had one sweet thought: iced coffee! Shakerato, maybe. Or frappé.

It was only when I asked Hook if I could try The Old Brewery’s burger did I see any signs of irritation. Here Hook had indulged us with a confit Middle White pork terrine followed by neck of Herdwick mutton braised in Meantime India Pale Ale and I was still hungry (and foolish?) enough to request a burger and chips. Naturally he had no way of knowing that at every opportunity I’d been seeking out truly great London burgers for the BurgerMonday meetups and eatups I’ve been organising.

Turns out I’d misread Hook’s exasperation. What troubled him about my request, which he satisfied without a second thought, was not its impertinence but rather the challenge it posed: finding just the right beer for a burger. Here was the ultimate paradox: a combo that comes so naturally to most of us – a burger and a beer – frustrating one of our greatest authorities on the arts of brewing and beer-and-food partnering.

I urged Hook to stare down his fears by agreeing to host a BurgerMonday. He’d get lots of help in his effort to finally find the perfect Meantime beer for The Old Brewery’s very good burger. Lots of help. I think he is game. Hook is a guy who loves to, as he says, “lubricate the situation”. That’s what got him into the beer trade in the first place.

While Meantime brewery revives London’s once glorious brewing heritage, its most recent forerunners are the microbreweries of the US as well as the great and still thriving breweries of Germany and Belgium. US brewpubs were likewise an inspiration for the much grander ambitions of The Old Brewery restaurant. Hook therefore has a soft spot for Americans, which perhaps works in my favour. The brewer of artisan English beers made with the finest malts of East Anglia and the prized hops of Kent nevertheless reserves his highest praise for Budweiser, a top-selling and notoriously insipid American brew.

“It’s very very hard,” says the brewmaster, “to prepare something that tastes of nothing”.