That's an easy one Luna.
Here it's a tradition, a culture even. Chefs write cooking books about dishes based on beer, there are official beer tasters, conventions about beer, ...
And, in the USA beer is mostly a mass produkt. Here you have numerous little breweries. Who all did their own thing in the past. And a lot still do today. They experimented, used "raw materials" they found in their region, most didn't cared about selling much but wanted to make something differend (what doesn't exist anymore these days),...
The tradition is much older than in the USA.
<img src="/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif" alt="" />

~Setharmon~ >>[halfelven]<<