"My whole life I've heard people saying 'I'm going out for a beer, then for a curry' but nobody has ever put them in the same room," says the chef and broadcaster Hardeep Singh Kohli about his first restaurant, or 'bar with food' as he prefers to call it.

VDeep has just opened for an extended test run in Leith on the site of the former The Vintage bar, and he is aiming to open in Glasgow later this year.

Of course his comments are not entirely true if you think of the gazillions of pints of fizzy lager that sluice through the nation's 12,000 curry houses, but I get his drift. We are talking craft beer, not some mass-produced brew such as Cobra that, in his view: "tastes like sh***.

Growing up in Glasgow 'a chubby Sikh boy frae Bishopbriggs', Singh Kohli told me how he used to drink Guinness. "I was never much drawn to the football culture of Tennent's and McEwan's, though I was quite taken with Belgian beers and wheat beers." Nowadays he's partial to Vindabrew - the cardamom-infused IPA he recently produced with friends at Glasgow's Drygate brewery.

It's one of over a dozen craft beers available on tap at VDeep, and trying it with various curries I am convinced he is on to something. If you reign back the heat just enough to expose the subtle flavours of the food and pair them with a tasty, well-balanced brew that is not too hoppy something magical happens.

For Singh Kohli "the road from Damascus moment was a pint of Runaway American brown ale with some dal makhani." It happened while hosting a pop-up curry and quiz night at The Vintage during the Edinburgh Fringe after years spent dreaming of opening his own restaurant while working for the BBC in London. And trying this same combination myself I have to say it works brilliantly.

Curry and beer is as Indian as the chicken tikka masala you won't find in India. It's a British invention thanks to licensing laws which placed the curry house at the end of the pub crawl because it could serve beer later. So forget phoney Indian brands unless dousing the flames of a fiery Vindaloo, and try home-grown craft beer instead.