The Cheese: Ewephoria (get it? ooof), aged pasteurized sheep's milk, Holland. Purchased at New Seasons Market in Beaverton, OR, $18/pound
Aww, sheep and milkmaids and stuff.
This cheese is tasty as hell. It's a Gouda style, but light on the funk and heavy on the nutty and butterscotch flavors. It tastes a lot like dessert, so would probably be great for an after dinner cheese course. The rind is thick (Gouda plasticky) and the cheese is very dry/hard near the edges. The middle is more of a Gruyere texture (including tyrosine crystals):
(I just got a new macro thingy for my camera, so expect obsession with gratuitous close-ups for awhile)
The label contained an ingredient I'd never seen before: "lysozyme, derived from egg whites." WTF, you may ask? According to wikipedia it's an anti-bacterial enzyme found in eggs and tears. But why use it in cheese production? Welp, according to lysozyme.com (not making this up), it apparently selectively kills bacteria that make the cheese look ugly and taste yucky (paraphrasing). So there you have it.
It's not my favorite cheese ever, but I would definitely buy it again. Kacy loved it and Sammy wouldn't try it. In fact she wouldn't eat dinner at all, until I pulled reverse psychology and told her she wasn't allowed to eat anything. Sadly it worked.
Anyway, The Beer: De La Senne Taras Boulba Extra Hoppy Ale, Belgium. Purchased somewhere for some amount of dollars. 11.2 fl. oz.
As you can see, this one has a cutesy label. Smeirlap! Get it?! Me neither.
That and the "extra hoppy" part convinced me to go for it. It's got a very light golden color and foamy head, and tons of stanky belgian funk.
It reminds me of Duvel (although not as boozy), if you're into that sort of thing. There isn't a ton of hop aroma, but definitely bitterness. This one didn't rock my world and I probably won't buy it again. I'd rather have a La Chouffe any day.
The pairing wasn't that successful. The cheese helped balance the bitterness of the beer, but the beer didn't really do much for the cheese. Apparently cartoons and cutesy names aren't a great pairing strategy. No big woop.
