The Beer & Cheese Project

Toronto Beer & Cheese Party

The Great Canadian Pubs & Beer blog has a writeup (and tasty pix) of a great-sounding beer & cheese tasting in Toronto last week.  The Gruyere and Doppelbock pairing is classic and bad-ass - I first read about it in Garret Oliver's book The Brewmaster's Table and I have served it many times.  It is pretty amazing and a great place to start.

BCP#7: Jolly Pumpkin / Nøgne-Ø / Stone "Special Holiday Ale" & Cimonino

Mmkay, some unusual ones tonight.

The cheese, Cimonino, is a cow's milk cheese from Italy.  It comes in a wacky little Tootsie Roll package:

Inside the paper wrapper was a perforated plastic wrapper to let it breathe without sticking to the paper.  Kinda cool I thought.  Ok, whatever.

The cheese is a, um, moldy log:

 

The taste is VERY strong.  This is not a beginner's cheese.  It starts off creamy, but then the salt kicks in.  But that's nothing compared to the spiciness and bitterness that comes in near the end and doesn't go away.  I can still taste it.  From my experience that heat usually comes from the rind, and when I notice it I usually remove the rind, but the diameter of this cheese is so small it can't be easily removed, other than the stripes that were already shaved off before packaging (I guess they know it's a little strong . . . ).  My 4-year-old, unpredictable as always, ate a slice.  I think she was attracted to the odd shape.  She waved off the second slice . . .

 

The good news was we had a strong beer to stand up to it.  The Jolly Pumpkin /Nøgne-Ø /Stone "Special Holiday Ale" is a collaboration between three great brewers from Michigan, Norway, and California.  How cool is that?  (Hint: very cool!)

But the cap leaves no uncertainty as to where the beer was made:

It's syrupy coming out of the bottle, with a thick foamy head:

It's sweet and strong, and has lots of flavor with oats, rye malt, chestnuts, juniper, white sage, and caraway on the ingredient list.  Wow.  This beer kicks booty.  It stands up well to the redonkulously strong cheese.  The only problem is that the bitter finish of the beer teams up with the hot/bitter finish of the cheese, and it's un-fun.  I would definitely buy the beer again; the cheese kinda sucked, although it would be a challenge to find something that pairs well with it.  I can see how some people would dig it though. 

BCP#6: Tara Boulba & Ewephoria - Battle of the Cutesy Marketers

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.

BCP#5 - Chimay Red & Frisian Farms Aged Gouda

The cheese:  Frisian Farms Aged Gouda, cow, Iowa.  About $19/# from Steve's Cheese.

Milder than some of the Dutch Goudas I've had, this one was still pretty complex and great.  It comes from Steve's hometown of Oskaloosa, IA, so, you know, there's that.  The rind is firm and orange but not all weird and waxy like some Goudas.  A few little funny-shaped holes.  The texture was sort of cheddar-ish, but I'm sure this varies with age.  The flavor is nutty and the whole scene sort of reminded me of Pleasant Ridge Reserve, which is to say, Gruyere-ish.  I'd like to say I can rattle off the differences between Gruyere and Gouda, but I can't.  They seem pretty similar, until the Gouda gets dry and crazy caramely after lots of aging.  My 4-year-old daughter, who usually ignores the cheese tray, started snarfing the hell out of this and had a minor hissy when I pulled back a few slices for myself.  So I guess you could say it's a crowd-pleaser.  Not too challenging but plenty to offer, and inexpensive as artisan cheeses go.

The beer: Chimay Red.  Belgian trappist ale.  I think I got this one as a birthday gift.

If you've given a shit about real beer for a while, you're probably familiar with this one already as it's everywhere.  If you're new to real beer, you should check it out.  It is a great "starter" Belgian beer, as it gives you a good dose of funk from the Belgian yeasts but not too much, and well balanced by sweetness and spice.  This one is successful and popular because it's good.  No Super Bowl ads or air race sponsorships required.

This pairing was really positive.  Both elements are assertive, but not overly, so they were evenly-matched and played well together.