The Beer & Cheese Project

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#4 - Ninkasi "Spring Reign Ale" & Ancient Heritage "Valentine"

The Beer: Ninkasi Spring Reign Ale, seasonal release.  Purchased at a NW Portland supermarket - I can't remember which one (we average 1.0 supermarket visits/day, so it's hard to keep track).  Price: I wanna say $5-ish/750ml.

This is a great beer, although Ninkasi's label blurbs: "refreshing seasonal ale" and "great session beer" (I'm paraphrasing) are a little optimistic.  In typical Ninkasi style, this is a very hoppy beer.  It's basically an IPA style, but it's more floral and less syrupy/malty than some of their standard hop bombs.  I love pretty much everything they do and this is no exception.  What a great addition to the Oregon beer scene.  My wife even drank this one, and she generally doesn't like hoppy beers (booo).

The Cheese: Ancient Heritage Dairy "Valentine", 100% raw sheep's milk, Scio, OR, purchased from Steve's Cheese, price forgotten. 

I finally got back to see Steve after way too long of an absence, living off of plastic-wrapped supermarket cheese and the occasional discarded bread crust.  I immediately asked about the Valentine in the case, because the Adele was so badass.  This one is 100% sheep's milk, while the Adele is a blend of sheep and cow.  Steve explained that they are seasonal, which makes sense, and is all the more reason to tank up on them during the spring.   Also, like the Adele, it's the perfect size for 2-3 people to take down as part of a nutritious happy hour.

I cut the rind lid off for easy access with butter knives.  Here is the autopsy shot:

What a great cheese!  This one is about a month old, and has ripened into a runny, salty, tangy pool with a dumpling of creamy,fresher sheep cheese in the middle. 

The pairing was fine, but nothing to go crazy about.  The hoppiness and tanginess seemed to stand up well to each other, so the beer didn't overwhelm the cheese and vice versa, so nothing to complain about.

BCP #2 - Pelican Brewery "Le Pelican Brun" 2007 & Caña de Oveja

While this cheese was tempering, my 3-year-old daughter was doing a different kind of tempering: having a DEFCON-1 tantrum.  As in scramble the bombers, get the White House on the phone.  An old-school China Syndrome meltdown.  I was pretty bummed out by the whole thing because my wife had to take a break to calm down and the only thing my daughter wanted was mommy and she was all kicky and hitty and bitey and hyper-ventilatey.  She doesn't do it very often which is good, but also bad because we don't have a system for stopping it.  Anyway, I almost put the cheese back in the fridge for another time because my appetite was shot, but I really wanted (okay, needed) the beer, so after the girl went to bed I busted them out.

I was pretty pumped about this cheese because it is from my favorite semi-arbitrary category: two-tone cheeses.  I.e., cheese in which the paste (or whatever the inside is called) has a very distinctive border between two different textures.  It's like getting two cheeses in one.  I've been told it's a result of aging, and eventually the center part would look like the outer layer, but whatever.  I think it's cool and there are certain cheeses that seem to always look like this when they are for sale, and I am semi-obsessed with them.

My wife doesn't dig on goat cheese (one of her very few flaws; all are food/drink related) so I hardly ever buy it, and until recently sheep cheese was off-limits too, but she has been crossing over and trying the sheep cheeses lately and mostly liking them, so I lunged for this one at the local grocery store recently. 

Caña de Oveja - pasteurized sheep's milk, Spain.  purchased New Seasons Market, Beaverton, OR, $15.99/#.

This cheese was okay but not amazing.  It didn't blow me away.  The coolest thing about it is probably the name, which is fun to say.  It's also pretty to look at, similar to a French bucheron.  The two different regions were very distinct, which was good.  But neither one of them was a superstar.  The middle had a very chalky almost goat-cheese texture and flavor, which unfortunately grossed my wife out a little (she only had one piece).  The outer portion near the rind was creamier and more appealing, but still not anything to write home about.  I would definitely try this cheese again from a specialty cheese monger to see if storage/ripeness is an issue before writing it off.  I try to buy most of my cheese from my homeboy Steve, but the reality is that a lot of times I am at the grocery store, and I see cheese, and I want it, and I buy it.  I am weak and cheese is strong.

Pelican Brewery "Le Pelican Brun" 2007 - purchased at the Brewery, $15/750ml.

This is a nice beer.  More belgian-y funk and less sweetness than the Grand Cru from BCP #1, but otherwise a lot in common.  I've only ever seen it for sale at the brewery in Pac City.  Unlike the Grand Cru, I probably won't pay $15 for it again, as there are belgian-style ales as good or better for less money here in town. 

The pairing was okay, nothing especially bad or great.  Probably being in a shitty mood from the kid kirking out didn't help.

BCP #1: Pelican "Grand Cru" & Ancient Heritage "Adelle"

The Cheese:  Adelle
                    Pasteurized Cow & Sheep
                    Ancient Heritage Dairy, Scio, OR
                    Purchased at New Seasons Market, Beaverton, OR

The Beer:      Pelican Grand Cru 2007
                    Pelican Brewery, Pacific City, OR
                    Purchased at the brewery, $15 for 750ml

 

Kickass pairing, which is what I wanted to start with - the beer and the cheese are both great and they are great together.  I think you can only get the beer in Pac City.  It's fizzy and dark and malty.  The cheese is way better than imported brie.  I cut the top off and we scooped it out with butter knives and straight woofed it.  I think it would've gotten gooier over time, but it was good to go at just under 1 month old.  As they say on khymos, "these go really well together".