Beer and Cheese: Doing Double Duty
Beer and cheese, it’s a wonderful combination. While we can spend hours talking about pairing individual cheeses and beers, it’s a select few professionals who can make both beer and cheese. What better way to start the conversation than with makers of the Belgian beer classic, Chimay.
While Chimay makes a few cheeses, only one is made using their famous beers: Chimay with Beer.
The very personal preparation and maturing of this cheese make it an exclusive product.
Its natural rind is bathed in Chimay Trappist beer so that its incomparable flavour flatters the palate and the nose.
The washed rind on the cheese is sharply salty while the center of the cheese is rich and creamy with a yeasty bite. Against the Cinq Cents, the cheese softens the beer’s intensity, urging you to drink to quench the briney flavor. With the more malty Première and Grande Réserve, a sweet and salty contrast heightens the flavors of the beer, creating a more decadent experience with each bite. The creaminess of the cheese provides a solid foundation for the increasing intensity to play against.
Other brewers have toyed with cheese, but I am not sure if others have created cheese. Fritz Maytag, in addition to home appliances, made Anchor Steam beer for over 30 years as well as the Maytag Blue Cheese.
While not made by the brewers, there are numerous cheese made with beer as an ingredient. Fiscalini’s Hop Scotch is soaked in Devil’s Canyon’s Full Boar Scotch Ale while Sartori’s Raspberry BellaVitano is soaked in New Glarus’ Raspeberry Tart.
What other beer soaked, washed, infused cheeses have you tried? Where else have the brewers ventured into the realm of cheese makers. Chare your experiences and comments below.
One Comment to “Beer and Cheese: Doing Double Duty”
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There’s the fairly ubiquitous Guinness Cheddar. Not bad.
Found this article on a few other beer cheeses (http://pnwcheese.typepad.com/cheese/2005/10/tasting_notes_b.html).
I would encourage Quebec microbrewers (or cheesemakers) to experiment with this combination. Quebec has some very excellent examples of both!