The first cheese was a Camembert. If you have never had any, this is a soft, creamy French cheese with a chalky rind, and is very similar to Brie. I usually pick up very gentle notes of mushroom in the taste, along with masses of creaminess. This cheese is very subtle and delicate in taste, and is a style I have only recently become a fan of.

The second cheese was a 3 year aged Australian Cheddar cheese. This is a very assertive cheese, pretty much the diametric opposite of the Camembert – if the Camembert whispers sweet nothings in your ear in French, this Cheddar comes up to you and yells “G’day, mate, time for a tinny!”.

As I expected, Gouden Carolus Tripel handled these radically different cheeses with utter aplomb. With the Camembert it brought out the creamy, lush, buttery richness without drowning out any of the subtlety. With the Cheddar it calmed the cheesey exuberance without becoming harsh or watery or leaving any nasty after-taste.

Combine this experience with the barleywine pairings I did previously, and it looks as though the days of the rotten grape being paired with cheese are numbered.

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Burgers – who doesn’t like them? Brie – a cheese I have only recently discovered a liking for. And beer – the classic combo.

I went with the Indian Brown Ale from Dogfish Head, one of the best breweries in the world. Their IBA clocks in at 7.2% ABV, and is ranked as one of the best beers in the world on both major beer rating sites (95th percentile and A-, if you’re curious). The flavour is wonderfully layered, with hops, coffee, and caramel – almost like a caramel latte made with hops. It’s beautifully carbonated, with a gentle effervescence on the tongue. I wanted to know how this dangerously drinkable beer went with burgers and brie, so I kept it simple: bun, burger, a little ketchup, brie, and beer.

The malt sweetness and roastiness played off the caramelised surface of the burger. The hop bitterness contrasted nicely with the rich lushness of the brie. The combination – having the burger, brie, bun, and beer in the mouth at the same time – produced an explosive combination of flavours – coffee, chocolate, hop bitterness, beef sweetness, mushroomy creamy buttery extravagance from the brie.

Could you find a better pairing? Probably. But for me, on this nice September afternoon, this simple combination raised itself head and shoulders above the crowd into a memorable moment of beerliciousness.

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Grilled Gulf Shrimp served on a Fried Green Tomato and Remoulade paired with Terrapin Rye Squared
The high gravity Terrapin beers have just entered Alabama. This was my first experience with the Rye Squared. As usual the hops in the Terrapin worked wonders with the spice in the remoulade to make an explosive spice mix. Wonderful.

Jolly Pumpkin La Roja served with a traditional Chef’s Salad and La Roja Vinaigrette Dressing
Jolly Pumpkin make very interesting and complex beers using wild fermentation, and are not the easiest to get hold of. All of them have some brettanomyces to provide a sour, wild flavour and unique taste profile.
The combination with the vinaigrette dressing and the chef’s salad is divine. The gentle sourness provides an almost vinegary tang that works perfectly with the salad. Seek out Jolly Pumpkin ales – don’t be put off by the description “sour” – this is an exceptionally good beer.

Three Cheese Tortellini covered in an Alabama Chevre Pasta Sauce accompanied by Rochefort 8 Trappiste Ale
The three-cheese pasta and goat cheese sauce is a great dish in itself.  The Rochefort is the 73rd best beer in the world (at the time of writing) and deserves this place – it is stunningly flavourful, rich and malty, explosively carbonated and delicious.
The combination is sheer perfection. The maltiness in the beer matches the rich unctuousness of the cheese, while the explosive carbonation scrubs the palate – and tongue – clean with every mouthful, cleaning and refreshing the palate to make every bite of the tortellini just as tasty as the first.
An example of a perfect beer and food pairing.

Cask Conditioned Ola Dubh Special 40 Reserve along with Sliced Smoked BBQ Mutton
Ola Dubh – Scottish Gaelic for Black Oil – is an old ale from Scotland. It’s matured in a cask that was previously used to mature single malt Scottish whisky from Highland Park, Scotland’s second most northerly distillery. It is rich, dense, tasty, with profound notes of single malt; a sublime beverage.
The Ola Dubh stands in stark contrast to the rich smokiness of the pulled mutton and the citrus-infused BBQ sauce, perking up your taste buds and providing a nice digestif to finish off the main course.

Good People Fatso Imperial Stout Ice Cream Float
Fatso is the new Imperial Stout from Birmingham’s own Good People brewery. Its taste has masses of coffee richness and an almost silky mouthfeel. In the ice cream float, it mutates into the richest, densest, most silky mocha coffee you can even imagine.  Absolutely wonderful.

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Regardless of how it’s prepared, a pork loin that’s tender and juicy when first cooked tends to get tough and dry in the fridge when it becomes leftovers.  That’s where quesadillas come in.  You dice the meat, throw it in a pan with some water and taco-seasoningesque spices like cumin, chili powder, paprika, garlic powder, salt, and pepper, and let it simmer for a while.  It absorbs the water, making it moist and tender, and gets thoroughly coated in the spices.  Then throw in some jack cheese, cheddar cheese, and a little milk and you have a yummy, stringy concoction perfectly suited to sandwiching between a couple tortillas and frying.

I was skeptical of the beer choice tonight.  The only reason I went with SA Imperial White is that it just hit retailers in Birmingham for the first time today, and I was just eager to try it.  That’s it.  I didn’t necessarily think it would make a great pairing, but I figured it was worth a shot.

The pairing actually ended up ok.  The coriander and orange peel spices in the beer were an acceptable compliment to the various spices in the quesadilla.  Enjoyable.

Turning my attention solely to the beer for a moment, I have to say it didn’t live up to my expectations.  I was actually pretty excited about this because I enjoy a good witbier and I enjoy high gravity beers, and I thought perhaps the combination would come out really interesting.  But when you jack up the starting gravity on a beer, you typically wind up with a high finishing gravity, too.  Which means more sweetness.  And witbiers desperately need to finish dry.  This one was just too malty and sweet.  There are techniques that can dry out high gravity beers, but they weren’t employed here, unfortunately.

This is part two of a linked two part article looking at pairing barleywine and cheese. The first part looked at it from the barleywine perspective, this part looks at the cheese perspective.

A work of beauty

Borough Market Quicke’s Cheddar
A full, rich traditional Cheddar aged for a minimum of 18 months bound in linen and covered in lard to provide a protective coating. An awesomely good cheese.
Seek out Flying Dog’s Horn Dog, Great Divide’s Old Ruffian, or Rogue Old Crustacean to pair with this cheese.

Cave Aged Gruyere
An assertive, earthy, complex cheese that will dominate a pairing unless you are careful. Try it with Flying Dog Horn Dog, or Avery Hog Heaven.

Cypress Grove Humboldt Fog (goat cheese)
Made by a mother/daughter team in California, it has buttery, creamy, faintly feta taste. Seek out Nogne O 100 or Rogue Old Crustacean to pair with this tasty cheese.

Maytag Blue
Made from pasteurised cow’s milk, Maytag Blue is a more subtle blue cheese which dominates the US market. Try this with Flying Dog Horn Dog, or Uinta XV Anniversary.

Neal’s Yard Dairy Colton Bassett Stilton
Rich, creamy, mellow and savoury with a buttery texture. Move Heaven and Earth to have this with Weyerbacher Blithering Idiot – a truly outstanding pairing, you may hear an angelic chorus. Whatever you do, do not pair this cheese with Norrebro Little Korkny Ale, or the Uinta XV Anniversary – it produces appalling bad, rancid, moldy, metallic, vomit-inducing sensations.

Neal’s Yard Montgomery Cheddar
Rich, sweet, fruity, nutty, beefy flavours reminiscent of the caramelised edge of a Sunday roast. This cheese will play well with most barleywines, especially so with the Flying Dog Horn Dog (which won the award of “most cheese agnostic” beer!), Weyerbacher Blithering Idiot, Norrebro Little Korkny, Avery Hog Heaven, Rogue Old Crustacean… well, pretty much any decent barleywine will do good things with this wonderful cheese.

It was a dirty job, but we took one for The Team

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Beerlicious articles by Stuart Carter, stuart@beerlicious.net is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-No Derivative Works 3.0 United States License.

This is part one of a linked two part article looking at pairing barleywine and cheese. The second part will look at the flip side, pairing cheese with barleywine.

A few bottles of barleywine

Mikkeller Big/Worse
A Danish barleywine.
Flavour is sweet and fruity, making this a very easy to drink beer. It does not play very well with the cheese we chose, making this hard to recommend as a pairing beer. But it’s well worth it as a drinking beer

Weyerbacher Blithering Idiot
A Pennsylvanian beer.
The absolute show-stopper perfect pairing of the evening was Blithering Idiot paired with Neal’s Yard Dairy Colston Bassett Stilton. This pairing is definitely a 10 out of 10: you will taste rich, buttery, creamy sweet notes in the cheese, with a cheeky little hop/blue cheese snap at the back of your throat as the after-taste. Outstandingly good.
Your mileage will definitely vary more with cave aged Gruyere: one comment of “sweet and tasty”, one of “BAD ANIMAL, BAD!”.

Avery Hog Heaven
A Colorado brewery.
Pairs very well with Neal’s Yard Dairy Montgomery Cheddar – it makes the cheese taste more cheesy, without developing any harsh flavours. It pairs reasonably well with Cave Aged Guyere, bringing out a funky nutty taste.

Flying Dog Horn Dog
A Maryland brewery.
This beer is best described as “cheese agnostic”: it will pair respectably well with a wide range of cheese, but never reaches the heights of the Blithering Idiot and the Stilton.
With Maytag Blue, the beer brings out a nutty spiciness; with the Cave Aged Gruyere, it reduces the funk of the cheese and brings a buttery flavour out, but beware of the Cypress Grove Humboldt Fog – your mileage will vary a lot with this pairing.

Norrebro Little Korkny Ale
A Danish barleywine, it tastes much more like a Sherry than a beer. It does not play well with anything less than a powerful blue cheese – it is so sweet that it will drown out any lesser cheese, but beware Stilton – for me, the combination with the Stilton was bad enough for me to comment “Bad, fail, kicked puppies”! Enjoy this as a good drink, don’t sweat it as a pairing beer.

Nogne O 100
A Norwegian brewery.
A very pleasant beer, it is meant to be paired with a goat cheese like Humboldt Fog. Comments include “brings out faint Stilton flavour”; “Goat Heaven! Goats should drink this!”; “brings out some spice, makes the cheese more creamy”. Don’t pair this with Stilton, the cheese will wash the beer out entirely.

Rogue Old Crustacean
An Oregon brewery.
A huge, complex, powerfully flavoured beer. Brings out citrus spicy notes from Borough Market Cheddar, a nutty spiciness or Stilton/feta characteristic from the Humboldt Fog, a chalky earthy funk from the Stilton, and a good balance and complexity from the Montgomery Cheddar.

Great Divide Old Ruffian
A Colorado brewery.
Works wonderfully well with the Quicke’s Cheddar, bringing out buttery flavours, peppers, soft red fruits. Seek this out!

Uinta XV Anniversary
A Utah brewery.
Oh dear. Under no circumstances have this beer with the Colston Bassett Stilton. I nearly vomited. One of the participants described this combination as tasting “like the contents of a moldy New York dumpster”. There really is no way to emphasise how truly appalling this pairing is. I warn you: if you seek out this pairing, puppies will commit suicide in horror. Won’t you think of the puppies?

It was a dirty job, but we did it.

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This year, we settled on filet mignon, roasted winter vegetables, and mixed greens with homemade Roquefort blue cheese dressing.  The dinner was actually quite easy to put together.  It required a minimal amount of prep work–cutting the veggies and blending the dressing–but was otherwise a breeze to assemble.  The difficult part was choosing a beer.  I wanted something special as it was Valentine’s day, so I pulled out a slight rarity, Opus 10 by Two Brothers Brewing Co.  Classified as a cherry lambic, it is entirely unique as it is a dark lambic with more chocolate than cherry flavors.  The result was quite fantastic.

Knowing my wife is not a big beer fan, I also opened a bottle of Kirkland Napa Cabernet Sauvignon.  I figured this was a perfect opportunity to pit beer against wine.  For those who like tannic hearty Cabs, let me say that for $16 a bottle at Costco, you can’t beat the Kirkland Cab.  Really, it is worth it.  To me it tastes like a $35 bottle (despite my affinity for beer, I still love a good wine).  But this is a blog about beer and food, and I digress.

My first comparison came with the filet.  Both the cab and the lambic went well with the meat, but to be honest, the wine enhanced the flavor of the steak and the beer did not.  My next comparison came with the root veggies–carrots, butternut squash, and sweet potatoes roasted under the broiler with olive oil, salt, and pepper.  The veggies went just fine with both the beer and the wine, no weird flavors or anything.  The most interesting pairing of the meal was the Roquefort dressing and the lambic.  If you aren’t a fan of funky beer or funky cheese you would not like this pairing.  The lambic took the spoiled flavor of the cheese and enhanced it ten-fold.  For those who are curious, I looked it up, and the flavor I’m refering to is butyric acid–common in rancid butter, parmesan cheese, and body odor!  Doesn’t sound good unless you’re into that sort of thing, right?  It is kind of like reading reviews of lambics–”horsey,” “sweaty,” “barnyard,” etc.  You have to ask yourself, “But is it good?”  Split decision.

My wife found the combination to be utterly foul.  I thought it was good if not a bit overpowering.  I’ll be honest, I like smelly cheese and all kinds of wild brews, but I actually needed to mix in other parts of the meal so as to keep from being overwhelmed.

The real surprise for the night for me was when I pitted the cherry lambic directly against the dark red wine.  The wine brought out the cherry in the lambic in a way that was quite pleasant.  All in all it was a very interesting experiment.  The only disappointment I had was that I didn’t save any Opus 10 for dessert.  Chocolate-cherry lambic would’ve been awsome with some brownies à la mode with berry sauce.

Like Guinness. Only better.

Frozen microwaved pizza.   But really heavy on the garlic, which can make anything good.

I really had no basis for choosing this pairing.  It was just a case of “I wonder how this will taste,” which is something I do quite a bit of.

Beamish is the same style as Guinness, but a bit more flavorful.  But still incredibly mild as stouts go.  I’ve had many a porter that was darker and bolder in flavor than Beamish (all the more so as compared to Guinness).  Which just serves to highlight how fuzzy the line is between porter and stout.  It’s very, very fuzzy.  But I digress.

So how was the pairing?  Meh.  Entirely pleasant, but neither the beer nor the food was enhanced by the pairing.  Very average, with no harsh flavors.

Good enough to crack one open if it’s convenient, but definitely don’t go out of your way to have this.

My first instinct was to polish off the stout before digging into dinner.  “Coffee stout won’t go with pizza!” I thought.  But I don’t guzzle beer, and there was just too much left to finish for me to hurry through it before eating.

Surprisingly good.  Not “Oh my god you must try this it will rock your world” good.  But pretty darn good for something that never should have happened to begin with.

By the time I’d finished my first slice, my glass was empty.  I wanted another slice, which presented an opportunity to try one more beer with it.  Having been surprised by a pairing that no one would have suggested if they’d chosen carefully, I went with what should have been the obvious choice, a pilsner.  Brooklyn Pilsner, to be exact.  Which may be my all-time favorite pilsner.

Unfortunately, I think the popular image of pizza and beer (in which the beer is a pilsner-like macro such as Bud or Coors) has more to do with the flavorlessness of macros than it does with any special qualities in the pilsner style.  Brooklyn Pilsner is quite hoppy, and the hops clashed pretty bad with the pizza.

So, to sum up: coffee stout, which should have been a horrible pairing, went quite well with this pizza.  Brooklyn Pilsner, which ought to have been a great match, was harsh and unpleasant here.

If you’ve ever had gorgonzola, you know it is intense.  It dominates this dish, so when picking a beer, you’re primarily picking something to complement the gorgonzola.

Been eating on the pizza for a couple days, so I’ve sampled three different beers with it.   Dick’s Double Diamond Winter Ale, Sierra Nevada ESB, and Tommyknocker Butthead Doppelbock.  They were all pretty much shots in the dark.  I really wasn’t sure what would go well with something as crazy as gorgonzola.

Happily, they all worked.  I’d say the Butthead was best, the ESB placed second, and the Double Diamond clocked in at number three.

Double Diamond is a Winter Warmer along the lines of an old ale.  Not especially hoppy, but rich and malty with some fruity esters and a nice alcohol warmth.  It was just ok with this.

Sierra Nevada is an Americanized ESB — a bit more citrus than English versions.  I was very pleased that the hops didn’t clash with this.  Something even hoppier might even work.

I was really unsure about going doppelbock, but Butthead was excellent with it.  It has a more roasted character than most of the really classic examples of the style.  And it’s just a bit thinner on the robust malt character that a Salvator has.  But still a well done doppelbock and it was a great compliment to the gorgonzola.