Pairing Beer and Cheese

BEER & CHEESE Forget wine and cheese parties -- the true soul mate for fromage isn't made from grape juice - Janet Fletcher, Chronicle Staff Writer Thursday, February 17, 2005 Click to ViewClick to ViewClick to ViewClick to View The crowds munching nachos at America's ballparks all summer don't need convincing that beer and cheese go together. It's the die-hard wine enthusiasts, myself included, who resist the notion that beer may in fact be cheese's better match. As a longtime cheese aficionado, The Chronicle's weekly cheese columnist and a nightly wine drinker, I've reluctantly concluded that many cheeses give wine, especially dry wine, a rough time. But after several weeks of "research, " including two marathon tastings, I'm convinced that beer as a partner for cheese rarely stumbles. It takes some knowledge of beer and cheese to engineer the most harmonious marriages, but intolerable mismatches are rare. Mark Todd, a Sonoma County consultant who leads professional workshops on pairing cheese with wine and beer, concurs. "Some wine and cheese pairings have really excited me, but a lot of them have been, 'Oh boy, where's the sink?' " says Todd. Beer authorities offer several theories for their favorite beverage's superiority with cheese. For one, argues Todd, the two products grew up together, on the farm, with farm women making both. These women would surely have wanted their beer to taste good with their cheese and vice versa. Furthermore, experts say, both beer and cheese are based on grain, although cheese's link to grain -- via the grazing animal -- is more attenuated. Theories aside, beer excels with cheese because of the harmonies and contrasts the beverage brings to the match. "It's rare to find wines that echo any flavors in cheese," says Garrett Oliver, brewmaster of New York's Brooklyn Brewery and author of "The Brewmaster's Table" (HarperCollins, 2003). A nutty aged Gouda might find a complement in sherry, he admits, but dry table wines largely lack the nut and caramel aromas found in aged cheeses, aromas plentiful in malty beers like nut- brown ales, stouts and porters. "With wine, you're almost always working just with contrasts," says Oliver. "That's not as satisfying as also working in some harmonies." Harmonic convergence happens when a sharp, bitter, hoppy India Pale Ale meets a piquant, high-acid cheddar; or when a porter with its caramel and coffee notes encounters a smooth and sweet aged Gruyere. But contrast underlies some successful matchups, too, especially the contrast that carbonation provides. Cheeses are high in fat, often creamy and almost always mouth coating. Beer, by virtue of its carbonation, is brisk and palate cleansing. "It gets your mouth ready for another taste," says Tom Dalldorf, editor and publisher of Celebrator Beer News, a bimonthly national magazine based in Hayward. With dense, sticky, fresh goat cheeses, the kind that clings to your tongue, a highly carbonated beer like a hefeweizen, a light-bodied wheat beer, acts as a palate scrubber. Among wines, only sparkling wine has that refreshing capability, and it typically comes at higher cost. Strong, stinky washed-rind cheeses such as Munster and Livarot reliably demolish almost any wine. A concentrated and spicy Alsatian Pinot Gris or Gewurztraminer can hold its own, but most other dry wines fall by the wayside. What a surprise to discover how seamlessly these assertive cheeses meld with beer. Chimay Grande Reserve -- strong, dry and richly spiced -- meets the Munster on equal footing. At another tasting, I tried the beer with the pungent washed-rind Chimay cheese produced by the same Belgian abbey, a model marriage. Lucy Saunders, a Wisconsin-based beer writer, maintains a Web site called www.beercook.com and frequently conducts beer and cheese tastings. For successful pairings, advises Saunders, "it's useful to think in terms of four things: hops bitterness; malt sweetness or breadiness; the level of carbonation, and extra flavors added to the beer." Those extra flavors could be the cherries used in kriek (cherry beer) or the bitter orange peel and sweet spices used to flavor Belgian wheat beer (also called witbier). Oliver likes fruit beers with fresh cheeses, such as goat cheese, teleme and burrata; Todd prefers his kriek with triple cremes. Wheat beers tend to have higher acidity and a lighter taste profile, making them most appealing with young, delicate cheeses. Although the experts generally agree that lighter-styled beers in the pilsner and wheat beer camp complement mild cheeses, an intense cheese with an intense beer can be calamitous. I discovered this unfortunate truth when I met Dalldorf at the Rogue Ales Public House in San Francisco for a lengthy tasting. Point Reyes Original Blue, a tangy, salty, piquant cheese, paired with Rogue's robust, roasty Old Crustacean Barleywine -- a clash of titans -- was the only truly bad match of the day, a pairing that made me cringe. A much better partner, I thought, was the spicy, warm and mellow Chimay Grande Reserve, which took the edge off this potent cheese. Oliver, the Brooklyn brewmaster, occasionally participates in cheese- pairing competitions with sommeliers and says his beer selection often vanquishes the sommelier's chosen wine. "No one has ever brought a single red wine into competition," claims the brewer. "Your chances of getting away with it are extremely slim." But even the sommeliers' sweet white wines, sherries and fortified wines can be upstaged, says Oliver. In one taste-off recounted in his book, the barley wine he poured with Stilton triumphed over the sommelier's dessert wine. "Most people have the idea that this is one of wine's great strong points, " says Oliver, speaking of the beverage's supposed affinity for cheese. "They haven't given beer the benefit of the doubt, so they're surprised at what beer can do." EXPERT MATCHES The following pairings are based on suggestions from beer experts Tom Dalldorf, Garrett Oliver, Lucy Saunders and Mark Todd and have been tested at the table.. With: Young, fresh, tart cheeses such as fresh chevre, mozzarella and crescenza Try: Wheat beers such as hefeweizen, Bavarian-syle weissbier and Belgian- style witbier; pilsners. With: Humboldt Fog and other goat cheeses with a little age Try: A Belgian-style saison such as Ommegang Hennepin or Saison Dupont. With: Garrotxa and other aged goat cheeses with some caramel notes Try: Sierra Nevada Stout or similar dry, creamy stouts with coffee and chocolate aromas. With: Lamb Chopper and other mild, medium-aged sheep's milk cheeses with sweet, cooked-milk notes Try: Fat Tire, Red Tail Ale or similar amber ales well balanced between malt and hops. With: Ossau-Iraty, mature Pecorino Toscano and other aged sheep's milk cheeses with pronounced salty, nutty flavors Try: Lost Coast Brewery Downtown Brown or other brown ales. With: Soft-ripened triple creme such as Seal Bay, Pierre Robert or Mt. Tam Try: A Belgian-style saison such as Ommegang Hennepin or Saison Dupont; a dry kriek or other fruit beer. With: Aged Gruyere, Comte or other aged Swiss-style mountain cheeses Try: Anchor Porter, Rogue Shakespeare Stout or other sweet, mellow porters or stouts with chocolate, caramel and roasted coffee notes; brown ales. With: Montgomery cheddar or other classic English-style cheddar Try: McEwen's IPA or other pale ales with abundant hopping; Anchor Steam. With: Munster Gerome or other washed-rind cheeses with strong earthy aromas Try: Chimay Grande Reserve (blue label), Red Tail Ale or French biere de garde, such as Jeanlain or La Choulette Ambree. With: Saenkanter or other aged Gouda with pronounced caramel notes Try: Anchor Porter or other gently sweet, mellow, rounded porters; or nut- brown ales or amber ales. With: Stilton or other mild to moderately piquant blue cheeses Try: Old Foghorn Barleywine Style Ale or Moylan's Barleywine Style Ale. Serve barley wine at cellar temperature. -- Janet Fletcher PAIRINGS POINTERS Although you'll find many happy matches that break the following rules, these guidelines are a good starting point for thinking about beer with cheese. -- Pair delicate beers with young, fresh cheeses. -- Pair malty beers with nutty, aged cheeses. -- Pair highly hopped, bitter beers with tart, sharp cheeses, especially cheddars. -- Pair strong, sweet beers with blue cheeses. EXPERT OPINIONS Lucy Saunders on washed-rind cheeses: "I really like some of the darker ales, porters and stouts with those. I like that bready character that you get with a darker ale with a lot of chocolate malts in it, where the hops' bitterness isn't overwhelming. You want the aromas of the cheese to come through." Mark Todd on triple cremes: "My personal favorite is cherry kriek, Belgian cherry-flavored beer with sour cherries. Or any of the decent Belgian tripels that are high in alcohol content but have bright crispness. Chimay Tripel does well with high-fat, mild-flavored cheeses." Garrett Oliver on aged Goudas: "They tend to have a big caramel kind of flavor underpinning. They match up with brown ale or amber ale that has a lot of caramel flavor." Garrett Oliver on brie de Meaux: "It can be tough. You've got to be careful not to use something with a lot of hops. I had a competition in Denmark with a sommelier, and I won the round with a stout that had some chocolate in it. It wrapped itself around the cheese very nicely and worked its way into the mushroom flavors." Garrett Oliver on blue cheese: "I tend to go for stronger beers, beer with some residual sugar, like strong stouts and barley wines. I'm a big fan of port, but a nice aged barley wine and Stilton disappear into each other. It's a really beautiful match." -- Janet Fletcher Janet Fletcher is a Chronicle staff writer. E-mail her at jfletcher(a)sfchronicle.com. Page F - 1 URL: http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/c/a/2005/02/17/WIGHKBA1OC1.DTL �2005 San Francisco Chronicle -- ------------------------------ * * Dr. James Lee Ellingson, Adjunct Professor jellings(a)me.umn.edu * * University of Minnesota, tel: 651/645-0753 fax 651 XXX XXXX * * Great Lakes Brewing News, 1569 Laurel Ave., St. Paul, MN 55104 *