The Holiday Cheese Board: Great with Any Seasonal Beer

I know we discuss all things BEER here at the Jolly Good Fellows, but I come from a beer pairing background and love to match beer with a great cheese. This story is from my former blog, Beer Meets Cheese. It doesn't speak to the beer as much as the cheese - but trust me, any of your favorite holiday ales will pair pleasantly with these cheeses. Before you run out to the store for some last minute items, consider putting together this cheese board to pair with your holiday beers.

Enjoy - and let us know what beer and cheese you like to to pair for the holidays.

Picture it... Phoenix, 2011.

I’m at my in-laws house for Christmas day. All of them have heard about my blogging and my love for beer and cheese. Suddenly, the dreaded question is asked: “why don’t you make a cheese board for Christmas brunch?”

Oh, crap. Now I have to put my money where my mouth is – or some clever phrase like that.

Did I mention I’m in a dry household?

Well – at least that helps to end the fear of pairing beer with my cheese.

Now all I need is to get my cheese board together.

But we’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto. While one of the 5 C’s of Arizona is cattle, dairy cows are definitely NOT part of this agreement. Finally, after going to several “standard” grocery stores around the Scottsdale area, I broke down and drove the 8 miles to Whole Foods Market. I could feel the rays of light shining down from heaven as they lit my path to the cheese counter – filled with lovely gourmet cheese! Finally, I feel like I’m pack in Portland for a moment (the sunshine outside tells me otherwise, but that’s why I’m here in Phoenix to avoid the rains of an Oregon Christmas).

Selection was easy from that point – a 5 month old Manchego cheese to be paired with a pear / apple chutney (made from the gift box from Harry & David’s – thanks aunt Molly and uncle John!) was the first selection (thanks to Deborah Madison's book Vegetarian Cooking for Everyone for this suggestion!).

Then I moved to my old standards, a good aged Gouda and some creamy Taleggio. From here, I was stumped… but thankfully the friendly WFM cheesemonger was there to save me!

He suggested we try La Tur, an Italian cheese made from pasteurized goat, sheep, and cow’s milks. What we discovered was love at first bite! I would describe the cheese in my own words, but I find that Murray’s Cheese shop of New York City does it the best justice:

From the great wine region of Piemonte comes La Tur: a dense, creamy blend of pasteurized cow, goat and sheep milk. Runny and oozing around the perimeter with a moist, cakey, palette-coating paste, its flavor is earthy and full, with a lingering lactic tang. The effect is like ice cream served from a warm scoop: decadent and melting from the outside in.

Um…yes, please! I’d like to crawl into a bucket of this and not come out until the New Year… oh, wait, you mean I can do that!? Ye-es!

Seriously, spend the extra duckets to buy this cheese next time you pick up some food for a party (impressing your friends = priceless), or maybe just hoard it for yourself once your realize how delicious it is!

For pictures of the entire cheese board and brunch, please check out my Flikr page HERE.

Cheese Paired with Winter Warmers

Written By Guest Blogger from Beer Meets Cheese, Sarah James.


Hi Ho! Sarah the blogger here, with a beer and cheese pairing news flash! Since Skye has been writing about Winter Warmer Ales all month, he thought it would be a great idea if I stepped in and suggested a cheese that pairs with Winter Warmer beer. Since I love a challenge, and this is sort of what "I do" for my blog, I was happy to take this match up on in full force.

When I think Winter Warmers, I think back to when brewer’s finished a good harvest season and decided to brew some ales with higher alcohol content in order to warm the belly during the cold winter months. While many of the Winter Warmer beers have spices added, I find that the true ones stick to darker roasted malts and little hops.

In order to pair a good cheese with this style beer, I kept in mind the cellar where many of the root vegetables and bottles of beer sit during the cold months of winter. What else sits in these cellars? Some good cheese, of course!

Sticking to this logic, I picked out a Spanish sheep’s milk cheese called Zamorano. The sheep from this region, called Churras, are used to colder and more humid climates. The cheese itself is aged in cellars in these climates – most likely sitting right alongside homemade beer, canned preserves, and root vegetables.

This hunch proved successful, for the pairing was delightful and highly recommended by Beer Meets Cheese.

So let’s discuss the details before we get too ahead of ourselves!

Beer Selection:

Pyramid Snow Cap Winter Warmer Ale

Purchased at $2.49 for a 22 ounce bottle.

Beer Highlights:

Dark mahogany color, poured a good head, but it quickly disappeared. Good lacing. Full mouth taste – bit of tangy hops, but overall a malty, caramel flavor, with hints of citrus. Good carbonation.

{ can you tell I’m a bit simple when it comes to reviews }

Cheese Highlights:

Zamorano Mitica


Purchased for $4.50 for a quarter pound (it was $18.99/pound)

Unpasteurized Sheep’s milk cheese, and made with animal rennet. Smells like a good parmesan cheese, different than a Manchego, it is a bit dryer in texture and harder. Mild flavor with grassy and nutty notes.

PAIRING

The nutty flavors of both the beer and cheese are enhanced with this pairing. The beer cuts through the saltiness of the cheese, leaving a lovely after taste and feel in the mouth. I wouldn’t quite place it as a “love at first bite,” but this combination will do well on a cheese plate during a winter get together. I mean, what’s better than having some friends over, drinking some Winter Warmer beers, and eating some great cheese to pair with it? I would add some dried fruit to enhance the mild citrus flavors often found in a Winter Warmer Ale, but don’t take my word for it!

{ prost! }

Working off the ranch...

We haven't been around the last two days but we haven't been stagnant. Instead we have been working on some commentary for Beer Meets Cheese. Matching up French and Belgium farmhouse ales with brie cheese. Head on over to www.beermeetscheese.com for the full story. (I apologize up front for my grammar and sentence structure, I was well in the bottles at writing time)

Tomorrow we will be posting our 1st Annual Gift Guide for Beer Lovers and returning to our regularly scheduled program with another edition of Welcome to Your Weekend. Thanks for dropping by!

But You Hate Beer...

"You used to hate beer - remember the time you told me that?"

My mother (bless her heart) likes to remind me of this statement, spoken when I was 16 years old.

What I like to remind her is that I still don't like beer...or at least what they called "beer" at that time. Honestly, what 16-year-old kid seriously enjoys the taste of Budweiser or Busch Light? Unless it's in the middle of a cornfield (I grew up in a rural small town in Southwest Wisconsin), and served from plastic cups for the sole purpose of getting you drunk (with an unbelievably bad hang over - not to mention the runs), why would I enjoy “beer?”

I sure didn't.

The first time I enjoyed beer was when I had a New Glarus Spotted Cow. The brewery opened in 1993, during the upswing of craft brewed microbreweries, and it was around 1998 when I had my first taste of this “real” beer. Its yeasty flavor with a mellow malt aftertaste made me realize beer is far more complex than the macro-brewed items made with corn and rice. I was spoiled by beer from this moment onward, and all the beers made in Wisconsin have only enhanced my curiosity in exploring the complexity and varieties of beer. If you want to know when I became more of a beer enthusiast, it was when I moved to Boston. Drinking the Cambridge Brewing Company’s Great Pumpkin Ale and their Heather Ale changed my beer life forever.

Now I study beer (my senior undergraduate thesis focused on how customer’s interact with beer), write about beer (www.beermeetscheese.com), and enjoy the beverage in all its aspects (especially when it’s a microbrewery beer I share with my mom). I can feel my German ancestors rejoice.

Prost!