We kicked off the "month of love" feeding our love of cheese with another installment of pairing it with beer, assisted by numerous, like-minded friends. Our usual crew picked up cheeses from Trader Joe’s, Fred Meyer and Grocery Outlet (we’d heard they often have some good deals on good cheese), trying to select ones we hadn’t used in previous pairings. One friend, with family in Wisconsin, brought back three blocks of dairy goodness from his holiday visit. Other friends contributed their pairing skills helping to select beer and cider. From this fine time we found the following eleven pairings, in no particular order, to be our favorites.
Westminster Aged Cheddar with Aecht Schlenkerla Rauchbier Helles Marzen
At 12 months old this cheese remains creamy, balancing the thin sharpness of this smoky beer.
Trader Joe’s Ghost Pepper Cheddar and Heretic Make America Juicy Again IPA
The cheese wasn’t overly spicy but did have a late palate heat that when combined with the juicy IPA was reminiscent of Burnside Brewing’s Sweet Heat. Since that beer is unlikely to be available again, if it’s something you enjoy, try out this beer and cheese pairing.
Trader Joe’s Ghost Pepper Cheddar with La Chouffe Blond
Going in a completely different route with this beer, the effervescence of the Belgian Strong Golden Ale complimented the cheese’s heat nicely.
Roth Surchoix Grand Cru Alpine-Style Cheese with 2 Towns Riverwood Cider
Somehow this nutty cheese from Monroe, WI managed display both soft and hard characteristics at the same time, becoming more earthy when paired with the effervescent cider.
Guinness Cheddar with Deschutes The Dissident with Marionberries
The oddest looking cheese of this installment, it looks and even tastes a bit like root beer...in a good way. When eaten with this tanic beer it goes from root beer to chocolate. Hard to describe but trust us on this one.
Guinness Cheddar with Sam Smith’s Nut Brown
Less decadent than the previous pairing with The Dissident, it still goes the dessert route, reminding us of eating chocolate cake.
Mullins 12 Year Super Sharp White Cheddar with Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout
The sharpness of the Mosinee, WI cheese was brought out by this coffee beer and in return the cheese pulled the coffee flavor forward out of the sweetness of the beer. After a few bite, sip, bite, sip back and forths the combination was rich and dessert-like.
Murray’s Stilton with Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout
As with other stout/blue cheese pairings we've tested out before, this one was a hit. A hunk of this delicious blue cheese and a bottle of this stout and bye, bye we’ll go off in a corner by ourselves, stopping only when the both of them have vanished.
Trader Joe’s Cheddar & Gruyere Melange Cheese with Fremont 2018 B-Bomb
The intensely flavorful beer combined with the first-time-we’ve-seen-it blended cheese to create a deliciously unexpected chocolate bar flavor profile.
Murray’s Stilton with Deschutes The Dissident with Marionberries
Along the same vein of the pairing with Lagunitas Cappuccino Stout, the creamy blue cheese found a fast friend in this Flanders Oud Bruin that was aged for nine months on Oregon Marionberry puree.
Castello Vintage Havarti with Saison Dupont
A big selling point on this 24 month aged cheese was the crystalline texture. The crunchy bits found in some aged cheeses are the result from the unraveling of protein chains, adding what we believe to be a very desirable texture to the cheese. Saison Dupont has proven to be a very pair-able beer for us in the past and in this pairing it amplified the flavor of the aged cheese further still, much to our delight.
Big thanks to everyone that joined in the fun with us! The more palates and minds we have contributing, the better as far as we're concerned. And even bigger thanks to The BeerMongers for indulging our pairing forays.
Have you ever been into an Asian grocery store and been intrigued by packages of things you have little to no idea of what they are? We make periodic trips to our favorite, Hong Phat out on SE 82nd, to stock up on pantry staples and are drawn to the salty snacks aisle where some bags' contents are understandable through pictures and/or English labels while others remain a mystery. After our recent pairing with coffee creamers, grabbing some random salty snacks from Hong Phat didn't seem too odd.
Pool of Snacks
- Lay's 2-in-1 Prawn & Salsa
- Boy Bawang Cornick Salt & Vinegar
- Oishi Prawn Crackers
- Powers for Easy Life Rice Crackers with Tomato
- Want Want Natori Snack
As we were inspecting the bags more closely before opening we noticed that we had ended up with an unintentional geographical assortment - two from China, two from the Philippines and one from Thailand.
We haven't seen Lay's 2-in-1 in this country but upon opening discovered that the two seasoning flavors, prawn and salsa, weren't combined onto each chip. Instead the larger, redish chips were prawn flavored and the smaller, greenish chips were salsa (verde) flavored. The prawn flavor being very pronounced was off putting for a couple of those in our group but made for an interesting combination with the flavors and carbonation in Saison Dupont and helped to balance the overt maltiness of Old Speckled Hen. The salsa flavored chips were easier to pair, going well with Heretic Lager for a mild Mexican-ish pairing. When eaten with Culmination Sour Flower the green onion of the chip came out a la onion ramen.
Boy Bawang Cornick Salt & Vinegar appeared from the picture on the label to be similar to corn nuts and indeed they were. Their flavor profile was strong enough to stand up to the hops in Breakside Wanderlust and made for solid bar snacking material. They were similarly good with AleSmith Nut Brown and like the Lay's 2-in-1, were able to balance the maltiness in this beer.
Oishi Prawn Crackers were not nearly as prawn-powerful as the red chips in the Lay's bag and found partners in lighter drinking options including coffee, Heretic Lager and Cascadia Granny Smith cider. The cider made the prawn flavor more pronounced but even the prawn-averse in our group enjoyed the light, easy pairing.
Powers for Easy Life Rice Crackers with Tomato easily had the best name of the group although the contents of the bag were probably the least enjoyable. We settled on a description of a salty version of breakfast cereal, either Corn Pops or a mild version of Capt'n Crunch. Although we have paired beer with cereal, this salty hybrid had a hard time finding a partner. Saison Dupont seemed to be the "best" by making the snack less cereal tasting. All of the other beers as well as the cider accentuated the sweetness, resulting in flavors ranging from chocolate Sugar Pops to Apple Jacks.
Want Want Natori Snack ---> had the second best name but definitely the best illustration on the back of the bag, giving us hopes that these were going to be The Snack. What we found upon opening the bag were sticks that looked like battered french fries but had a very mild flavor reminiscent of those crunchy chow mein noodles we've all had atop a Chinese-ish dish. Not surprising, both the mild Saison Dupont and the Cascadia Granny Smith made for appropriate pairings.
Thanks again to Chris, Mag, Paul, beertender David and others who were willing to go along with our wacky pairings once again!
This week's best were a split decision between cider and beer, with all of the makers being relatively new to us.
Starting off on the beer side we had two more beers from Revision Brewing Company out of Sparks, NV. The first beer we had from them was a triple IPA and made The List in early November.
Planet Lovetron - The label artwork has a fun (albeit perhaps sexist) pink/lilac theme that jives with the slightly hazy, mildly fruity New England style IPA contained inside. The combination of Amarillo, Mosaic and Citra hops and "pillowy bed of malted goodness" hit our taste buds just right, in line with its 4+ rating on Untappd.
The Bruff - Once again featuring one of our favorite combination of hops (Citra and Mosaic), this 8% New England style IPA is fantastically balanced.
Heretic El Diablito - This was a beer that we were far more enamored with than our drinking buddies were. The 9% came across to us as pleasantly sweet (instead of cloying) and drinking dangerously crushable. As with their 12% Ecstasy barleywine, they seem to have the skill of "hiding" big ABVs in delicious drinkable packages.
Now for the cider side of the list, starting with Bauman's Cider Company located in Gervais, OR (yeah, we had to look at a map, too, to find that it is about halfway between Wilsonville and Salem). These two ciders were a great introduction to them.
Loganberry - Light berry in flavor with a beautiful color, it is effervescent and temporarily transports one to the warmer days of summer. Loganberries are one typically one of the first berries to ripen with the trade off that due to their delicate softness, they must be hand picked. We applaud Bauman's for using them despite that and hope to find more of this cider in our glass in the future.
Clyde's Dry - Named for the cider maker's grandpa, this is a blend of 20 varieties of apples. What could have been a muddled, middling cider is in fact wonderfully complex and slightly funky.
Carlton Cyderworks Summer Set - Located just down the road from Bauman's is Carlton Cyderworks in McMinnville. This is the third offering we've had from them, the others being a perry and their 2017 Willamette Week Pro/Am offering. A straightforward 50/50 blend of Dolgo Crab apples from Sunnyside, WA and Gravenstein apples from Wheatland Ferry, OR, it features a slightly funky aroma with a pleasantly tart flavor.
We have been keeping our eyes open, and starting to do some stocking up, of beverages for the holidays in anticipation of the gatherings we'll be attending and hosting. It's a bonus that all the beers and ciders on this week's list are available in packaged/portable form.
