Pairing fall beer and artisanal cheese

It was a brisk fall day when I stopped by Binny's Lakeview location last week to discuss my two favorite food groups -- beer and cheese -- with Glunz Beer Culinary Council member and cheese maven Jeff Collins, Binny's gourmet grocery manager. We decided we'd pair some craft-produced, autumn-appropriate beers with artisanal cheeses. After several trials, we found a couple of great matches we'd like to share with you.

Why beer and cheese?
Before we jump into the pairings, we'd like to make a brief case for why restaurants should care about offering beer with cheese, and it starts by dispelling the myth that wine is cheese's only perfect mate.

Jeff writes, "The classic pairing with cheese has always been wine because the wide variety of styles and varietals would give you a large enough canvas available to match any wine and cheese for a pairing.

"There is also a certain snob factor that would play into the fact you would never pair beer and cheese," he continues. "Cheese and wine, classically European in their centuries of lineage, have always had a certain dignified perception -- where beer in America was confined to the bowling alley and the frat house. In the past 10 years, craft beers have emerged and reinvented themselves, providing multiple flavor and style profiles of their own."

That development and growth in the craft beer category now has created consumers who are increasingly interested in upping their beer savvy, Jeff adds, and this trend offers a great opportunity for restaurants to boost check averages by getting creative with beer and cheese pairings.

"As the demand for serious beer by serious customers rose, the perception changed as well. Beer has been legitimized, and that new-found respect is now acknowledged by chefs who also are looking less at European haute tradition and more toward creating the next wave of American craft dining."

And now back to the pairings, with tasting notes from a professional and a novice enthusiast ...

The Beer: Founders Red's Rye P.A.
Jeff: The reason I enjoy Red's so much is the amount of body to it. It reminds me of a double IPA with its golden copper color and the solid malty backbone, without the extreme hop profile, naturally. On the finish, the rye is clean and reminiscent of a classic English bitter.
Lacey: This is a great version of a Rye P.A. -- malty, caramely and a nice spice from the rye to balance out the grapefruit flavors of the Amarillo hops. It's 70 IBUs, but does not punch you in the taste buds.

Try with:
Chabrin
Jeff: A wonderful firm-textured goat's milk cheese from the Pyrenees. Where most goat's milk cheeses are softer and more on the gamey side, the age and harder texture here allows the butterscotchy and milky flavors of the cheese to step forward. The sweetness in the cheese worked together with the malt in the beer to create a nice round flavor. It produces an almost savory, hit-you-under-the-jawline sort of flavor reaction. Our first attempt at this pairing might have been the best one.
Lacey: I was really digging the balance between the Chabrin and the Red's Rye. The beer became a little less spicy and bitter, and the cheese's natural sweetness was enhanced. Creamy, smooth and just a hint of goat's milk flavor at the end without being overpoweringly goaty.


Morbier
Jeff: A traditional rustic cheese from France that takes the pairing flavor in a different direction. The rind of the Morbier is brushed with a brine to increase the tacky nature of it and to help enhance the earthy, barnyard and robust flavors. These pronounced flavors stand up the malt, with the the mid-palate turning peppery, leaving the finish light, clean and buttery. We recommend that you enjoy the cheese with the rind on. (Or not, I'm not the boss of you.)
Lacey: I have to agree with Jeff here on eating the rind. It really brought out some gentle palate-tingling pepper notes of the beer without going overboard. And yet it finished clean and mild, perhaps from the beer's effervescence? I also thought it was neat that this unpasteurized cow's milk cheese has a layer of ash running through the center of it; you can detect just a tiny bit of char flavor when it hits your tongue.


Appenzeller
Jeff: I don't know what it is about fall, but it always makes this cheese taste better than normal. This firm, aged selection from Switzerland is used in raclette and fondue season for its full flavors and melting properties. It is very beefy and meaty in its flavor, which allows it to run alongside the Red's without clashing with it. Together, the tanginess is really accentuated with the help of the beer, leaving me wondering about how well these two work together and where I left the raclette machine last spring ...
Lacey: I love that Jeff calls this cheese "meaty": It works! This Swiss cheese has that full-palate, satisfying umami on its own. The Red's Rye tames the robust flavors just enough to let Appenzeller's milky sweetness shine through.

The Beer: Samuel Smith Yorkshire Stingo
Jeff: The fact that this is aged in oak certainly adds that characteristic to its flavor profile, but as we let the beer breathe, it really opened up. The flavor of figs and dark fruit were there at the start, but as time went on, it started to open up with flavors of molasses starting to bloom as it had a chance to unwind.
Lacey: When I saw that this beer was oak-casked for a year before bottling, I expected it to be very big. But at 8% ABV, the alcohol content helped to balance out the oakiness, and the wood-aging somehow helped quell the alcohol burn. This beer has sweet dried fruit notes and is the color of maple syrup or clear caramel.

Try with:
Marcona almonds
Jeff: To pair nuts and beer is no creative achievement. If that was the case, countless bartenders would be admiring their James Beard awards right now. However, in this case, the nuts we tried had their flavors turned up very loud. The Marcona almond, Spanish in origin and sautéed in sunflower oil, had its flavor not only accentuate by the sweetness of the beer, but then proceeded to finish with their flavor completely stripped down to their natural oils on the finish. Just wonderful. As much as I enjoyed this pairing, with the salt and the richness, I couldn't really enjoy eating them for more than 3 hours. That is all I could really handle. I am only human.
Lacey: Okay, okay, so this pairing isn't a cheese, but what cheese plate is complete without a few complementary nibbles?! As soon as we tasted the Stingo, we both thought nuts. Maybe it's from the year-long wood-aging the beer went through. Somewhere nestled in the flavors of buttery oak and discrete vanilla was a sweet nuttiness. The essence of the Marcona almonds hung around on the palate (in a good way) when paired with the Stingo.


Colston-Bassett Stilton
Jeff: Arguably the King of the Blue cheeses, this British export helped create something special when paired with the Stingo. The beauty of the Stilton -- with its creamy texture, profound veining and rich, earthy flavor -- is that it proved to be a perfect dance partner with the cheese. The beer cuts the creaminess at the start, then the natural richness from each plays off each other to create an almost maple syrup sweetness on the mid-palate before it changes back to earthy on the finish. I have a hunch it will be a while before I enjoy a pairing this much again.
Lacey: This pairing was a classic case of using beer to contrast a flavor profile. The big Stingo matched well with the robust Stilton. The sweet notes of each were discernible, but I still got elements of the oak and dark fruit from the beer and that great funkiness from the cheese.

Comté
Jeff: From the Swiss and French border, the Comté is a personal favorite of mine. Firm, fruity with an almost creamy, yogurt-like flavor. I thought the Stingo would only work with the deeper flavored items with its deep, dark fig start, yet lightly cola-sweet flavor on the back end. The Comté worked in playing to the lighter tones of its character. The fruity quality was flushed to the fore at the start, but the nutty quality in the cheese once again proved to be key to the match.
Lacey: We went back to complementary flavors for this one. The Comté was nutty upfront and in the finish, with some buttery oak flavors coming through in the middle thanks to the beer. Nice and creamy all the way through, and not too sweet.

Talk to your cheese monger (or hop on over to Binny's and see Jeff!), and give these pairings a try. Let us know your thoughts by posting in the comments section. Thanks again to Jeff for the great cheese and beer insights. And check the blog soon for some festive winter beer and cheese pairings.

--Lacey Griebeler


Binny's Beverage Depot
Ivanhoe Castle & Catacombs Tasting Room
3000 N. Clark St.
Chicago, IL 60657
(773) 935-9400