I decided to try my hand at a beer/cheese pairing. No stress - just the Jen and I. No stress, that is, except I had to first purchase the cheeses, and decided to go for the best cheese shop in town. I’ve been to The Cheese Board many times for pizza and pastries, but never before to pick out a selection of cheeses. The experience was similar to my first trip to The Toronado, except the cheese monger who drew my card didn’t turn her back on me when it was obvious I was a noob. She was, in fact, very patient and helpful, for which I was overly grateful.
With little idea what to buy, except that I wanted one aged, somewhat hard cheese, one soft, kind of weird cheese, and something tart and acidic, I started with the first one to catch my eye. I forget who makes it, but it’s their Grand Cru. On top of that, it’s made in Monroe, Wisconsin, a tiny town that is resident to a good chunk of one of my best friends’ family. My hard, aged cheese chosen, I went for an obvious soft ‘n weird - Chimay. Jen and I have had that at The Trappist, and we both like it. It’s a little weird and footish for me, but it’s Jen’s Trappist fave. Then I saw one of those cute little soft cheese cylinders. Turns out, it was a raw goats milk cheese, somewhat grassy, not very goaty at all, creamy and delicious. So I bought half a cylinder of that. I asked the cheese monger what she recommended in the way of a blue cheese, and she brought out a French blue cheese - again, made from raw milk, I think - that was both cheap and super delicious. On the soft side, with a citrus acidity and lots of blue all through it. I bought that, some mixed olives and crackers, and took off for Ledger’s to figure out what beers I should buy.
First off was Chimay’s Tripel. An obvious choice to go along with the beer-soaked Chimay cheese. I think I read on the RRBC menu that hoppy beers go well with blue cheese. Maybe not, though. Either way, I thought of Het Anker’s Carolous Hopsinjoor to go with the blue - a very hoppy beer, but using (if my taste buds aren’t lying) European or noble/noble-like hops*, rather than what you’d find in a hoppy West Coast US beer (Cascade, Columbus, etc.). I was thinking Unibroue’s Blanche de Chambly would go well with something. Fortunately, we had a bottle in the fridge at home. I also grabbed a Monk’s Cafe Sour Red Ale, just in case that Hopsinjoor didn’t work with the blue.
Jen stopped by Trader Joe’s on the way home and picked up a white wine cured salami. Damn, this is super faux hoity toity.
In that picture, the grand cru is at the top, with the Chimay center below, the creamy goat cheese next to it and above the blue (which I hope is obvious). I’ll leave it to the reader to figure out where the salami, crackers, cashews, and olives sit.
I got home and futzed around, completely forgetting band practice was happening at 7:30. I got everything all presentable by around 6:30/6:45, and we sat down with our delicious cheeses and beers, along with some cashews we’d found at Grocery Outlet last week. No fine dining is complete without a Gross-out selection.
As we sat down to dinner and our beers, I discoverd it’s a lot harder for me to pay close attention to all the details when I’m downing multiple beers and several different foods. There’s always a battle in my head between the forces of Documentation and the forces of Experience, and the cause of “STFU and enjoy your dinner before you have to run off to practice” won out this day, as you can probably tell from the descriptions below.
The Blanche du Chambly accompanied the Grand Cru and the soft goat cheese very well. The spices and wheatiness of the whit were great with the grassy, creamy cheese, and with the salty, hard cheese.
The Chimay Trippel with the Chimay cheese was a no-brainer, and worked out perfectly, as well.
The Hopsinjoor was my favorite pairing of them all. I find that beer to be a strange one. I rarely pick up a bottle or buy a pint when I’m out drinking and see it. Noble hops are a crazy flavor when used in abundance. But Hopsinjoor with blue cheese is just perfect. So much massive flavor in the cheese and the beer, but they don’t fight. They take up slightly different spaces, and ended up creating a flavor sum greater than the parts.
The salami was also delicious, with some pretty prominent black pepper flavors (which is probably a “duh” kind of observation - I don’t know about these things, I was vegetarian for years, until recently). It went particularly well with the Chimay Tripel. Everything seemed to go particularly well with the Chimay Tripel, with the possible exception of the blue cheese, which overpowered all but the Hopsinjoor.
Before I could open the Monk’s Cafe, there was a knock at the door, and it was time to go practice. I’m saving that bottle for a later review.
* Het Anker’s site
confirms this:
4 types of hops are used: Golding, Spalt, Hallertau and Saaz.
Except for Golding, which is very similar to the noble hops, those are all noble.
