I’ve started up a new blog (Beer + Cheese) with my beer-loving husband and we’ll be posting about cheese and beer pairings plus other great food pairings over there. Last night we went to Steve Jones’ new Cheese Bar and wrote up a little review.

Check it out!

“It was time, we needed room to do more,” says Jones, whose clients include many top Portland restaurants as well as adventurous cheese shoppers. Jones says the spirit of the Cheese Bar is inspired by France’s tabac shops. “Every corner has one,” he says. “All the old men drinking espresso or grappa or having croissant. A tabac is for the neighborhood — they’re social yet convenient locations.”

~ Karen Brooks, The Oregonian

He’s hoping to open up in March and you can be sure I’ll be the first one in line.

The Cheese Bar • 6031 SE Belmont • Whoop! Whoop!

Boerenkaas from Willamette Valley Cheese Co, a 2009 favorite

* * *

FUCheese started off the year with a revelatory cheese and beer tasting put on by Saraveza and Steve’s Cheese. It kicked off a true obsession with pairing these two fine items and I spent most of the year trying new combinations and doing my best to spread the beer/cheese love.

In March, we packed up the car and stayed in a yurt in the Rogue River Valley to attend the 5th Annual Oregon Cheese Guild Cheese Festival in Central Point. We had so much fun at the festival and met some awesome people. We also visited Vern and Gianaclis at Pholia Farm which kicked off a love of goats. I still haven’t been brave enough to milk one yet. New Year’s resolution?

Linnea feeds a baby goat at Pholia Farm

In April, we made mascarpone, more yogurt and had some iffy cottage cheese. I also attended a hard cheese class at Kookoolan Farms which convinced me that we needed to get back on that horse and give hard cheeses another try. Did we? No. Another resolution, perhaps.

Nicole and I hit the road again, this time north to Seattle for the cheese festival at Pike’s Place Market. We went as volunteers and worked at the Peterson tent taking in money and handling out samples. It was a total blast and we may do it again this year. This time we’ll have to walk out of there with more cheese. We were just so overwhelmed after finishing our shift that it was all we could do to visit some of the smaller cheesemakers for samples and then go collapse in the park.

Nico attacks the mimolette @ Seattle Cheese Festival

In the summer, I was too busy camping, BBQ-ing and drinking beer to spend too much time in the kitchen. I got my first paid gig doing a pairing of cheeses and beers. Profits, admittedly, were a bit low because I bought waaay too much really awesome fancy cheese and paired it with incredible (and expensive) beers. It was a total blast, though, and everyone had a great time and – bonus! – we had enough cheese left over to put together a handsome platter for a dinner party of 6 the following weekend. I have done a couple more pairings for groups since then and my portioning is getting more under control.

I also spent a fair bit of my summertime involved in putting together the Portland Cheese Festival. I somehow wrangled my way onto the planning board and met some great people in the process. The festival went off really, really well. Feedback was – and continues to be – incredible. The cheesemakers brought amazing stuff and the location turned out to work pretty good. Hopefully when it comes around again, I’ll be able to get involved and build on what I learned with the last one. You’ll be there, too, right?

* * *

Sadly, this is where an already bumpy year for personal reasons got downright depressing. My father passed away at the end of October after a fierce, year-long battle with cancer. He was a good military man and, really, still too young to go. He loved hearing about the cheese festival and all our adventures with cheese. He was a big cheese fan (also smoked anchovies, hot mustard, oysters and other Scandinavian treats and terrors) and it was really tough to lose him. However, his death opened my eyes to what it means to have people in your life who truly care about you and for that I am so very thankful.

* * *

The end of the year rounded out with more goats, excellent cheese plates and a beer/cheese pairing challenge! My friend Bruce, a die-hard beer nerd and curator of fine brews decided it was time to pull up some beers from his cellar and do a tasting. He asked if I could pair some cheeses with his eclectic collection. Since I couldn’t pre-sample these beers due to their rarity and age, I went off of tasting notes from the brewers and other beer writers and his own recollection of what these tasted like or should taste like.

A 3-decade vertical of Sierra Nevada Celebration – 2009, 1999, 1989! – paired with a pungent and footy Canadian cheese called Charleudix.

The pairings turned out really well and everyone had their favorites. The one pictured above was a huge hit. That cheese was incredibly stinky and I made everyone take a good sniff before I portioned it out. They were scared, for sure. However, it was a wonderful and creamy cheese with a lot of flavor and balanced with the hops notes of the ‘99 and ‘09 quite well. Poor, old ‘89 tasted like it had almost no hops left at all. I couldn’t have asked for a better cap to the year, surrounded by some of my favorite things in life: good beer, great cheese and fantastic friends.

So, to more of that in 2010!

I just had to post a couple pics from our hop harvest today. I’m so proud of my husband — these hops are his babies that he started last spring. We had a small yield last year but this year’s crop is pretty damn good! We have Willamette, Cascade & Magnum hops. Cascade were the highest yield but overall we got over a pound of hop cones. You know how I feel about cheese and beer together so I’m just tickled to make some homebrew from our very own hoppy hops! I wonder what cheese I can pair with this?

Okay, not to beat a drum but we went to another cheese and beer tasting event last night and it was EPIC. Going in knowing that the menu would include 10 pairings, I was a bit intimidated. Luckily, both the beers and cheeses were more on the mellow side, lighter beers without super complex flavors and cheeses that were all unique but none that really knocked your palette out. We also sampled Rogue’s new whiskey which was pretty darn good as whiskey goes. I could definitely see taking it on a camping trip which is my metric for tasty whiskey.

It was hosted by Rogue at their Flanders Street location but included a variety of breweries. A few of the standout beers for me were Deschutes Twilight Ale, the Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar and Hair of the Dog Fred. The cheese was supplied by Sysco, a fine foods distributor and the portions were quite robust. Frankly, by the end of the event we were very stuffed and quite cheerful.

Me and Fred

The star of the show was Fred Eckhardt, a local beer writer and celebrity who is a colorful and jolly guy, regularly surrounded by friends and fans — you’ll know him by his artfully curled mustache. Earlier this year, I attended “Fred Fest” at Hair of the Dog Brewery on the occasion of Fred’s birthday. It’s a rather intimate brew fest as far as those things go with limited ticket sales and some very special beers. I was delighted to find myself chatting with friends off in a corner when a huge platter of cheese arrived and was set on the table right in front of me! A gift from the heavens! It was really great cheese, too, not just a bunch of oily cheddar cubes. This is when I discovered that Fred is known for his interest in unique pairings, including candy and cookies and, naturally, cheese. All the food at Fred Fest was chosen by the man himself for its pairing friendliness. Last night he suggested we try warming Hair of the Dog Fred to 110 degrees and then dipping an Oreo cookie in it! Hmmm… I might try that… once.

Eugene City Brewery Honey Orange Wheat & Willamette Valley Gouda

Overall the event was a lot of fun and Fred kept up a patter of beer and cheese trivia, history and advice on life while the samples came fast and furious. I would say that the pairings were good with a few standouts. The first pairing was Fern’s Edge Chevre paired with Full Sail Ltd 03 Lager. The lager was light like a pilsner and very slightly bitter, a perfect mid-day beer. The chevre was incredibly light and fluffy with notes of lemon. Sampling the beer again after the cheese made the difference. The cheese cut the bitterness of the beer, bringing out a sweet and happy flavor.

Our whole table really enjoyed the third pairing, Rogue’s Hazelnut Brown (which we used at our sampling event) with Alsea Feta. The feta was moist and creamy, not very dry, very light in flavor and salty. The interplay between those two was really just pitch perfect. I’m thinking that Browns and Porters really have a ton of potential pairings and the Rogue Brown especially has such lovely notes that I think we’ll come back to that again.

My notes

Thanks Fred and Rogue and all the others who worked behind the scenes to make this happen — it was a lot of fun! You can see a few more pictures over here.

Our cheesemaking group, FUCheese, has long talked about doing a home cheese pairing with homebrews (from the guys at BSBrewing, including my husband) so I started doing some research on what kind of cheeses we would want to make and what would be a good pair. There’s a surprising amount of information out there about pairing the two and for good reason: they are delicious together!

Typically, when you think of pairing something with cheese, you think of wine. Wine is a wonderful, wonderful thing and I have had some truly sublime wine and cheese pairings. (The Rioja Santiago paired with Midnight Moon that we had at the sadly defunct Curds & Whey shop in Sellwood comes to mind.) But, at least for me, wine is a little less accessible than good beer. And wine is really more of a contrasting flavor with cheese whereas beer can be more complementary. The tannins and oak and leather and jam of wine is not very present in cheese. However, the grassyness of some hopped beers, the earthy and meaty flavor of porters and the bright freshness in pilsners and hefeweisens can really interact with cheese in a refreshing way. That’s the other thing — beer is refreshing! It can cleanse the palate in a way that wine is hard-pressed to do. Some cheeses are incredibly tongue-coating and not much but something bubbly and cold can hold up to that. And now that the hot weather is finally upon us, it makes even more sense to crack open a beer and keep on enjoying that cheese.

Last year when we got some goat milk and had a goatapalooza of cheesemaking, Nicole and I put together a goat cheese plus beer pairing using as a guide some info we found online (google Garrett Oliver — he loves this stuff!). We were bowled over by how good it was. Then this past winter, Thom (the Mr.) and I joined Dave and Sarah at Saraveza for a cheese and beer pairing with cheese provided by Steve Jones of Steve’s cheese. It was fantastic! The cheeses were incredible and the beers were amazing. So, we’d been talking about this for months and continually pondering which beers would go with which cheeses. I’d push Thom to try some cheese and think of what beer it would go with and he’d push back with some beer asking what cheese I thought would go with that. We were talking about this with his cousin Julie (also a beer fan, she used to work at Bridgeport Brewing, Portland’s oldest craft brewer) who is now at Adidas. She said that a cheese beer pairing would be a fun thing to do with her department at work and could we arrange that? We looked at each other and laughed, “Yeah, we could probably do that.”

So, a few weeks later after some fun evenings of beer sipping and cheese sampling, we came up with a rough plan of attack. We bought beers at Belmont Station and Saraveza (all Oregon beers) and I spent an hour or so at Steve’s Cheese getting the cheeses. And let me take a moment to sing the praises of Mr. Steve’s Cheese, also known as Steve Jones. He is an enthusiastic and knowledgeable cheesemonger who clearly loves his work and puts a lot of effort into stocking the best local and international cheeses. Thankfully, he is also a big beer fan and was able to suggest alternatives and amendments to my cheese list based on the beers that we wanted to serve. I knew the type and flavor of the cheeses I wanted but only had one very specific cheese in mind that I had to have so he was invaluable in finalizing the list. If you live in or near Portland, GO TO STEVE’S CHEESE. Seriously.

The next day, I packed up a cooler of beer and cheese, a big cutting board and my cheese knives (a birthday present — they are so cool! I should write a post on those.), some crostini crackers and sampling glasses for the beer. Thom and I went over to Julie’s house that evening and met a dozen of her coworkers and gave a little talk about what we were about to do. Then, we started sampling!

The menu started with a fresh chevre from River’s Edge paired with Widmer’s Hefeweizen. This is one of my favorite pairings, they work so well together and I think Widmer’s Hef is one of the best of its kind — easy drinking, accessible and inexpensive. Next we paried Pondhopper with Mirror Pond Pale Ale. Pondhopper is an aged goat cheese that uses Mirror Pond Pale Ale to wash the curds during the making process. I wasn’t actually sure how well these would pair because when you taste Pondhopper you don’t necessarily get a “beer” vibe from it or a hops note but they were really fantastic together. Also, Pondhopper is a standout cheese that would be welcome on any cheese plate at any time. We then passed around small samples of Mirror Mirror which is a double of their Mirror Pond beer and aged in oak barrels to produce what is essentially a barleywine.

After that we shifted gears a bit and sampled Rogue’s Hazelnut Brown with the creamy, 3-milk Robiola — an Italian cheese from the Piedmont that is meaty and full and creamy and awesome. You kind of want to roll over and die after eating some Robiola and that’s a good thing. The final pairing matched Cascade Brewing’s Kriek (a sour cherry beer) with a stinky swiss style cheese called Maritchas. This last cheese came straight from Steve because I could imagine a few different types of cheeses that might work with the sourness of the beer but I wasn’t sure how big I wanted to go. Some cherry beers are incredibly tart and the Cascade Kriek is too but not terribly so. Once he cut me a sample of the Maritchas, I knew it would be a good finish to the evening.

Anyway, everyone had a really great time and Thom and I had a blast. I would totally do that again. So, next time you’re at the cheese counter, pick up a few things and then head over and grab a couple beers. Beers tend to be cheaper than wine (though not that Kriek!) and you may come up with an astounding flavor combination. Also, I was asked what would be a good cheese to go with Budweiser and I think a Kraft American cheese slice wrapped around a Slim Jim would be pretty awesome.*

* But I’m not sure I would ever eat that.

Saraveza is a bottle shop and tavern owned by Sarah Pederson. They had their grand opening last fall, 2008. It’s in a very cute little building off North Killingsworth and they keep their for-sale beers in these great vintage coolers. They’re the kind of coolers that you might open a restaurant around since they are so adorable. The bar has a nice, casual vibe and we tried a couple of their pasties (all good) and a sausage plate (yum!). One of our favorite bartenders from the Green Dragon works here, too, so that was a nice surprise.

Steve’s Cheese is located in the Square Deal Wine Shop on 23rd and Thurman and is run by Steve Jones. He’s a young, very bearded guy who has a clear passion for cheese and cheesemakers. He was able to answer our many, many questions with enthusiasm and point us toward some great Northwest creameries.

Okay, on to the tasting. Sarah and Steve put together five pairings of beer and cheese. The tastes of cheese were cut from the center of the wheel to the rind so that we could get the full experience of the cheese. They were nice hunks — enough to get at least three or four bites.

I had no idea Thom was looking so beer-studious in the background there.

1

Pholia Farm’s ELK MOUNTAIN (Raw Nigerian Dwarf Goat) – Rogue River, Oregon paired with HUB’s DIABOLITO (Small Belgian Strong) – Portland, Oregon

Steve called this his “regional” pairing. The Elk Mountain is an aged farmstead cheese* which is washed in a local (to them) beer. The cheese was dry and not very “goaty” but with a strong flavor that mellows the slightly bitey beer. HUB stands for Hopworks Urban Brewery and they are new to the Portland brewing scene. They have a restaurant and brewpub on Powell Blvd and seem to be doing a great business. We like them a lot. Sarah called this a “small” beer which means that it is a second brew made using the spent grains of the first beer — lower in alcohol content and milder than the first brew which, in this case, is HUB’s Diablo.

* Farmstead cheese is cheese made from the same people who farm the animals that produce the milk. This was something I did not know before this tasting.

2

ROS OMBRA (Sheeps Milk) – Catalonia, Spain paired with Moylan’s SCOTCH ALE – Novato, California

Steve dubbed this the “comparative” pairing. This was a creamy, smooth hard cheese with very small “crystals.” It’s an artisinal cheese* and it was very delicious with the beer. This was a nicely satisfying pair. The Scotch Ale was slightly bitter and malty and the two just really worked well together.

* Artisinal means that the cheese was made by hand and in small batches.

3

Guifante’s 3 MILK ROBIOLA – Piedmont, Italy paired with Eel River’s CLIMAX NOEL (Imperial Red Holiday Ale) – Fortuna, California

Steve called this one a “contrast” pairing. He brought out the chunks of Robiola on crackers and we all oohed and aahed over this creamy looking cheese. It was very white with a runny, yellow rind. It was quite salty and tongue-coating. It was so rich and wonderful that as much as I thought I could eat a whole wheel of it, I’d probably have to stop after a few bites. This would be a really great one to have on a cheese platter at a party. The beer was a real balancer — a strong, malty big beer almost like a porter. Great seasonal.

4

Hervé Mons’s GRUYERE (Raw Cow) – Bern, Switzerland paired with Brouwerij Verhaeghe’s DUCHESSE DE BOURGOGNE (Flemish Red Ale) – Vichte, Belgium

From Switzerland, this earthy gruyere comes from the caves of Hervé Mon — who is apparently a gentleman and an affineur. He collects the cheese from the makers, who get their milk from dairy producers, and he cares for them and ages them in his caves. His art is in the aging. I don’t have much experience with gruyere but after this it may be a new favorite. It had a strong, deep flavor, slightly tangy with grassy notes. It had small crystals and was just a nice, satisfying cheese. It was paired with Duchesse which is a dark fruit ale, almost like a sherry. The tartness of the beer was nearly cancelled out by the cheese leaving a far sweeter flavor in the mouth. This was the first pairing where I felt that there was a real back and forth between the cheese and the beer, almost like a wine.

5

Neal’s Yard Dairy – Colston Basset’s “SHROPSHIRE” (Cow’s Milk) – UK paired with Ommegang’s GRAND CRU ROUGE (Flemish Red Ale) – Copperstown, New York

Sarah and Steve called this their punk rock pairing. They said that they wanted to do something loud and bold that would really create an impression. This was totally right on. It was similar to the last pairing, in that you had a strong flavor in the cheese and a very strong tart flavor in the beer and they worked together to mellow each other in the best way. The shropshire is bright orange from the addition of annato and run through with blue veins. It has a strong blue flavor. The Grand Cru was incredibly sour and full of cherries. The two balanced each other but each really had such strong flavors that they weren’t totally mellowed by the other. A really fun pairing that was a great end to the evening.

* * *

Besides being a really lovely night out with our friends this was a great kickoff to what I hope will be a year packed with cheese exploration. The cheese was fantastic and the beer was exceptional. What really made the evening great, though, was the enthusiasm of both Steve and Sarah for their trade. They both gave plenty of personal time at each table answering questions and were just really engaging and high energy. I could tell that they love what they do and I hope they were having as much fun as we were.

For the young chevre we ended up choosing two beers, both from Widmer. I really like both their Crimson Wheat (an ‘08 summer seasonal) and their old standby Hefeweizen so we got a couple bottles of each for the sampling. The second recommendation was to pair a slightly aged cheese like Humboldt Fog with a Belgian style Saison. Thom picked out the Farmhouse Ale from Bison Brewing down in Berkeley. It comes in a really lovely bottle with a sweet label. The last recommendation was to pair a firmer, more aged goat cheese such as a Garrotxa (ga-ROTCH-ha) with a porter or stout. We hemmed and hawed over this choice. Darker beers are sometimes difficult for people. My first inclination was to go with the reliable Deschute’s Black Butte Porter — it’s easy to drink and generally pleasing to most palates. However, we ultimately decided to go with Laurelwood’s Tree Hugger Organic Porter. Laurelwood Pub and Brewery is local here so I have no idea if you can get this outside of Portland or a well-stocked beer shop.

On to the tasting notes:

Fresh Chevre with Widmer’s Crimson Wheat and Hefeweizen

The Hefeweizen is a crisp, lightly-colored, summery beer with a slight tang. Served best cold with a wedge of lemon for the rim. The Crimson Wheat is a nice maple color and tastes slightly malty with a touch of caramel and perhaps banana — a truly lovely summer beer. I seriously am in love with this beer. We sliced up some bread and mixed a taster of the fresh chevre with rosemary (from Amanda’s garden), left one plain (all were mixed with cheese salt) and a third we mixed with chives (from Sarah’s garden). We felt that this was a good pairing, nicely complementing and counter-balancing the chevre. It was noted that the Crimson Wheat seemed most delicious paired with the rosemary chevre and the Hef really shined next to the chives.

. . .

Humboldt Fog with Bison Brewing’s Farmhouse Ale, Belgian-style Saison

Humboldt Fog from Cypress Grove is a creamy, slightly dry chevre with a ribbon of vegetable ash running through its center. It has a creamy layer at the rind and has a slight tang to it. We complemented this with the Farmhouse Ale Belgian-style Saison. The Saison also has a tang with a very fresh taste and is slightly bitter. There was nothing wrong with this pairing. Everything was right!

. . .

Spanish Garrotxa with Laurelwood’s Tree Hugger Porter

The Garrotxa is a light cheese with grainy “crystals” and slightly nutty flavor and was very complementary to the very drinkable and chocolatey porter from Laurelwood.

. . .

All in all, I think the lesson here is that cheese and beer are a happy pairing. I think for summertime especially, when rich wines might not be as welcome, that putting out some beers to go with the cheese plate is a good idea. Having said that, I didn’t really get a transportational effect with the beer as I do with some wines. At the goat cheese tasting we did at Curds & Whey some months back, they paired the St. Olga with a lively red wine and the two together were divine. However, it’s easier and cheaper to have a couple beers on hand and rely on them as a cleanser to better enjoy the cheese.

You can read more about beer and cheese in this San Francisco Chronicle article which has the recommendations we followed as well as more pairings.

Here at FUCheese we are beer lovers as well so learning how beer might complement our favorite cheeses would be exceptional. For our third cheesemaking project we are planning to focus on goat milk and I’m going to try to put together a beer and cheese pairing. I will report the results!