Beer and Cheese Dinner

I had been waiting for quite a long time to put together my first ever beer and cheese pairing event.  I finally had an excuse to put one together a few weeks ago when my parents were in town.

Not being all that familiar with common pairings, I had to do some research.  My first stop was Sam Calagione's book, Extreme Brewing, which suggests some common pairings and some ideas on how to set yours up.  Next, I took a few notes from the Beer Advocate page.  Lastly, I got this great pairing guide, to help solidify my choices.

Part of the goal was to intertwine the cheeses into actual dishes, so that people weren't left hungry or stuffed after eating four courses of cheese and nothing else.  So after deciding pairing combos, the second challenge was to figure out how to use the cheese in a salad, soup, sandwich or pasta dish.

Ultimately, this is what I came up with, and as you can see, I couldn't resist making a menu.

Here are a few shots during the cooking process.

And the finished products.

This is the Cabot Clothbound Cheddar, paired with the Dale's 1500 Pale Ale.

This is the Blue de Basques Sheep Cheese, paired with Avery's Hog Heaven Barleywine.  Those are toasted walnuts surrounding it.

This is the mixed green pear and prosciutto salad with Ciresa Mountain Gorgonzola, paired with the Stone IPA and Racer 5 IPA.

These are the goat cheese and balsamic caramelized onion crostinis, paired with my Brouwerij de Isser Saison, Enter the Tiger.

To finish off the meal, I took one of my Cossack Wisecrack's (russian imperial stout) and reduced it into a chocolate sauce to pour over vanilla ice cream.

Ultimately, the pairing went incredibly well and the dishes were liked by all.  The consensus was the Barleywine with the Blue de Basques was the best pairing, however, my Saison was the favorite beer and worked remarkably well to cut through the thick and creamy goat cheese on the crostinis.  Everyone really liked the salad too, however, the cheese seemed to get lost in the lettuce and was hard to define its particular flavor to pair with the IPAs.  The aged cheddar was incredible, but Dale's 1500 was probably too hoppy of a pale to pair it with.  Lastly, my stout reduction syrup was a big hit.

Brouwerij de Isser, Enter the Tiger

This beer was probably most impulsive to date.  After reading about Georges Clemenceau, I was quickly motivated to both grow a mustache and brew this beer.  To tell the truth, I'm not really a fan of Saisons, so perhaps I shouldn't be making them.  However, this beer was such a perfect fit for the moment that I felt like it was a match made in heaven.  Here's the recipe:

Grain Bill
1lb Cara-Munich 15

6.6 lbs light liquid malt extract
1 lb light dry malt extract

Hopping
60 min - 1.5oz Hallertau
15 min - 1 lb light Belgian Candi Sugar
10 min - .5oz Hallertau
10 min - 1 whirfloc tablet
5 min - .5oz Styrian Golding
0 min - 2oz crystallized ginger

WLP568 Belgian Saison yeast

This the crystalized ginger.

First time using Belgian Candi Syrup.

As you can see the mustache was in full effect and a very important part of making this beer.

Mustaches make your funny faces look even that much funnier.

Cleanup is always the worst part.

Pitching the yeast.

Enter the Tiger momentarily sits beside Cossack's Wisecrack.  The only photo of these two great powers taken together.

Process went pretty smoothly on this one, the only problem I encountered you can see below.  About a month in I started noticing these little circles forming on the top of the beer.  At first I was convinced it was mold, however, after doing some research and examining the closely, I discovered that they were simply tiny bubbles packed tightly together on the surface of the beer.

I have to say, reviews have been possibly my best beer to date.  Ironic, given that this really isn't my style of beer.  Once again I did have some trouble with carbonation, however, instead of being too flat, each bottle seems to explode upon opening.

Finally, here's the label and the beer.

The taste on these is fairly traditional Saison.  The ginger bites through with just a hint to give the beer some spice and uniqueness.