(SPOT.ph) When you think of cheese, you likely automatically think of having it with wine. But it’s also totally worth changing up the usual glass of red or white for another beverage: beer. Cheese and beer can make for some amazing combinations that are more than just the sum of its parts, as we learned from the folks behind The Tasting Club—a group that hosts tasting events that explore the different fine wines, spirits, and cocktails with food pairings.
Kevin Charuel, a French wine connoisseur, started The Tasting Club with his wife Adrienne in New York in 2016, in hopes of sharing information with fellow food and drink enthusiasts. You can expect each session to be as educational—you’ll learn more about the story and process behind the featured food and/or drink, which will help you appreciate it better, too—as they are enjoyable, in a casual and relaxed environment where you won’t feel intimidated.
We recently attended a virtual session that focused on pairing artisanal cheese from Malagos Farmhouse and craft beers from Crazy Carabao—both local brands that are elevating the game in their respective fields within the Filipino food industry.
Malagos Farmhouse is a Davao-based company that makes their cheese from scratch—from taking care of the goats and cows, getting their milk, platform-testing and pasteurizing the milk, adding the appropriate agents, cooling down, aging, processing, and packaging. Founder and cheesemaker Olive Puentespina shares that cheese is a dynamic product, in that a small change in the production process can make for dramatically different results. Today, Malagos has more than 25 different cheeses, ranging from fresh, washed-rind, blue-veined, bloomy, and even aged variants.
Crazy Carabao, on the other hand, is a Santa Rosa, Laguna-based brewery that specializes in craft beer. Brewmaster Ian Leigh explains that craft beer differs from commercial beer in that is made with only three main ingredients aside from water: malted barley, hops, and yeast. They’re also more labor-intensive to make, and are often produced in small batches. But the result is a more complex-tasting and flavor-forward brew—one that you can better appreciate as more than just a medium to get drunk, and as a great-tasting beverage in its own right. Crazy Carabao currently has five variants in their roster: Pilsner, Wheat, Golden Ale, Pale Ale, India Pale Ale, and Borracho.
It's a Match: Cheese and Beer
Cheese tends to be creamy, buttery, and/or fatty, while beer has a frothiness and bubbliness that can cut through the richness and cleanse your palate in between nibbles. Cheese also has nutty, savory, tangy, and umami notes to it, which can match with the wide variety of flavors you'll find in beer—from fruity to herbal to floral to spicy and everything in between.
Charuel explains that pairing cheese and beer follows the same basis for pairing food and wine. "We can either balance the intensity of flavors to complement or contrast them. But with beers we can also play a lot with the cutting and cleansing effect as beer is very appropriate for this.”
For complementing pairings, for example, Charuel pairs Crazy Carabao’s Golden Ale beer and Malagos’ Ingrid’s Rosemary cheese. The former is an ale with pale malt and Australian hops, resulting in a light, fruity, and floral taste and aroma (we got notes of passionfruit, in particular), while the latter is a semi-soft cow’s-milk cheese done in the style of Gouda and aged with fresh rosemary for a minimum of 90 days, making for a tangy, creamy number with a natural sweetness, enhanced with the zestiness of the rosemary. Both are on the floral-tasting side with a slight bitterness, relays Charuel, but with similar intensity, which allows them to meld harmoniously.
Another complementing duo is Crazy Carabao’s Pale Ale with Malagos’ Queso Rustico. The Pale Ale is their take on the classic American pale ale with citrus and pine hops matched with bitterness, while the Queso Rustico is a cow’s-milk cheese with a hard outer rind and nutty flavor. The cheese is on the mild-tasting side, Charuel says, but the Pale Ale elevates its flavors. For us, we can best liken the beer’s flavor to that of home-baked bread, making the lightly salty and tangy cheese a natural pair. And while primarily savory, the cheese ends on a naturally sweet note, which balances out the bitterness of the beer.
Then there are contrasting pairings, like the Crazy Carabao’s India Pale Ale (IPA) with Malagos’ Borracho. The IPA is a stronger, bolder brew with made with North American hops and British malts, making for an initial sweetness, intense tropical-fruit notes, and a bitter finish; the Borracho is a goat's cheese that’s washed with dark beer and aged for three months minimum for a firm, parmigiano reggiano-like result with a distinct funk from the beer. Charuel explains that the saltiness and oiliness of the Borracho contrasts with the bitterness and higher intensity of flavors of the IPA. We find it interesting how the beer and cheese fall on different ends of the flavor spectrum, but come together seamlessly.
Last but not least are cutting-and-cleansing pairings, like Crazy Carabao’s Pilsner and Malagos’ Anmari cheese. The Pilsner—a style of lager—has lightly toasted malt notes as well as floral and spicy herbal flavors. The Anmari is a creamy cow’s-milk cheese that’s basket-molded by hand, coaxed to develop a layer of white mold, and aged for six months—resulting in a creamy cheese with a bold and complex taste we can best liken to porcini mushrooms. “The crispness of the beer cleanses perfectly the palate for the aged and mushroom-y flavors of the cheese,” Charuel says. Indeed, each nibble of the cheese coats our tongue with a full-on, rich, and umami profile, which is evened out with a sip of the beer—which in turn, makes you want to take another nibble of the cheese.
Pairs are not limited to just one category; one duo that's both complementing and contrasting, for example, is Crazy Carabao’s Wheat beer (a wheat-, hops-, and coriander-loaded beer with notes of citrus, clove, orange, and banana esters) with Malagos’ Feta Tricolore (a tangy and crumbly goats-milk cheese infused with fresh rosemary and pepper). On one hand, the beer has a smoothness that offsets the feta’s tang, which, in turn, also brings out the fruitiness of the beer. Each element brings the other to perfection.
Ultimately, Charuel emphasizes the value of experimentation and, well, having fun. “We always find our own taste by experiencing different pairings and it can sometimes be very surprising,” he says. “Also, general rules do not apply to everyone and we all have a unique palate that can appreciate exceptional pairings.” In short: the guidelines are there to help you, rather than to limit you. At the end of the day, the point of trying different pairings is to see what tastes good to you, and that’s a very personal thing.
The Tasting Club has more events lined up in the coming days, such as a French wine and cheese tasting on October 17 and an Italian aperitivo event on October 24; just visit their social media pages for updates on how you can join.
For more information, check out The Tasting Club’s Facebook and Instagram pages.
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