Beer & Cheese Together

I've always said at beer tastings that beer and cheese is one of the best beer and food matches you can enjoy and often use cheese as part of my beer talks to demonstrate how flavours work together. I was therefore thrilled to be invited to meet Ian Wellens and his team at the Cheeseshed in Bovey Tracey, Devon to take this a stage further with some refined matches.

The Cheeseshed is an online business specialising in artisan cheeses sourced from the West Country. You won't find the well known brands available here that you can get from any retailer, no its a lot better than that! It is the equivalent of the craft beer shop, bringing to life some fabulous specialist and deliciously characterful cheeses you have never heard of.

Being a Beer Sommelier the one thing I can do reasonably well is to describe the flavour and make up of a beer, but I've never really tried to describe the flavours of cheese and actually, its really quite hard. To me cheese tastes like cheese, I can describe the texture but attributing flavour characteristics in terms of flavours I can recognise, well that's hard. This made the whole task of beer and cheese matching a whole lot more tougher.

So on with the matching. First of all let me say the beers were all St Austell Brewery beers and excellent beers they are too, but they were the easy bit. Here are the suggested matches we came up with.

Tribute & Smarts Single Gloucester. St Austell's flagship Pale ale, Tribute a hop driven beer leading to delicate citrus flavours and very easy to drink. It does not want to be over-powered by the food flavour so this lightly textured cheese with an equally mild mannered flavour was a good partner. Its like for like and they seemed to respect each others strengths.

Mena Dhu Stout & Devon Smoake. A big flavoursome toasted chocolate stout with hints of liquorice and smokiness complemented the Devon Smoake cheese superbly. This match was quite a hit, they went together like carrots and peas. Both have an element of smoke and both have a sweetness, but the rich chocolate of the beer was balanced by the earthy creaminess of the cheese. I've always matched smoked cheeses to Weiss beers in the past for which they work equally well, but certainly a traditional stout is another option.

Proper Job IPA & Cornish Blue. I've always found the citrusy IPA's difficult to match with cheese but the blue cheeses seem to work best. Proper Job is a big resinous pineapple IPA with a solid bitter backbone. Cornish Blue is not the strongest of blue cheeses but that's the trick, it had enough firm creamy texture to balance the natural hop bitterness of the beer and the flavour did not overtake the fruity hops of the beer, both stood out without reaching a tipping point against each other. Cornish Blue is a favourite cheese of mine so I was delighted to include it within the tasting.

HSD & Cornish Yarg. A legendary beer with a likewise cheese. HSD is St Austell's oldest recipe beer and something of a hidden gem. Its a strong malty beer but well balanced with plenty of fruity pear drop esters. Cornish Yarg has a crumbly and creamy texture, quite rich and a hint of lemon. The flavour is more delicate so although a contrast to the beer, they did match really well.

Bad Habit & Francis wash rind cheese from James Cheese makers in Dorset. Bad Habit is a Belgium style tripel, rather like Leffe, its spicy, lemony, blonde and heartily strong. The cheese is pungent with a firm interior and a touch a citrus on the palate. A contrast of flavours, the beer is delicious and will always be the hero but this unusual cheese with a depth of flavour holds up well against it.

Cardinal Syn & Quickes Vintage Cheddar. The biggest beer of all requires one of the biggest cheeses of all. Cardinal Syn is dark, Christmas cake type dark fruits with treacle and esters flavours, full and rich on the palate -  a powerful beast of a beer.  The Vintage Cheddar is matured for two years and has a crumbly texture with a intense rich flavour with hints of caramel - its a very fine and complex cheese indeed. Both are wonderful taste experiences and together they would make the perfect end to the most regal of dinners.

I really enjoyed meeting Ian and his team and hopefully we'll be able to pull together a evening of beer and cheese tasting at some stage. The Cheese Shed offers some wonderful cheeses, its just the same as discovering some wonderful new beers so if you like the sound of them, do visit his website www.thecheeseshed.com Thank you Ian for one of my best mornings work of 2016!