Welcome to the week’s Beer & Cheese Pairings. I chose these three delicious and diverse cheeses to pair with Curious George, a flavorful beer from Highway 1 Brewery. Let’s get started!
BEER:
Curious George is a delicious and fruity beer from Highway 1 Brewery. It smells of ripe banana and has a beautiful roasted banana and chocolate flavor with an acidic note and a bitter finish. It’s harder to pair fruit beers so I picked three distinctly flavored cheeses to pair with.
CHEESES:
Pepato from Bellwether Farms is a semi-firm Pecorino with whole peppercorns. The peppercorns give this cheese a nice, subtle kick without overpowering the overall flavor. It is a raw, semi-soft sheep milk cheese with a flaky, yet creamy consistency. After being aged for two to three months, Pepato is salty with tangy citrus flavors that are nicely balanced by the heat of the peppercorns. This cheese paired nicely with the beer, making a good combo of sweet and spice.
Bijou from Vermont Creamery is an aged goat cheese “Crottin.” This geotrichum-rinded cheese has a delicious yeasty flavor that is uniquely sweet. It is dried and ripened for one week and gains sharpness and complexity after thirty days. Bijou and the Curious George were the best pair of the day. The two joined so beautifully with the always reliable sweet and salty flavor profile.
Truffle Tremor® is a beautiful ripened goat cheese from Cypress Grove that is jam-packed with Italian black summer truffles. This cheese has heavy floral, herb, and mushroom notes and was my favorite cheese of the day. This cheese on a salted cracker was my favorite bite of the day. Unfortunately, the wonderful truffle flavors were diminished by the beer.
Make sure to tune into the next installment of Beer & Cheese Pairings!
