The Fourth Annual Regional Wines And Spirits Beer And Cheese Tasting

The Matches were as follows:

Boon Framboise and Kaimai Brie
The combination of one of the Belgium’s raspberry infused lambics with a rich creamy brie from Kaimai cheeses in the Waikato sought to match the earthy notes of the cheeses rind with the slight barnyard notes in the beer, while at the same time balancing the rich cream of the cheese with the tart fruit character of the beer.

Croucher Hef and Puhoi Farm Fresh Goats Cheese
This match pitched the spicy fruity yeast character of a German style wheat beer against the tart zesty notes in the fresh goat cheese.

Epic Pale Ale and Zani Zeus Chilli Feta
This match was an unrehearsed wild card where I decided to try something that sounded good in theory, and indeed it did work in practise! The spicy pepper corn and chilli character found a perfect partner in the waves of zesty American hop flavour while the rich salty hit of the cheese was perfectly balanced by the long dry finish of the beer.

Townshend E.S.B. and Barry’s Bay Cheddar
This match was meant to pitch the big rich malt profile, earthy hops and rounded fruit character of an English style extra special bitter against the tangy earthy notes of a traditionally produced and aged cheddar. However this particular batch of Townshend E.S.B. was particularly fruity with apple, pear and melon notes somewhat dominating the match.

Pink Elephant Mammoth and Neudorf Richmond Red
Pink Elephant Mammoth is a particularly good beer for matching with hard cheeses. Having found much success in past tastings when matched with other cheeses it was no surprise the Mammoth went so well with a hard sheep milk cheese this time. Richmond Red offered up loads of nutty rich caramel notes which found the perfect partner in Pink Elephant Mammoth’s rich nutty toffee malt notes.

Harrington’s Doppelbock and Meyer Medium Gouda
This match served as another wild card as the fresh batch of Harrington’s Doppelbock was bristling with fresh hop character something that had not been present in the beer that the match had been trialled with and upon opening the Meyer Old Gouda it proved to not be the aged ‘old’ version but the younger ‘medium’.

Hallertau Porter Noir and Te Mata Irongate
This match pitched the most wild barnyard notes of the cheese world against and the funky spicy flavours of a barrel aged porter. Te Mata Irongate is a washed rind cheese that is bursting with pungent yeasty aromas of the barnyard, honeycomb and over ripe fruit. I matched it with Hallertau Porter Noir an incredibly complex dark ale that had been aged in brett infected pinot noir barrels. The result was controversial and sensational!

Flying Dog Horndog Barleywine and Scraped out Vintage Windsor Blue
For this match I revived the Victorian tradition of scraping out a wheel of blue cheese with liquor. In this case I used a rich fruity barleywine in place of the traditional port and then served it with the same beer. The result was spectacular with spicy blue, rich malt, dark fruit and fortified wine notes all blending perfectly to create a deeply complex pairing.

As is usual with these sorts of tastings it was the bigger bolder matches which took the popular vote however it was pleasing to see that after the 2 big winning combinations their was a three way tie for 3^rd.

Cheers
Kieran Haslett-Moore

The results were: