Good Taste: When local beer meets local cheese
Cheese(s) of the month, bolstered by beer. (Beer makes just about everything better.)
Cheese(s) of the month, bolstered by beer
Beer makes just about everything better, and it's especially true with washed-rind cheese, whose flavors take on extra dimensions when yeasty brew is added to a brine brushed across the rind during aging.
Two excellent examples using local beers come from Pennsylvania farms.
Tommenator from Keswick Creamery near Newburg in Cumberland Valley is a semi-firm raw milk tomme, whose naturally mild flavor takes on a hoppy tang and malty resonance, thanks to a Troegenator double bock from Tröeg's Brewing Co.
A considerably more assertive beer cheese is the funky wedge from Calkins Creamery in Honesdale called Levon's Luck, a softer round that reminds Aimee Olexy at Talula's Garden (where it's included on cheese plates) of a Tomme Crayeuse. This buttery raw milk cheese gets marinated with orange peel and coriander before it's washed with hefeweizen wheat beer from 3 Guys and a Beer'd in Carbondale. The resulting mottled and sticky crust can be borderline salty (each wheel varies), but also sparks with pepper and floral spice notes that are a natural, says Olexy, with mustard, summer sausage and, yes, a cold beer.
Keswick Creamery Tommenator, $24.95 a pound at the Fair Food Farmstand (215-386-5211) in the Reading Terminal Market.
Calkins Creamery Levon's Luck, Talula's Daily (208 W. Washington Square, 215-592-6555).