Beer and Cheese, Yes Please!

Perhaps a longer post on the possibilities of pairing beer and cheese is in order. A year ago I wasn't keen on the idea of beer and food pairings, I just wanted my beer. But Another Pint, Trinity, and now the Melting Pot have been working away at me. I was given a ticket to the recent Oskar Blues and Melting Pot fondue dinner. For that reason I'll keep this brief so it doesn't sound like I'm only advertising to you. I'm not, I was really surprised at how well fondue and beer worked together.

The dinner started surprisingly with some of Oskar Blues' heavy hitting beers, the G'Knight and the Gubna. There were two types of fondue at this point, the first was normally made with White Wine and Sherry, but this time it had Gubna in it, it was delicious and the hoppy Gubna certainly stood out while the Swiss cheese also stood out. Drinking the Gubna next to it though I was able to really discern some of the fruitier characteristics of the beer that I'm not used to tasting. I think most nicely the bittnerness of the beer cuts through the fattiness of the cheese and really smoothed it out, the owner had previously been nervous that the sharp cheese and bitter beer would be too much. Same was true with the Gubna, which was put into a cheddar fondue with sausage, some spice kick, and normally made with Boston Lager. I think the earthiness of the Gubna really stood out and was my favorite pairing of the evening. Another good pairing was a great tasting mustard that was made with Gubna but paired with Mama's Little Yella Pils, which cut through the bitterness and quenched your thirst. Very nice pairings.

Of course the rest of the meal was delicious, perhaps the meats and desserts overpowered the other beers, but whatever. Regardless what I want to say is that I was certainly thrown off guard by how well the beer and cheese went together.

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