A Taste of the Taste Pavilions | Civil Eats

A Taste of the Taste Pavilions

Many of us think of wine and cheese as two great tastes that go great together (like pizza and beer, milk and cookies). At Saturday night’s Taste Workshop celebrating American Raw Milk Cheese, we were treated to a different kind of pairing—cheese and beer. Two cheese experts, Jeff Roberts (also a Slow Food USA Board Member and beer aficionado) and Laura Werlin, led us through the tasting of seven cheeses and six craft ales.

The cheeses and their makers hailed from Alabama, Indiana, Oregon, Wisconsin, Vermont, and California; several of the cheese makers were in the room with us and shared their processes, working with their sheep, Guernsey cows, Nubian dwarf goats, etc, to craft and shepherd (as it were) that milk into beautiful artisanal cheeses. Ever seen a cheese that’s been rubbed with paprika? Hillis Peak Cheese from Pholia Farm Creamery was a first for me and I fell in love with its spicy, rich, creamy flavor. (It goes really well with Dogfish’s Midas Touch Golde Elixir.

Most surprising were the ways in which the cheeses changed in combination with the beer, and vice versa. Six pieces of fantastic farmstead cheese + seven diverse and delicious craft ales meant several interesting and surprising flavor combinations.

If you are interested in reading more about American Raw Milk cheeses, check out Jeff’s Book The Atlas of American Artisan Cheese, and Laura’s book Cheese Essentials.

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Jerusha Klemperer lives in New York City where she is a co-founder and the communications director at FoodCorps. She blogs for Huffington Post, WellandGoodNYC and her personal blog Eat Here 2. She also cooks up food and fun with Conni’s Avant Garde Restaurant. Read more >

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  1. Virginia Lyons, dairy goat owner
    A favorite beer and wine combo of mine is cheddar cheese and wheat beer.
  2. Thank you for the nice write-up of Jeff's and my seminar. We had such fun doing it, and I, for one, learned a few things about pairing beer and cheese. Glad you liked the Hillis Peak so much. I think the cheesemaker (Gianaclis Caldwell) is doing an extraordinary job with the milk of her Nigerian Dwarf Goats (who knew?) By the way, I liked your photo of the cheeses and beers, which featured one or two cheeses already devoured. You're my kind of seminar-goer!

    Thanks again, Laura
  3. inge m
    I would have loved to attend. Turns out that around this holiday weekend all air travel was extremely expensive. I would have had to pay almost triple the usual rate for a flight from NJ to San Francisco. So I (and perhaps many others around the nation) did not attend. Please take this into consideration for future planning.

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