Cheese and Beer - Post-Hoc Analysis

This week, thanks in no small part to the hard work of all the lovely staff at Beer-Ritz in Leeds (GhostDrinker worked his arse off behind the counter, while Beth and Jeff did their best to demolish the mountains of cheese on offer), as well as the tireless enthusiasm of Leigh Goodstuff, we hosted a beer and cheese tasting event. It's fair to say that although it doesn't take many people to fill our little shop to bursting, the evening was very well attended, with both a plethora of regulars and a whole bunch of new faces on show.

Orval and Delamere mature goats cheese was, for me, always going to be a hard sell, so this was the obvious first choice for me. I'm not a fan of goats cheese - it's just too, well, goaty for me. Perfect then to pair it with Orval, a beer that slowly turns to dung through the action of brettanomyces yeasts, also a bugbear of mine. Look, I know this makes me sound (a) fussy and (b) a philistine, but I simply struggle with these flavours. I can appreciate that they have a wonderful depth, complexity and intensity, but I simply don't like them. It's a good beer, it's a good cheese, I'm just not crazy about how they taste.

What better, then, to clear the palate than some gently crumbly Lancashire cheese and and dark ale. Ilkley Brewery are firm favourites locally, and starting to make some serious inroads into the national scene. Not only have they been very generous to our little homebrew group, but brewer Stewart Ross also distinguished himself by (a) turning up to consume some beer and cheese and (b) bring some Ilkley Lotus IPA with him, presumably in case we didn't have anything worth drinking on the premises. The cheese was marvellous - like soft, crumbly butter - and paired nicely with the dark nuttiness of the Ilkley Black.

This is a pairing handed down to me, father-to-son style, by the legend that is Rupert Ponsonby. The pairing of mature cheddar against a medium-bodied IPA is one that isn't immediately obvious, but one that actually works really well. The sharpness of the cheddar serves to bring out the sweet nuttiness of the beer, which in turn acts as a foil to the.... well, cheesiness of the cheese. It's hard (as you can see) to explain exactly why this works, but it's something along the lines of marmalade and butter - salty and sweet rubbing up against each other in a deliciously saucy manner.

I started out this post 'fessing up to a dislike of certain flavours that no doubt many readers will view as a lack of maturity, but I'd like counter that by saying that blue cheese is something that I used to abhor, but have come to love. I tell you that to demonstrate that (a) I like scary cheese - I'll eat runny brie with a spoon quite happily - and (b) don't give me a load of crap about how my palate will mature and I'll eventually like goats cheese. I won't. Ditto brett - a tiny amount is OK, giving some sort of hint of background sexiness, like glimpsing the silhouette of the body of someone you fancy through backlit sunlit clothes, but anything more than a glimpse is a bit intimidating, and can almost be unpleasant, because after all, it was only a fantasy anyway (note: I'm aware that I've stretched that simile to breaking point). ANYWAY, blue cheese with strong dark beer totally rocks - the Elland 1872 Porter was great, as was the Moor Amoor (Peat Porter), which displayed a remarkable body and muscularity (sorry, I'm still reeling from the sunlit clothing simile) for a beer of relatively modest alcohol content.

In summary - people like beer, people like cheese, but people love beer and cheese. It's a win-win scenario.

Wetherspoon's Real Ale Festival

Just a quick round-up of the eight beers I tried, across three of Wetherspoon's pubs in Leeds city centre yesterday. I was of course hoping to drop on one of the holy grails of their festival - a beer by one of the foreign guest brewers that Wetherspoon flies in for the festival. As luck would have it, the 'Spoons at Leeds railway station had Zululand Zulu Blonde (4.5%abv) on, so this was my first tick (I've not taken up ticking, it's just a figure of speech). It was a perfectly decent pale golden ale, faintly floral, with a gentle bitterness, but nothing that would make me go back for another. To be honest, it was thrown into the shade a bit by my next beer, Elland Eden (4.2%abv), which demonstrated how far the pale golden ale category had come, all brightly fruity hops and creamy malt. Yes, I know that's not actually in the festival, but it had a festival pumpclip on it. Oh well, a happy accident.

Brains Honest Ale (4.5%abv) was solid, if unexciting, and frankly paled into comparison next to the creamy, spicy delights of Val-Dieu Abbaye Blonde (5.5%abv), a huge mouthfilling blonde beer, sweet and slightly worty, with a luscious, nourishing quality - beer as a foodstuff, no less. Budelse Capucijn (6%abv) seemed disgustingly buttery in comparison, but that's the thing about comparitive tasting - your palate needs a few sips to adjust. What seemed buttery to the point of gag-inducing was revealed to be a rich, spicy dubbel, with gingerbread notes and a spicy hop finish. Very good.

Sharp's Gentle Jane (4.8%abv) is unusual, having a slightly sherried edge (I thought fino or nutty dry oloroso), alongside the trademark Sharp's character. I think the brew is innoculated with a strain of peddiococcus bacteria, which would account for the atypical flavour set. I thought it was distinctive, different and enjoyable. By comparison, Banks's Morrell's Oxford Blue (4%abv) had a lot going for it, but was a bit too restrained on the hop front to make enough impact. Wadworth's Farmers Glory (4.7%abv) was sweetly nutty, with a surprisingly dry hop finish.

Overall, the beers were in great condition, and the three 'Spoons that I visited were all perfectly decent places to drink. Maybe it would have been nice to see a few more beers amped up a bit for the festival - the Morrell's beer in particular could have been great if it had a bit more poke, looking on paper to be a C-hop riot (Cascade, Centennial, Citra, Columbus), but just missing out in the glass. But generally, my experience of the Spoonsfest is that it's a lot of good beer, in good condition, at a great price. You can't knock that.