Here in Portland, Oregon, a city many call the micro-brewery capital of the U.S., the Oregon Brewers Festival is our annual celebration of all that is beer. Along with the big beer tasting festival held along Portland's waterfront, various pubs and restaurants around town sponsor beer tastings and beer related events as part of the week-long party. This year, I made it to the Rogue Ales 5th Annual Beer, Cheese and Chocolate tasting.
Here's the menu of featured pairings this year:
(note: click here for information on all Rogue Ales beers)
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Widmer Collaborator Kolsch
Willamette Valley Cheese Co. Havarti
Rogue Younger's Special Bitter
Fraga Farm Chevre
Rogue Hazelnut Brown Nectar
Rogue Chocolate Chip Cooke w/ Hazelnuts
Rogue Chocolate Stout
Rogue Creamery Chocolate Stout Cheddar
Tuck's Cherry Porter
Rogue Pepper Fudge
Hair of the Dog Blue Dot IPA
Cypress Grove Humboldt Fog
Menage a' Frog Trippel from Rogue's Issaquah Brewery
Rogue Oregon Flourless Chocolate Cake with rum
Rogue Imperial Stout
Rogue Creamery Crater Lake Blue
Laurelwood Public House Ettinger Alt
Rogue Chocolate Cheescake Bars
Rogue Old Crustacean Barleywine
Coffee Ice Cream and Oreo Cookie
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Beer expert Fred Eckhardt emceed the event. He began with the notion that you can pair pretty much any beer with any cheese. 
It's easy to become entrenched in notions of what tastes good or what objectively "goes together" without really taking the time to consider unique possibilities in flavor combinations. Thus we tend to get stuck in the wine-and-cheese rut, when beer and cheese can be as good, or better. In fact, beer and cheese is arguably the more sensible combination, since (as Janet Fletcher points out in this article) it can be tough to combine oaky, fruity or jammy flavors in wine with tart, tangy or savory flavors in cheese. "With wine, you're almost always working just with contrasts" observes one expert Fletcher interviewed. "That's not as satisfying as also working in some harmonies (as you can with beer and cheese pairings)." See Eckhardt's own article on the science and philosophy of combining beer and cheese here.
Eckhardt walked the crowd of 50+ people through the varying combinations of beer, cheese and chocolate, sprinkling in anecdotes about brewers and cheese (did Queen Elizabeth I really use Manatee milk cheese as a hair restorer?). Most surprising to me were the combinations of beer and chocolate. Rogue's Hazlenut Brown Ale, on the sweeter side for a beer, was really nicely paired with a chocolate chip hazelnut cookie - not something I would have thought of previously, but I will now. There's something about combining sweet and slightly bitter (hoppy) flavors together that is a pleasant taste combination. And Rogue Chef Alex Gung's outstanding pepper fudge combined sweet fudge with spicy cayenne pepper, a great pairing with the light, slightly sweet Tuck's Cherry Porter.
My favorite cheese/beer pairings were the Widmer Collaborator Kolsch paired with Willamette Valley Havarti and the Rogue Imperial Stout and Rogue Creamery Crater Lake Blue. In both cases the flavors harmonized for me in just the way that Fletcher discussed. Both the Kolsch and the Havarti were initially very mild but both developed flavor after a few seconds, finishing in a remarkably similar mild, tangy bitterness. The same was true for the Imperial Stout and Crater Lake Blue - I wouldn't have expected these two to parallel each other so closely but the stout had a smoky sharp undertone that mimicked the "bite" of the sharp blue cheese.
These sorts of tasting events (be they wine and cheese or beer and cheese tastings) are a fun way to experience combinations and pairings that you might not otherwise have the time, funds or endurance to put together yourself. They're also a great way to create your own regional tasting adventure by exploring products made by local breweries and local farmstead cheesemakers.
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