Tasting Notes: Beer Cheeses

With beer and cheese pairings all the rage these days, I thought I'd try a couple of beer cheeses - that is, cheese made with beer. Two Northwest cheesemakers (that I know of) are currently producing beer cheese - Oregon's Rogue Creamery and Alaska's Windsong Farm. Each cheesemaker uses different methods to produce their beer cheeses, resulting in very different end products.

Rogue Creamery Soba Cheddar

Rogue Creamery has paired with Rogue Ales to create a number of beer cheeses, including the Soba Cheddar I tasted made with Morimoto Soba Ale, as well as a  Chocolate Stout Cheddar. The Soba Cheddar is creamy white with golden marbling (I think you can just see this in the photo). This results from rolling the curds in beer after the initial curdling process, before the curds are pressed into shape. The beer coats the curds rather than being absorbed by the curds, resulting in a mild, subtly flavored cheese. And I do mean subtly flavored - if I hadn't known this was a beer cheese I might not have guessed it. I did find that warming the cheese to room temperature allowed the ale flavors to emerge slightly more. This cheese would do well in a beer/cheese pairing, where the cheese is meant to complement the accompanying ale.

Rogue Creamery's beer cheeses are available at the Creamery in Central Point, Oregon. I've not seen the beer cheeses often in retail stores, so probably the most reliable way to purchase them is from the creamery.

Windsong Farm Hefeweizen Cheddar, Double Trouble IPA Cheddar and Fresh Cheddar

One of the great features of Windsong Farm cheeses is the packaging. Resealable plastic bags save you from the hassle of ripping open your cheese and then having to find another plastic bag to store it in. Fantastic!

Windsong Farm beer cheeses are made with beer from Great Bear Brewing Co., located in Wasilla, Alaska, a brewery that is, incidentally, the northernmost brewery in the United States.  These Alaskan beer cheeses are quite a contrast to Rogue Creamery's.  When I first opened both the Hefeweizen and the IPA Cheddar packages, a strong yeasty odor escaped (especially from the Hefeweizen).... like walking into a brewery! The Hefeweizen Cheddar has a  strong mushroomy odor and a very pleasant, hoppy (but not overwhelming) flavor. This surprised me, because Hefeweizen is not a strong beer.  The  IPA cheddar had a little more concentrated flavor that opened up as I tasted it - first I tasted the cheese, and then a distinct ale flavor followed. The IPA cheddar was my favorite beer cheese of the whole bunch.

For comparison purposes, I also tasted the Windsong Farm Fresh Cheddar, which forms the base for Windsong Farm's beer cheeses. This is an easy cheddar that embodies the word "fresh" - it has a very mild, just made flavor that's almost goaty, despite the fact that it's a cow's milk cheddar.

I asked Gary Beu, Windsong Farm proprietor, about how Windsong makes their beer cheese. He said their method is proprietary, but I gather (based on the strong tastes of the resulting cheese) that fresh beer and fresh milk are blended together early in the cheesemaking process, before the milk curdles, producing a combined beer/cheese curd with a stronger flavor.

Windsong Farm's cheeses are available in and around Anchorage, Alaska or by mail order (see here for more info).