This cheese and beer pairing is exactly what I’d expected it to be: endearingly bonkers. It’s a like-with-like pairing: both beer and cheese have a big umami/marmite flavour and also some dark chocolate.
Although, to really match like-with-like with Duchesse de Bourgogne you’d have to find a cheese for which eating it resembled drinking slightly fizzy Bovril through a Kola Kube held in your teeth. As unlikely as it sounds, this is a very pleasurable experience.
Bermondsey Hardpress made by Kappacasein Dairy in Bermondsey is a hard, unpasteurised cow's milk cheese. In style, it’s a mountain cheese, of the same family as Gruyere, Comte or Beaufort. Like all these cheeses it has a dense creamy texture and a sweet, nutty flavour with sometimes a hint of chocolate.
Duchesse de Bourgogne made by Brouwerij Verhaeghe in Belgium is a Flemish Red Ale. Aged in wood, its main character for me is the sweet and sour flavour along with woody tannin, caramel and umami. Even taking into account the products of Weird Beard and The Yeastie Boys, it is the most out-there beer I’ve drunk so far.
With all that sweetness, chocolate flavour and the rich creamy mouthfeel of the cheese – which the sourness of the beer cuts through so beautifully – you could have this for desert.
Fun Facts:
This uber traditional mountain style cheese – it’s made from raw milk in an antique copper vat – is made in a railway arch in Bermondsey. How cool is that?
For more about Bermondsey Hardpress click here.
Contact Ned to discuss your event: ned@CheeseTastingCo.uk