Blue Cheese and Barley Wine

There are few things I love more than planning a spontaneous cheese party, so that was my gift to myself last Saturday. It was the first day of spring break, and there was my tenure to celebrate. So off I went to Rittenhouse Square on a mission to buy any blue cheese that called my name.

Most people think all blue cheese tastes the same. But you know and I know that’s not true. Some taste mushroomy and mild, while others pop your eyes out with a peppery hook on the finish. The common thread is salt. Most blues taste like tears.

What alleviates tears? Sweet stuff.

That’s why blue cheese calls for port or sherry. Over the summer, a homebrewer suggested I try blue cheese with barley wine. I wrote it down, then looked it up. High in alcohol. The cognac of the beer world. Intriguing.

On Saturday, I picked up four barley wines at my local beer joint and trotted home to match sorrow and joy, blue veins and barley malt.

Here is what we tasted, cheese-wise:

Cremifacto Verde Capra

Rogue River Blue

Bleu de Basque

Colston Bassett Stilton

Blaue Geiss

Now for the Barley wines:

Blithering Idiot (Weyerbecher Brewing)

Insanity (Weyerbecher Brewing)

Cereal Killer (Arcadia Brewing)

Horn Dog (Flying Dog)

Our cheeses ranged from mild and creamy (Cremifacto) to sharp and clayey (Blaue Geiss) with a mellow sheep’s milk blue (Bleu de Basque) and a traditional British wallop-packer (Stilton) thrown in.

Not all of the barley wines worked with blue cheese, but we found a few favorites. And as the night wore on, the conversation grew livelier and livelier. You can guess why. "Blithering Idiot" and "Insanity" are apt names for these beers – they’re not for the lily-livered.

Blithering Idiot was deemed “O Negative.” It worked well with every blue in the house. Pairing it with Rogue River Blue, a grapey leaf-wrapped blue, earned yelps of “A stunning combo!” and “These were made for each other!”

Cereal Killer, which really did smell like Honeynut Cheerios, made a happy marriage with Cremifacto. Creamy meets creamy, go figure.

Horn Dog loved Blaue Geiss. The heavy grapefruit and honey sweetness of this beer pattered along perfectly with this dense, fudgy cheese -- even with its peppery head butt at the end.

Insanity paired off with feisty Stilton, no surprise. Insanity also spent the night with Rogue River. Two magical mates, very flexible.

And that left Bleu de Basque. With its curious flavor combination of mutton and grass, mixed with a hint of coconut (I kid you not – I made cheesemonger Dan Black confirm this tasting), this Spanish sheep’s milk blue couldn’t find a match, although Blithering Idiot worked okay.

Stick around for more of the Blue Cheese Invitational. In the coming days, I’ll unpack these cheeses, blue by blue. As for Saturday night's guests, special thanks to my blue-cheese guinea pigs: Meat Man Mike, Andre of Canada, and April Lindner whose new book, Jane, makes a perfect accompaniment to strong cheese.

Day 4: Blaue Geiss Bliss

Meet Kisha. On Friday, she drove over from Trenton to bring me her new favorite blue. That’s right, uh huh, she is that cool.

Kisha and I are cheese friends -- she comes to tastings, drops me notes on Facebook, and comments on this blog. When she heard I was launching a Blue Cheese Invitational in March, she was one of the first to say, Count me in.

Then she dropped me a line: “Ever tried Blaue Geiss?”

I hadn’t. Now, I am proud of the fact that I eat a lot of blue cheese, and to be honest, I sit can get a little smug about the fact that I have eaten most, if not all, of the realllly good ones.

Carles Roquefort, check

Colston Bassett Stilton, check

Stichelton, check.

Then along came Kisha with her Blaue Geiss. The girl delivered!

“I read about it in Max McCalman’s book, page 300,” Kisha said when she walked in the door. She handed me a cheese wrapped in paper and sat down at the cutting board I had set out on my table.

“Page 300?” I raised a brow.

“Yup,” she grinned. “It’s rare.”

I retrieved Mastering Cheese from my bookshelf and opened it. There it was, right on p. 300: “…this is an amazing cheese, highly atypical and distinct….”

We dug in.

Blaue Geiss tastes like lightly smoked white chocolate with a crank of white pepper. It’s a raw goat blue with a snow-white paste that is pocked with islands of bluing. The texture is clayey; the mouthfeel, densely fudgy – smooth, bright, crisp, achingly balanced. I was blown away.

I should mention that the rind of this cheese looks like a charred marshmallow. Put it in your “fright wig” category of cheeses, but don’t dwell on the surface. Below that craggy black rind: manna.  

Internet sleuthing reveals little: Blaue Geiss is made by Swiss cheesemaker Willi Schmid and aged by the rockstar affineur Rolf Beeler. Seekers on Chowhound give it a mention, but all other references are in German.

Where can you find this little truffle? Kisha foraged it in Princeton, NJ at Bon Appetit. I wonder if the store owner knows that he’s got rapture in his cheese case.