Yellow Springs Farm Yellow Brick Road & Philly Brewing Walt Wit.
By Ryan Hudak Read more…
Le Fromage
An Environmentally Conscious Pairing
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Birchrun Hills Blue & Weyerbacher Blithering Idiot
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Of the cheeses people most commonly run into in a local cheese aisle or farmstand, blue cheese is by far the most feared. Just the appearance is enough to turn people off: a perfectly good cheese, lightly spotted—and sometimes positively teeming—with mold. If the appearance wasn’t enough, the novice cheese eater will find the taste, oftentimes bitter and salty, quite offensive. This is where something like Birchrun Blue, which is less intense than many blue cheeses, can come in handy.
A Warming Pairing
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...December/January 2012-13 | Editions | Sections | The Variety Pack
Now that we are firmly out of the brutal summer and the weather is nice and cool, it’s time to move on to more robust pairings—finally! As fall creeps into winter and the beer becomes bigger and darker, a cheese that can support this kind of transition is imperative. When you ask your cheesemonger (and you should always get to know your cheesemonger) about what fits into this category and they get visibly excited, as Craig Melillo of the Fair Food Farmstand did, you know you have something special.
Cherry Grove Farms Toma & Stoudt’s Triple
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...October/November 2012 | The Variety Pack
The weather is cooling and the pumpkin beers have been on store shelves for quite a while, so it’s time to move on and move up. We need something a little more intense for the cold nights and progressively cooler days. Something that can fill us up and keep us warm, but not too warm–yet. Luckily, there is a great pairing that serves as a functional middle-ground between keeping it light in the summer and piling on the layers of fall.
Otterbein Acres Camem-baaa & Lancaster Brewing Co. Kölsch
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A deliciously light summer pairing.
Like it or not, summer is upon us and the heat index is hovering comfortably between “Melting Skin” and “Spontaneous Combustion.” The last thing anyone wants is an intense, heavy cheese that pairs well with a nice 14% ABV Imperial Stout. We need to keep things light and crisp so, whether you’re retreating to the A/C in your living room or venturing out to the shore as often as your day job will allow, there is a perfect summer pairing waiting to be discovered.
Le Fromage: Linden Dale Farm Dalencay & Tröegs DreamWeaver
(4 votes, average: 4.00 out of 5) Loading ...June/July 2012 | The Variety Pack
Enjoy this local artisanal pairing of beer and cheese.
These days, words like “small-batch” and “artisanal” are thrown around with abandon, eaten up by consumers who are desperate to get in touch with their farmstead sides. Luckily, Linden Dale Farm lives up to these descriptors when it comes to their wonderful goat cheese.
Farmhouse Flavors
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Victory Helios Ale and Birchrun Hills Fat Cat make for a complementary tasting.
This spring, it’s farmhouse meets farmhouse. Our cheese is Fat Cat from Sue Miller of Birchrun Hills Farm in Chester County. Sue makes some of the most interesting farmstead cheeses around, and it doesn’t hurt either that she’s one of the most accessible, affable cheesemaking characters I know.
Red Leaf & Voodoo Brewery
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Enjoy the natural complements of earth and fruit.
Al and Catherine Renzi run something of a nanobrewery of the cheeseworld. Operating on just eight acres of land with a small herd of goats, the Yellow Springs Farm cheese output is tiny, and very, very special. The Renzi’s business is not just dairy, they also are passionate about native plants and run their farm based around purposeful, conservation-minded agriculture. If you manage to find them down their winding road in Chester County, you’re sure to be taken by the Walden-esque beauty of the farm; a stone barn that houses the cheese room, a historic springhouse overlooking a pond and wetland, and floppy-eared goats amidst over 200 species of native plants.
Ultimate Holiday Cheese Plates
(No Ratings Yet) Loading ...December/January 2011-12 | The Variety Pack
Pairing the best local cheeses with your favorite local beers.
Toma Primavera
What’s a cheese plate without boldness? This one has it in spades. Toma is a washed-rind, raw milk tomme from Cherry Grove, a biodiverse farmstead near Princeton. Let it sit out a good while and a whiff of almonds and cultured butter will hit the air. Taste it and get all that, plus a tang reminiscent at once of briny caper berries and blackberry.
Pairing: Try something on the spicy side like River Horse Belgian Freeze or Philadelphia Brewing Co. Winter Wünder. Going in the opposite direction with a sour or tart beer, such as Weyerbacher Riserva, would work nicely as well. Read more…
JavaHead Stout & Old Gold
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This aged farmhouse cheese plays right into JavaHead’s coffee flavors.
This issue’s pairing comes out of Hidden Hills Dairy in Western PA and from the Trogner brothers in Harrisburg. JavaHead is a stout, a coffee beer brewed with actual beans that marries deliciously well with Hidden Hill’s Old Gold. Old Gold is an aged Gouda, and I affectionately assert aged Gouda’s are one of the “gateway drugs” of the real cheese world. With their candied flavors of caramel and toffee brittle, they have an addictive Wonka-bar affect on the tongue. Read more…
