Garrett’s been in the UK for the past week, brought there by the Imbibe Festival which celebrates the obvious. Apparently, while there he’s been hanging out with Britain’s most famous beer advocate, Pete Brown again. If you’ve never read him before, Pete has a great way with words and a really nice perspective on the wonders of beer. In this blog post he says kind things about Mr Oliver and gives a play by play of a recent beer and cheese pairing. See below the photo for Brown’s commentary on Garrett’s pairings.
BRILLAT SAVARIN WITH BROOKLYN LOCAL 1
Brillat Savarin is to my mind the best ever writer on food, famous for his aphorisms, my favourite of which is “A meal without cheese is like a beautiful woman with only one eye.” I don’t much care for the cheese that was named after him though. It’s like eating solidified cream. I hate cream. It’s too cloying and sickly and I don’t understand why everyone thinks it’s a treat.
The beer though is something I’d be perfectly happy to receive as a birthday present. And I mean a ‘proper’ present. It’s recognizable as a Belgian Saison in style but it’s smoother, more elegant. You want to say ‘dumbed down’ but that would be completely inaccurate. Yes, it’s more accessible than some of the funkier farmyard Saisons, but the cheesy, musty, sweet and sour, spicy flavour journey of a Saison is all present and correct.
This is a match where the beer comes out best. The cheese helps push its tartness to the fore, a brief spike of flavour emerging slowly and elegantly, like the spine of a humpback whale cresting the ocean surface before, submerging again.
On the other hand, the cheese just tastes even creamier, which I could really do without.
HEREFORD HOP WITH BROOKLYN LAGER
The Brooklyn beer you can get fairly easily in the UK was the first they brewed, and is a faithful recreation of what beer used to be like in New York a hundred years ago, prompting Garrett to exclaim that the current craft beer boom is not a fad or a trend, but a return to normality after a the late twentieth century’s obsession with plastic and standardization.
I realize that we spend too much time thinking about beer in terms of ‘hoppy’ or ‘malty’. Brooklyn lager is neither, or rather, both. It’s toffee in a very expensive designer label suit that makes it shine and sparkle.
The cheese is sticky and cloying and glutinous in a good way, sweet and salty and slightly acidic. Together I don’t find much alchemy – both are nice separately and nice together, but with nothing much added.
OSSAU IRATY WITH BROOKLYN BROWN ALE
This is an interesting one. Ossau Iraty is made from sheep’s milk and has an aroma of lanolin or ‘wool fat’, the smell you get off a wet woollen jumper and, once it’s been pointed out, the sweet smell you get from roast lamb.
The beer is all about chocolate and caramel, with a slight grassiness towards the end.
Together, they are in total harmony – beer and cheese blend into each other around an axis of sweet caramel. Just lovely.
SOME OTHER CHEESE WITH BROOKLYN DARK MATTER
This one wasn’t on the menu and I’m starting to lose track. Dark Matter is an 8% version of the brown ale that’s been aged for four months in bourbon and wine barrels to give it a strong American oak character. To me it smells initially of nail varnish, but that’s a smell I’ve always liked. On the second whiff I can isolate the coconut that Garrett’s talking about, and then you can get the strong vanilla essence behind it, a hint of sherry, and then a faint molasses character on the tongue.
I hardly notice the cheese. I’m all wrapped up in the beer, and the match doesn’t change much about it.
MONTGOMERY’S CHEDDAR WITH BROOKLYN EAST INDIA PALE ALE
IPA with strong mature cheddar has always been my favourite match of any beer with any food, and this one doesn’t disappoint. The dry saltiness of the cheese ands the fruitiness of the beer just body barge each other, exploding in a carnival of colour and partying on your tongue. Weirdly, Garrett compares it to a forceful physical dance, like a tango, just after I’ve written in my notebook that they’re slam-dancing. I just don’t have his class.
COLSTON-BASSET STILTON WITH BROOKLYN CHOCOLATE STOUT
This pairing was born by accident. Garrett was at an event where he’d asked for either a barley wine to match with Stilton (which is another awesome match) or chocolate stout with truffles. He turned up to find chocolate stout and Stilton, panicked, tried it, and found it worked wonderfully.
The dark chocolate character in the stout comes from chocolate malt only – no actual chocolate – and develops with a hint of sherry, followed by an inky Shiraz character on the palate with some bitter coffee grounds mixed in.
The Stilton is lovely. “People who don’t like Stilton… well… they’re just bad people,” says Garrett. “I’m serious. If you don’t like Stilton you can’t come to my house. You can’t pet my dog.”
The match is an elegant marriage which makes me think of high tea with a maiden aunt in a stately home. Don’t ask me why.
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