Specialty Food Magazine is the leading publication for retailers, manufacturers and foodservice professionals in the specialty food trade. It provides news, trends and business-building insights that help readers keep their businesses competitive.
Issue link: https://www.e-digitaleditions.com/i/725016
cheese focus BEERY CHEESES TO KNOW All of these American cheeses incorporate beer or a beer ingredient in some fashion. Alemar Cheese Company, Good Thunder (Minnesota) Briar Rose Creamery, Lorelei (Oregon) Crown Finish Caves, Trifecta; Naked Pruner (New York) Doe Run, Bathed in Victory (Pennsylvania) Harpersfield Farmstead Cheese, with Beer; with Hops (New York) Haystack Mountain, A Cheese Named Sue (Colorado) Jasper Hill Farm, Willoughby Washed Series (Vermont) Meadowood Farms, Ledyard and Rippleton (New York) Rogue Creamery, Chocolate Stout Cheddar and Hopyard Cheddar (Oregon) Vermont Farmstead Cheese Company, Alehouse Cheddar (Vermont) Creative Cross-Promotion "It's an opportunity to leverage each other's brands," says David Gremmels, co-owner of Rogue Creamery. And at the retail level, says Gremmels, "it's a cross-department marketing opportunity. We're seeing the beer merchants working with the cheesemongers on marketing." For Rogue Creamery's beer cheddars, the beer is added directly to the curds just before they are hooped. This technique yields moister cheddar that ages more quickly than Rogue's traditional cheddar and retains some of the character of the brew. Gremmels detects a malty f lavor and cocoa finish in the Chocolate Stout Cheddar and notable toastiness in the Morimoto Soba Ale Cheddar made with toasted buckwheat. The creamery's Hopyard Cheddar incorporates dry hops for a citrusy, f loral scent. More commonly, creameries and affineurs are putting the beer on the outside. At Briar Rose Creamery in Dundee, Oregon, cheese- maker Sarah Marcus washes her Lorelei, a small Taleggio-like goat's milk square, with Deschutes Brewery's Black Butte Porter. "I tried some of the local IPAs but found the hop f lavor wouldn't stick around," says Marcus. "It was too volatile. All the f loral notes evaporated after the first day." In contrast, the porter imparts malt, coffee, and spice notes that heighten with each wash. "It's a very different cheese than [one] with just brine," says the cheesemaker. An Evolving Approach On the East Coast, the aging experiments underway at Crown Finish are shedding more light on which beer types work and which don't. "We love saisons, sours, lambics—anything with wild fermenta- tions," says Chelsea Germer, the company's head of sales. IPAs tend to stunt rind development, she adds, and high-alcohol or high-acid beers need to be diluted with brine, not applied directly. One big success to date, Germer says, is Trifecta, a four-ounce triple-cream washed in a saison from Brooklyn's Threes Brewing. Old Chatham Sheepherding Company supplies the young cheese, a Camembert-style square from mixed sheep's and cow's milk. For Kent Falls Brewing in Connecticut, the affineur bathed the same cheese with the brewery's blueberry-blackberry sour to create a bespoke wheel for the brewery store. These custom projects "give us a great relationship with smaller shops that want to have something special," says Germer. "It fills the need for them to have their own thing, and it allows us to differenti- ate ourselves." If some of these treatments sound questionable (blueberry- blackberry sour?), at least the finished cheese doesn't taste like the beer. "That's the biggest misperception about beer-washed cheese," Vermont Farmstead Cheese Company's Alehouse Cheddar Jasper Hill Farm's Willoughby Washed Series PHOTO: VERMONT FARMSTEAD CHEESE COMPANY PHOTO: JASPER HILL FARM 20 ❘ SPECIALTY FOOD MAGAZINE specialtyfood.com