Cheese for beer, highballs and makgeolli

Why fermented drinks and cheese get along

Both are fermented, and that is the whole story. The longer something ferments, the more amino acids like glutamate it accumulates — which is what we call savouriness. Cheese has it, the drink has it, and together they multiply rather than add. Lactic acid builds a second bridge: the soft tartness and yoghurt-like aroma running through makgeolli, sake and beer belongs to the same family as the tang already in the cheese, which is why unfamiliar pairings rarely taste strange. Alcohol then loosens the fat a little and lets the aroma lift.

Beer — the bubbles do the cleaning

Carbonation and a little bitterness reset your palate, which makes beer an easier partner than wine. The fizz strips fat, the malt sweetness absorbs salt, and the lower alcohol never buries the cheese. A light lager sits well with mild semi-hard cheeses. Wheat beers, with their fruit and spice, suit fresh cheeses and soft bloomy rinds. A malty Belgian ale runs in exactly the same direction as the caramel notes in a long-aged gouda.

Easy company for a light beer:

Stout and porter — the natural home of blue cheese

Roasted barley brings coffee and chocolate, which meets the sharp funk of blue cheese head-on and somehow lifts it rather than fighting it. That is why Stilton with porter has stuck around in England for so long. If blue is too much, start with a long-aged cheddar: the bitterness of the stout against the salt of the cheese leaves something like a chocolate finish. Very sweet imperial stouts drift towards dessert, so the cheese needs real salt to hold its ground.

The ones that meet roasted malt head-on:

IPA takes a little more care

Hop bitterness and cheese salt tend to amplify each other, which is why an IPA next to blue cheese often makes both taste aggressive. The fix is to pick a cheese with sweetness left in it. The caramel of an aged gouda or the nuttiness of comté takes the edge off the hops nicely, and a moderately salty cheddar is a dependable middle ground. If you insist on blue, a double IPA — bigger, sweeter, boozier — has a far better chance than a lean, bitter one.

These take the edge off the hops:

Monasteries made the beer and the cheese in one yard

The Chimay abbey in Belgium was founded in 1850, and within about a decade it had built a brewery and a dairy side by side. It was a practical decision about staying self-sufficient, but the result is charming: the cheese there is aged with its rind washed in the beer made a few metres away. They were designed to be eaten together, so of course they work. A surprising amount of modern beer-and-cheese advice traces back to habits like this one. Things raised on the same ground, with the same water and the same microbes, usually belong together.

The family whose rind is washed with beer:

Highballs and soju — go salty and savoury

These are strong but simple in aroma, so the food side needs the intensity. A long-aged hard cheese cut into bite-sized pieces is snack enough on its own — parmigiano broken up by hand will do. Salty sheep's milk cheeses work just as well. A highball, with its citrus and fizz, can carry richer cheeses than neat spirits can. With something almost aromaless like soju, grind a little pepper over the cheese or add a drop of honey to give the drink something to meet.

Salty and dense enough to be the snack itself:

Makgeolli — fresh cheese for a tart, grainy drink

The gentle sourness and rice sweetness of Korea's cloudy rice brew clash with heavy aged aromas. Fresh cheeses that still taste of milk are the natural match, and since both sides make their acidity the same way — through lactic fermentation — the tang reads as one flavour rather than two. Ricotta with a little honey picks up the grain sweetness directly. Korean makgeolli bars increasingly serve cheese instead of the traditional fried pancake, often with sesame oil or dried seaweed rather than anything European.

The ones that still taste of milk:

Sake — savouriness times savouriness

Sake is about the most amino-acid-rich drink there is, because it ferments with a mould culture called koji alongside the yeast rather than yeast alone. Put that next to a savoury cheese and the two multiply. It is no accident that cream cheese cured in miso is a standard Japanese bar snack. Aged hard cheeses and salty blues both work well. The exception is a delicate daiginjo, where the cheese should stay mild — otherwise the aroma you paid for disappears entirely.

Savoury enough to multiply with it:

Whisky — match age with age

Long-aged spirits want long-aged cheese. Sherry-cask whisky carries dried-fruit sweetness that sits happily beside a nutty hard cheese, and a bourbon's vanilla and caramel run parallel to aged gouda. Heavily peated Islay whisky will flatten anything that is not equally opinionated, which is exactly where blue cheese earns its place. Smoke against mould is a collision of two different kinds of strength — divisive, but unforgettable for the people it suits.

Aged cheese to match an aged spirit:

If you are not drinking

Sparkling water does the same job as the bubbles in wine and cuts through richer cheeses. Black tea has the tannin for firm aged cheese — smoky Lapsang souchong is especially good with cheddar — while coffee, with its bitterness and roast, goes to the creamy ones. The dark horse is apple juice or a non-alcoholic cider: acidity and sweetness together suit almost anything. It is the teetotal version of what Normandy has been doing with camembert and cider for a very long time.

Worth trying beside tea, coffee or sparkling water:

Small things that make a snack board better

Give the cheese half an hour out of the fridge. Cold cheese barely smells, and you end up tasting nothing of what you paid for. Cut it into bites in advance — nobody wants to work a knife with a glass in one hand. Salt alone gets tiring, so put nuts or dried fruit alongside and the board lasts far longer. And serve mild first: eat the blue cheese early and you will not remember a single thing about the rest of the evening's cheese.