Pairing beer and cheese

36 hours ago I knew nothing about how to pair beers with cheese. But, like a sponge bar towel sponge, I have soaked up the surprisingly vast amount of information available online about pairing beers with cheese.

Have you ever seen that documentary about bonobo monkeys in which it's apparent in the first 58 seconds that bonobo scientists and enthusiasts are in this one-sided competition with chimpanzees? The bonobos seem to the the only ones without a major inferiority complex, and everyone interviewed spends the bulk of their screen time talking about how much smarter, more loving, more complex, more peaceable, and just how all-around better bonobos are than chimpanzees.

That's a little bit the vibe I got from the beer pairing aficionados. They were so aware of the comparison to wine tasting that talking up beer and cheese pairing while talking down wine was a recurrent tic. Instead of "bonobos are smarter" it was "beer has more complexity than wine" or "beer isn't as sweet and doesn't mask cheese flavors" or one of a half a dozen other repeated beer-is-better mantras.

However, once I got past the stream of unsolicited justifications, I found a lot of good information out there about how to pair beer and cheese. Here are a few that I found particularly useful:

• SF Chronicle's Beer and Cheese, see-what-I-mean subtitled "Forget wine and cheese parties -- the true soul mate for fromage isn't made from grape juice"
• Beer Advocate's pairing theory and suggestions
• Brewtopia pairing suggestions
• Beercook.com Wisconsin beer and cheese pairings
  

The only disappointment was that some of the sites I found downplayed cheese variety. My guess is that's because they're concerned with alienating beer drinkers by suggesting varieties more exotic than those you'd find in the specialty cheese case of local supermarkets. But seriously, if you're reading about beer pairings, you're probably aware that there are more than five types of cheese in the world, right? Pairing in itself is a fairly fussy endeavor, so making suggestions for what beer to pair with jack cheese seems either disingenuous or affectedly prosaic.

Raclette party

Finally, after years of talking about buying a raclette machine, Kathryn and I made the plunge and got one! You can see it in the middle of the table in this photo (thanks Ross, for the photo). The idea is that since no one actually needs a raclette machine on hand at all times (even Swiss shepherds), we can share it.

Its first party was in (low-key) honor of Alexa and A.J.'s upcoming journey to South America. May cheese smooth their travels. I think it's an old Armenian saying.

We did it up. Swiss and French racelette plus a bit of emmenthal in case anyone didn't like raclette (the vegans brought their own cheese with the label that boasts, "It melts!"), three kinds of baby potatoes (white, red, and purple), veggies for the grill top, charcuterie, fresh pepper, parsley. The giant coffee table came in handy (10 people fit around it).

Ah raclette, we'll be seeing more of you this winter. And on the flip side of the grill is a crepe surface! This thing truly brings the party.