Beer & Cheese with Cheryl Cade and Charlie Turnbull from the Academy of Cheese

Its all Beer and Cheese this week. bring your own and we will discuss the good and very good of beer with British cheese.

Streamed live on Mar 2, 2021

GUIDE TO TASTING CHEESE

Learn about the four stages of tasting cheese and how to take tasting notes with this definitive guide to tasting cheese.

Read our Guide to tasting cheese.

Beer and Cheese Video Transcript

Hi good evening, my name is Charlie Turnbull, this is the beer and cheese show, no it’s the cheese. But tonight it’s beer and cheese, it’s beautiful we’ve got the fantastically awesome amazing Cheryl Cade, who is a beer goddess or is that a fair comment?

I like it, i’ll take it. Okay well i’ll go with cheese guard you go with beer goddess and we’re good to go perfect marriage there all right don’t tell my husband don’t tell my wife okay good that’s right nobody’s watching it’s fine right uh okay now you’ve got for us i’m really excited about this i don’t know any of these ales these ones turned up uh i hope it doesn’t sort of do much too much time if i do it like that people can see it without actually this one turned out without me knowing it was coming two bottles of these um and i just love them they look amazing but you’ve also sent me through something from belgium two from belgium one of which is a cherry beer is that right yeah and runegazer which is one of your locals yes indeed so what you have there in your hand is a local ruby beer um from moongazer ales nibbler and we’ve got three cheeses as well so we’ve got the cinder the baron by god and the smoked dapple and the nibbler will go the nibbler that you’re holding up is sort of like basically to go with the smoked apple okay and stuff i’ve forgotten i’ve got my yellow background on which means my cheese is disappeared oh no like whoa look at that how weird is that it’s like i am the cheese anyway uh right so so you’re gonna have to do the holding up to the camera thing so firstly let’s hear about you you’re from you’re from east anglia you’re at the north top right hand corner sort of norfolk area aren’t you yeah we’re we’re the bump the the witch’s bottom if you describe the map of the england like the witch on the brimstick never done that is new i’m loving it oh well i heard that first comment in belgium and they went oh you’re the bum of the witch and i was like yeah all right okay you learned something new i’m absolutely loving that we are the witch well you are the witch’s bottom which makes us me down near brighton her feet i’m guessing yes okay uh i’m gonna have to go back to look at the map of england go anyway no stay on subject stay subject come on come on so uh yeah i’m a beer sommelier started off as a bismaria first with my husband who’s also qualified beer sommelier uh just looking we both love beers wanted to do something different with our lives and both qualified with the beer academy and then a few years ago i have to thank one of your students johnny for telling me to do the level one cheese academy and i came out of doing that with cheese plus and it was like okay i like beer but i love cheese and that drove me on to uh in the first lockdown i did the level two with the academy and absolutely loved it and then had the pleasure of becoming a training partner for the year are you on the team you’re one of the team know you’re on the back very exciting so you know we’ve we’re um i’ve actually natalie’s here tonight um i’m training a team we’ve got nine people doing level two this week it’s people really enjoy it we’ve we thought that we would be getting you know professionals onto level two actually it’s an awful lot of really you know cheese lovers the people who are the wise the great and the good who know that a bit more knowledge makes their cheese pleasure that much and i think as well you’ve got a lot of people wanting to know where their food comes from and having a better understanding of what’s what actually is involved in their food and reconnecting reconnecting with it yeah i agree all right now you’ve got two beers here from belgium now the uk population of cheese lovers are generally not familiar with belgian cheeses and shame we don’t have any tonight but you know maybe that’s for another time um but the belgium has really good cheeses as well i think it all comes out of that whole abbey monastery thing going down now it it does although you’d be surprised the abbeys and the monasteries didn’t really as we know them didn’t really kick off till around about 18 uh 1793 1805 when basically the um napoleon kicked out most of their french abbeys and they then moved into belgium and so on so forth so abby’s as we know them in belgium didn’t really although the first beer we’re actually have the all-vowel which is this wonderful one here yeah no i was looking for his twitter handle today there’s actually an orval beers lovers club of some form dedicated to this beer that is because this beer is so good trapper spears in general are recognized as being some of the best beers in the world so and now just trappist means i don’t speak doesn’t it isn’t yeah isn’t that what that all comes from it comes from that it’s basically strict order of the benedictines so they say nothing and they brew good beer that’s that’s what we’re hearing basically all right well come on let’s let’s kick off let’s kick off kick off now whilst you’re pouring your beer the thing to look for for a trapeze beer it might be a bit lively okay it lively’s a word love his word i think i’ve just contained it okay we’re back in the house all the glass yeah all right should i let it sit has it got yeast in there or anything that needs to be worked this is one of the few trappist beers that is actually um dry hopped but also it has sorry what does dry hopped mean dry hot means that at the end of the brewing process the hops are added so that it gets more of a hot flavor okay yeah but also this beer has yeast added to it just before it’s bottled mm-hmm and the use it’s added is bretomice’s yeast and that bread in my seizures continues to eat the sugars so when this beer is really young um it tastes um a lot more malty and a lot sweeter as it ages and the one you’ve got is two years old if you have a look on the label it will actually say um bottled on the 28th uh 21st of the 8th 2018. it does yes i can go from there um use by date is the 20th of the 23rd yep three yeah yes yeah yeah but ignore that this will keep weighing for years this will change and develop a bit like one of those cheese makers in the west country who tells me ignore the label on my bree just keep it for an extra 10 days and all that kind of thing it’s a life product and will continue doing its live thing as long as you don’t do anything stupid and my favorite period is the one that we are drinking we’ve just got this because um i run the world beer bar at night beer festival and we actually are known for aging beers and this is one of the styles that we age so you’re like a beer effinger kind of wow loving that this yeah this is great it’s better 2018 we’re in 2021 uh so it’s it’s it’s it’s it’s my it’s what my children would call middle two here years under our belt but you’re saying it would do another couple of years i’ve got one that’s 20 plus wow okay i’ve just had a smell i’ve spilted all over the baron by god which is not the plan okay this one it goes with it so so um but is this one of those beers you should i should have treated more generally so the east didn’t rise into the beer um yep chili get out the fridge only a few minutes before you want to serve it then serve it you should have this fluffy brown tan head in belgium you want a head that’s about two fingers high and um yep okay so so bring yours up yours you’ve managed to keep um uh more crystal than mine mine’s got a fuzziness because i’ve let my yeast come up so yours is fine yeah it’s perfectly fine for you to drink that yeast and everything it will just help that actually will give the beer a little bit more body that is that is delicious beer it is um it’s got it it’s what i think of a small bubble beer so we’ve got it’s got a light fizz a very gentle um but so is it a bitter or is it a lager it’s a more like a pale ale okay so it is an art the bitter end of the bitter spectrum more of the bitter than than a lot it’s definitely not a lager because for it to be a lager it would have to be um bottom fermented this beer is top fermented that’s there’s technical terms there are technical terms yes i do i don’t know i don’t know i’m i don’t often use the phrase bottom fermented but um i am aware of lagering kind of thing yeah so where are you taking us into the cheese line to go with this really quite extraordinarily delicious oil those lovely light bubbles made me think of cinder hill that light moosiness lemony like cinder hill this is an absolutely stalkingly good cheese this was an excuse for me to revisit cinder hill and i was like what beer that has to be my champagne of the beer world and that’s how i classed all val it’s like a champagne you can lay in your cellar and it will go with most cheeses i i would agree it’s got a a dry bitterness in its um the last quarter of the flavor so reminding people the cinnamon hill is a lovely little truncated pyramid sort of um a little bit like a fat valencia you might say and you’ve got um the penicillin geotrich and the one i’ve got here is quite it’s got quite a wet young skin it’s not bubbled up in the sort of firmness and i can feel the moisture under the rind showing there’s this kind of a liquid breakdown just on skin which we’re expecting to have a bit of fun with in a second the one i’ve got is beautifully creamy just under the wind and then you’ve got like near nearly porcelain crumbly all right let’s see if we can gather a little bit of uh it is beautiful yeah you can’t really let’s see if i have to get a bit closer here can we see can we make this can we see that getting there can we see that it’s getting that little creamy edge underneath the skin some people don’t like that other people do i’m in the do camp i i am as well i’d like to see that and in fact i like seeing them go further and into that center but when you’re having beer with it as well it’s this one definitely have a little bit of the cheese in your mouth when you have a sip of the beer i do advise that otherwise you dribble okay so the the the goat’s cheese has um the thick velvetiness the dense density of the cream and the goat and the velvet and the a little bit of sweetness um the beer emphasizes its vegetal flavors so you’re getting i suppose the hoppiness is overlapping a bit and getting something going on there yeah and then you’re getting those lovely little bubbles just cutting it all and lifting in that moussey texture of the cheese and that light featheriness and just lifting everything i i just for me this is one of the the beers that will marry with most cheeses um it does struggle against some really punchy ones [Music] but as it ages it changes and will develop a little bit more um tartness i’m i’m i’m not familiar with this um aging of beers it’s not something i have a lot of experience of so i’m absolutely fascinated with this so you’ve got a beer that can go five-ish years yep against and you’re matching with cheese that would struggle to go five weeks you know so there really is a this is agent asian beauty or something something like that definitely it’s like a grandparent leading a younger sibling forward you know and with the synergy that you have with beer and cheese both made with four main ingredients and yet you can have such a diversity you know that it’s it is a marriage made in heaven and these a lot of a lot of belgian speciality cheeses are of this cinnadon hill type small unique sort of that 150 to 250 gram sort of size um so maybe there is a predisposition here and if you go to a bar in belgium quite often you’ll be given your beer with and you can have it with a little bowl of cheese and a little bit of celery salt well the learning here everybody is that we should spend more time in belgium drinking beer and eating cheese okay where you going next next one is we’re going to move on to england we’re going to move back to the uk we’re going to move on to the nibbler okay so our little bunny rabbits oh sorry well actually it’s a hair so the reason the brewery picked the hair is the logo is that they have a lot of hairs in the area yeah yep now this one is four percent it i would not suggest aging this one because it’s too too low in abv basically if you’ve got over four percent sorry over eight percent you can probably age the beer oh god i never really looked okay we’ve got six point two percent on your oval so he’s running a much darker beer here much darker uh sort of tan head little bit of a head give it a little swirl if you want to get more aroma pop your hand over the glass and it will collect a little bit more aroma and then pop your head in and do little doggy sniffs don’t overfill the orafactory system or what a friend of mine calls a drive-by where you sniff as you pass over it’s not it’s not got a big it’s got not got a big nose it’s um very gentle you get the marisota malts which are our local malts got the the the classic bitterness of the malt but still it’s also got a very rich warm caramel malt thing that’s sweetness that caramel and yet there’s also those hints of nut and for me it it makes me think of walking through dry woodlands so you’re thinking more cob nuts that kind of that kind of i i think i when he said nuts i was i was wandering off into almond territory i think there’s oh no no no wait we are we are in the uk we’re much um well nutty and um sort of like those cobb nuts hazelnuts and all those sort of things so we’re going around a limb here i think this might be one of those beers while delicious might be better out of a cask yeah because because it’s got that kind of bottled big small bubble thing i don’t mean kind of yeah so i imagine that out of a cask we’re getting a much more complete experience and the carbonation is much more balanced out of the casket it’s much more gentle and the flavors travel and it becomes much softer okay all right what are we taking out who are we taking home with our with our with our moon we are taking home the smoked dapple oh okay now i know this is one i don’t think you’ve experienced before no i don’t know this cheese at all classic cheddar produced by ferndale farm um mum uh oh god i want to call her margaret but i don’t think it’s margaret betts but now her son arthur betts uh makes the cheese she still get she supposedly retires but still goes and collects the milk from binham um at 6am every morning so and it’s made classically as a cheddar crop wrapped salad but they also smoke it on site okay and i’m just going to bring attention to this oh i can’t do you’re gonna have to do it for me cheryl okay my invisible cheese um i will describe it you might have to turn your light off cheryl because it’s being too bright on there so what we can see is that um yep uh those people need to know about jesus there are two ways to make cheeses smoked one is you can um break the cheese down and add an additive right through the center of it and then reform it so cheese is uh done that way or you can actually with mercury and the thing about putting smoker is that cheeses this is so weird the cheese is the smoke is very doesn’t travel very fast so you can only smoke relatively small pieces of cheese and you can see that this one has been smoked in a portion because the darkness on the smoke is really apparent on each side um i’m gonna see if i can do a magic trick here cheryl you need to talk for a second i just need to see if i can get the background so um on that rim you have that beautiful dryness from the smoke and a little bit of i get a little bit mushroomy we’re still getting some bricks i’ve gone to bricks to see if i can get the camera to pay attention to you and we are beginning to get that now it is looking much better yeah um what i like about this cheese is it’s got a nice dryness and as well as those nuts and salts there is this sort of dryness that also with that smoke picks up on the smoked malts in the beard so as malt’s made it’s dried and kilned and there is an element of that smokiness in in the beer and it sort of like brings that out hmm it’s a very old english flavor this smoked cheddar and bitter isn’t it it’s like definitely one of the sort of great classics of of lunchtime pub eating and he almost like you’re tasting dare i say yesterday’s [ __ ] are still on the floor somewhere you know there’s a degree of atmosphere going on in this which is you know what i always think of a pub is you know i was brought up in pubs surrounded by sticky carpets and all of that those smells that you get in the morning when you first opened the pub yes yes yes kind of like how did i not notice that was there the night before and going oh that’s why i didn’t notice it the night before but you know the cleanliness today yeah i know that’s that does have that kind of smell um so that was delicious so congratulations mr moon is it right uh we uh what’s next then cheryl what’s next i think i’m going to move you on to how english ale used to taste and this is the audit yeah uh no where are we going the cherry beer the fruit this is a brewery yep bacchus yeah i was googling this out and of course bacchus is one of the massively overused words in the in the drinking industry whether it’s wine or i even have a party every year called a bacchanalia um for exactly that kind of all too much in one night okay we’ve got no labeling on here at all this is kind of cool no all the labeling is done on the package environmentally friendly really isn’t it yeah oh well in belgium you’re actually paid to recycle your bottles just how we used to send our pop bottles back for a tempe or whatever they tried that they tried that in the in the balkans did you hear about this they tried another balkans and they turned out that they were paying people too much so people started making bottles so that they not very clever anyway so um anyway so so this is the cherry beer this is the cherry this is a cherry beer now the difference with this is it’s made as an old ale first right and then it ha it lays on the real fruit so it’s put in a barrel with the real fruit so it gets those real fruit flavors to take away some of the tartness of the beer now other tart beers that we have or more sour beers would be lambics those girls and they also have fruit added to them and they’re also blended this is not blended but what you have is an old ale and there should be hints of redness if you shone a light through this this has got like first cousin to fizzy ribena if you know what i mean um you can get really really sweet versions but i preferred this this is along the lines of a road and back or a that old ale so this is how english beer used to taste so what why can’t you play i use why do you say english beer used to taste this way what makes you say that um the the louis pasteur discovered yeast and he turned that bretomyces that bretomyces is the yeast that eats all the sugars and turns the beers sour right the bretomyces comes from british yeast because all english beer according to him had those sour notes because as beer gets old if it hasn’t been treated it will age so it will go sour those wild yeasts get in there and there’s elements of wild juice now this i’ve actually picked as an all-rounder it will pair with the cinden it will pair with the cheddar but it will also go with the baron by god well i’m doing my little around the houses here it makes the it makes the cinder sweeter yeah because quite often if you put fruit with you you quite often will put a sweeter fruit with a goat’s cheese instead you’re putting a sweeter beer and you know it’s got those and yet it’s still also got that malt background to work with the cheddar and to think of it i’m giving this indian hill more points than cheddar so far but i have to say yeah i’d say but i’ve been into it already we opened it already i was sitting there between my wife and i when we were talking earlier and that’s how much apparent by god i have left from the small one that i bought yeah well i bought i got quite a big one and i’m [ __ ] up but you know but it’s funny enough i looked at it and it is barren by god but it really this particular by god is so reliant on the way it’s matured and it matures in different ways depending on how you mature and this one has real tones of west country breeze so i’m getting quite a lot of bitter butter if um there’s one which is not what i expect from the baron by god i i have to say i’m very much with the baron going past their use by date because i’d love it with that really oozy center um this is this is 100 there’s not a hint of firmness here i’m not going to put that down as a win no um it’s it’s it’s taking the complexity out of the cheese you still get that rich um uh the butteriness the the the delightful fattiness you know that kind of oh i’m just enjoying this because it’s rich but actually it’s it’s i think it’s stripping out the complexity of the it has taken those down and um i think maybe one of the sweet sweeter fruit beers without so much of a punch would have actually paired with it slightly better but i’d like to say that the the combination of the cherry beer with the fat is nice it that in fact this is a nice combination it’s like making more sense a part of the cheese but not letting another part of the cheese come through if that’s slightly different analyzing it no it is perfectly correct and one of the things about the fruit biz is that they are much more um they’re the marmite of the beer world they uh but when they’re put with food that’s when they come to light and i do think it is much more one that pairs better with the goats and lifts that yeah i’m putting it down as my favorite with the cinnamon hill without question of these three i’m going to bring you on to the fourth one here around me is that i used to be an auditor uh-huh comes from lakens brewery i’ve got to make sure i get it in the now this is another one that you can lay down and age apart from the nibbler all of these treat them like a wine put them in your cellar let them age um so lakens was a phoenix from the flames uh it was a brewery that was closed down when all the breweries amagamated and then reopened and their their previous head brewer will will woods who used to be at oakhams went back through the history books and found a recipe for a beer that was brewed for the colleges and the universities for when they did their audits and it was like a celebration beer to say right we’ve passed our audit we’re through okay okay so this falls in the salt barley wine category but it has a nice hoppiness as well you say barley wine i was that’s that’s quite quite a good way of putting at it so um so this is this is best before 2025 a beer that’s got another four years to run when would this have been brewed uh this is quite fresh because the hops are still quite fresh i think um it’s got it’s not a bit like chinese it’s it’s not unbalanced it’s just a little bit a robust robust um the flavors are still i i’m much of the um will sun now bruise this beer for lakens and i’m much of the opinion the same as will that this beer is better after a year okay um is it and then do we don’t think this is a year old this beer oh i don’t think this is um usually it has a brewed date sometimes no but um sorry cinnamon hill it’s not it’s the cinnamon hill is holding its own simply because the fat of the cheese is collecting around the edges it’s almost like waiting for that annoying beer to get out the way and then come back and deliver all its flavor there’s no there’s no melding of the flavors there too punchy way too punchy for something as delicately it’s been quite on the hill though it’s hanging on in there until the beer is gone oh yeah yeah but it’s going it’s having a divorce that there’s arguments going on um but sort of like especially with the rindy um that under the underwrite oohs of the barum cheddar’s doing better let’s try the baron moment quiet while we earnestly bear in keys very easy job we’ve got here cheryl that i mean the audit as well i really enjoy the audit with a good um blue yeah i can see that well i think i think you still need to get to your year here yeah um yeah but then i do find that with quite a few beers uh especially christmas beers people bring out beers for christmas with lots of spices if you pop them in the cupboard for a year they’re better what i mean like a good christmas christmas cake it’s like leave it for you and it’s better still yeah knock down that cinnamon and the cloves because it’s had that time and it brings forward the other spices and flavors that you get and stuff okay i am um my favorite with the audit is the baron by god that’s a surprise for me i was not expecting it to be the um uh but it’s it’s there’s a bitterness in the back by god which is that kind of um candida kind of thing and uh and if for some reason it mellows it and just gives a sweeter barren by god than you have on its own which is quite delicious and and this is what we often find with really good pairings is that you’ve got two cheeses that are individually a little bit uncontrolled sometimes together makes them more makes them behave if that makes sense that makes total sense and also what i find is the texture-wise this has much more of a body much more of a texture going on and it matches with the barons texture as well with all the beards and one thing i always have i always have three or four beers or three or four drinks with any cheese board because they all interact so differently oh the discipline of your life having to have three or four beers with every cheese board i call it study it’s research materials mm-hmm well somebody down here i’ve been noticing talking about the importance of research there jacqueline she was talking about it there you go it’s all about the research definitely jacqueline i fully agree you have to research them all right we are slightly overtime if everyone’s got any questions please ask them now that’s one of them um the question that i’m asking is which do i like most i actually haven’t got a clue i’m going to go away and do more research with my wife we will sit down we’ll make good notes um and we will uh we’ll check it out we could check it out i think that i think the takeaway for me is the fun of really interesting and really good beers with really interesting and really good cheeses and good chat i mean that’s what our takeaway isn’t it yeah yeah well it’s food and drink is all about the company that you have as well around it i fully agree pardon me we we have a lot of chats about what things taste like and why do they taste it because that’s sort of our job on me but at the end of the day if you can’t share it it’s not as much fun you know that’s the gig and that’s why i find wherever i travel especially in belgium if you start talking to people about their beer or their cheese or their food i mean the norfolk dapple is perfect for a wet loof with um cream sauce and with a pale ale next door to it well i’m we’re gonna have to wrap this up we’re gonna have to wrap it up i’m just gonna respond slightly to natalie who said the most hypocritical thing of all time um we’re doing she’s on a level two course here um she has never turned up to a session without an exceptionally good bottle of wine her taste of mine is very good um so tell me not to be too drunk tomorrow on you mate uh so that just goes to show that this is about the pleasure and the pleasure of having cheryl here today um thank you very much for having you for having us cheryl basically i’ve got level one happening in may and then i have and that’s online over of three days two and a half hours over three days and then i’m also running a few sort of fun courses where people can drop in and have some fun so when do you expect to be back with bums on seats do you think you can do that is that your main one um i would like to be back with bums on seats in august hopefully okay i’m i’m hoping earlier than that i really hope that that will um that will come in but then we can start having that real energy of the room as people learn to love cheese together or learn to love cheese more well my thing is that most of my events happen within pubs so i’ve got to wait for the pub rush to die down so there’s some space in the back yes yeah give up on that that’s 2023 mate right okay okay we got it we got to close thank you very much cheryl thank you very much who’s joined us this evening it’s been a pleasure um and uh if there’s one takeaway everyone drink more cheese and eat more beer definitely