Beer school.
One of the best things to pair with beer is cheese, and that’s because of beer’s great variety of flavours and drinking characteristics. Sweet malts often taste like bread or toast, and we know that’s a complementary flavour with cheese. Light, crisp, bright beers gently match the soft creaminess of fresh cheeses, while darker, stronger beers compare to the salty intensity of aged and blue cheeses. Fruity hop flavour finds the natural fruitiness in cheese (in the same way that grapes or chutney work with it) and beer’s carbonation and bitterness cut through cheese’s fat content.
Cheese gives us some of the simplest food pairings too: bitter and a ploughman’s, IPA with mac and cheese, pilsner and a margherita pizza, cherry beer and cheesecake. When the cheeses come out over the festive period, make sure you’ve got some good beers ready to drink alongside them.