Our favorite beer-blog author was unable to make it to what may have been the pinnacle of Sacramento’s Beer Week—the Westvleteren 12 tasting at Pangaea Café. I realize that Beer Week is long over and this write up is long overdue. Eh, oh well. On to the marvelous tale!The tasting wasn’t cheap, $40 to taste a handful of Belgian beers with cheese pairings put together by food-man Big Mike Moore. Forty clams would be wildly overpriced if not for the final two ounces of the evening.
For those readers of this blog who are unfamiliar with Westvleteren 12, allow me a few sentences of background. Westvleteren is made at the Trappist St. Sixtus Monastery in Belgium and is probably the most exclusive beer in the world. The monks at St. Sixtus have some strange urge to deprive the world of their beer and unlike all the other Trappist beers, theirs is only sold from either the brewery or the monastery café and in quantities no larger than one case per visitor. This means that the beer widely regarded as the world’s best is almost impossible to find outside of a few Belgian pubs, ebay, and the monastery itself.
For more love: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/westvleteren-12/4934/ ‘nuff said.
Rob, the gent who owns and runs Pangea was presented with a handful of bottles of this rare brew by a friend of his. In a move as saintly as the monks themselves, Rob decided to share this windfall with his loyal customers. Every drop of the beer he had was poured into the little sampler glasses we giddy fans clutched in our beer loving hands.
Of course that wasn’t the whole story. Prior to the Westvleteren we were treated to beer and cheese pairings that were on the whole good. Big Mike got all the cheese for the pairings at Nugget which was convenient for those of us who found something they liked and wanted more. The pairings were good, in each case beer and cheese were of similar complementary character. Lets zip through them briefly.
First off was Dupont Foret paired with Seal Bay Triple cream. Foret is a saison from the folks who define the style, Foret being their organic version. As one who prefers his apples worm free, I was surprised to find awhile ago that I much prefer Foret to Saison Dupont the other (inorganic?) version. Seal Bay is a super creamy brie-like chesse. It is good but forgettable. The combination is ok, but it felt like this was set up intentionally as the boring low-ball flavor pair. The cheese was so bland that it seemed to bring down the beer. I prefer to pair a good saison like this with crusty old salty aged gouda, brings out the flavor in both—of course I like aged gouda with damn near any beer.
Round two was Affligem Blonde paired with Tillamook Reserve Extra Sharp Cheddar. That was fine I suppose.
Following that was Chimay White paired with Chimay Cheese. The Chimay cheese is a moderately pungent fresh soft cheese. It would probably be better with one of the heavier more flavorful Chimays—red or blue, but white was ok. Chimay white is the quietest of the Chimay family if you ask me, and the cheese may have drowned it out a little. Still a tasty pair—keeping it in the family.
Batting clean-up was Grimbergen Dubbel with Gran Queso. Grimbergen is not my favorite dubbel, but it’s tasty enough and the Gran Queso was a really good pair. Gran Queso is a slightly harder cheese like a softer version of Manchengo or something. It’s tasty, and despite the name, not Spanish at all.
The last pair before the big show was Tripel Karmeliet teamed up with Cypress Grove Chevre Goat Cheese. This was an interesting pair—the goat cheese was a big nasty flavorful delicious bleu cheese like affair and Tripel Karmeliet is a sweet tripel. The cheese made the beer taste like caramel syrup and the combination was surprisingly tasty.
Finally, at long last we got about an ounce and a half of Westvleteren 12. It is difficult to describe the flavor of the beer, very full bodied it feels almost like drinking a slice of bread. The flavor is pronounced but not overwhelming. The taste was nutty and perfectly balanced, nothing stood out or was lacking. It is difficult to describe other than to say it tasted very right.
I went to the shindig to have a swig of Westvleteren and of course it would have been all worth it for that alone, but I wound up really enjoying the beer and cheese pairings. I like cheese as much as the next guy, and I certainly like beer, but I’d never really given any thought to pairing them. I’ve done the wine and cheese thing of course, and that’s all well and good (though Big Mike is critical of pairing wine with cheese, he thinks they taste metallic together), but now I’ve started playing around with beer and cheese. It’s a lot of fun, get a few cheeses and a few beers and see how they taste together. You get beer and you get cheese. How do you beat that?
- S. Joe Griffin
Note: I would like to personally thank Joe for going to the trouble of drinking the best beer in the world and writing this blog in my stead since I could not be there... Cheers!!! - Brian
