The Brewery Adventure
Do you love breweries and tap rooms? Well, we do. We love the beer of course, but this podcast is more about the spaces themselves. What makes a great brewery experience? We explore breweries around Minnesota and beyond to discover our favorites. Join us for The Brewery Adventure!
The Brewery Adventure
Hoppy To Brie Here
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We’re blending two of our greatest joys: beer and cheese! We sit down with Laura from Boom Island Brewing and Christine from The Grater Good to talk about their beer and cheese pairing class... how it came to be, what makes their pairings click, why craft beer and artisan cheese are so perfect together, and how they are preparing for the November 7th class at Boom Island. Grab a pint and a chunk of cheese and join us for some laughs, learning, and maybe a few cheesy jokes!
EPISODE BEERS:
Que Pasa, Mexican Lager
Oktoberfest, Marzen
Light the Lamp, Hazy IPA
Dark Horse, Porter
LINKS:
Visit our website at https://thebreweryadventure.com or contact us by sending an email to courtney@thebreweryadventure.com.
Be sure to subscribe to our Instagram at https://www.instagram.com/thebreweryadventure!
Oh, jeez march. I suppose I'll have another wedge of that. Blue there.
CourtneyWelcome to the Brewery Adventure. I'm Courtney.
DanAnd I'm Dan. We're here to dive into the world of your local craft brewery.
CourtneyIt's not just about the beer, it's about the vibe, the people, and the stories behind every tap room.
DanFrom small neighborhood spots to big bustling brew houses, we'll bring you along for the ride. So grab a pint and join us on the brewery. Cheers.
CourtneyWe're so behind on the clink. Oh, there we go. We got it. Wait. Oh, I didn't drink.
DanBad luck.
CourtneyOkay. Right? That's our little, that's our thing. I thought that went well.
DanI think that went well.
CourtneyOne try, that's all we're doing. That felt like a first try right now. You guys, you guys witnessed it. You saw it. Saw it. You are good luck. Yeah. We have some extra voices with us today, Dan.
DanYeah, that's fun. I mean, I always have extra voices with me, but this is another podcast for another time.
CourtneyThese are real voices.
DanWe spend eight hours in uh public high school. There's lots of voices on the way home. It's always some are nice and some are not so nice. Yeah, yeah. It's good. Yeah, it's fun to have guests on the show. This is good.
CourtneyThese are you're like the first guests on the brewery adventure. Really? Yeah, no pressure or anything. Oh my goodness. So you know, you're setting the bar.
DanYou did it right though. You brought cheese and beer. So that's that's the perfect.
CourtneyDoes it get better?
LauraIt doesn't get better. I mean, if that's all it takes, we can do this all the time.
CourtneyOh, okay. We are here at Boom Island Brewing in Minnetonka, and we are with Laura, who is the events manager and might have some other titles and other hats that she she wears here.
LauraOh, it's so many titles and so many hats. Yeah. Yeah. Eventually essentially, excuse me, the events manager is my main title. Yeah. We got the main one. Yeah. I do a lot of other things too, of course, behind the scenes, but that's who I am.
ChristineAnd we have Christine, who is from The Greater Good. Yeah. So I'm a full-time dairy farmer. And then I also have a little cheese business on the side. So I do cheese and charcuterie boards, cheese tasting classes, and we just opened up a micro cheese shop right on our farm, just west of the Twin Cities near Waconia. And I'm hoping to make my own cheese. So 2030 is the goal. We're sort of getting people used to what artisan cheese looks like, tastes like, and costs in the meantime.
CourtneyAnd oh, I'm in already.
unknownGood.
CourtneySo Dan and I came to a beer and cheese pairing event here at Boom Island a couple weeks ago. It was absolutely amazing. I I could sit here and talk about it all night, all the different kinds of cheeses that we had. Again, as we mentioned on the last episode, there was one pairing that brought a tear to my eye. There were there were tears shed. It was a happy, happy moment. But we wanted to talk with both of you about how you do the classes, how this comes to happen. How did you start doing these classes here? Because I know that wasn't the first one that happened. And we also have this plate of cheese and all of these delicious beers in front of us right now. So there's gonna be some sampling that happens tonight, too.
ChristineOh yeah. I'm so nervous for eating on a microphone. I can't tell you. So I'll try to pull back so we don't get too many noises. I don't want you guys to lose followers because I'm smacking on the microphone.
CourtneyYou know, there's there's four of us, so if anybody does end up chewing in front of the microphone, nobody's really gonna know who it is. So it it'll be like anonymous eating. It's fine.
LauraJust announce yourself before you take a bite.
CourtneyChristine.
DanI'm gonna coming in hot. What is that noise?
CourtneyOkay, it could happen. You could hear some chewing. It's it's cheese.
DanAlso a chance to loop in the ASMR crowd. That's a big faction of the listening public.
CourtneyA homie audience for us.
DanFor better or for worse. They're gonna expect it.
CourtneyI love it. Well, we'll we'll try and keep it at a minimum, but it happens. This is a food episode and a beer episode.
ChristineShould we get started with one of the pairings right away? Can we do that? Oh, yes. Like to get our palates going for sure.
LauraWhich one do you want to start with?
ChristineI think we should just start with the the first beer, right? I mean the first I have the belair first.
LauraYou have the belair first. So we're going with K Pasa, which is gonna be so as you're looking at your flight boards, yes, your handle is like number one. So Capasa is gonna be number two, the lightest beer.
ChristineSorry, I just jumped right into this, but sometimes we get to all the like chit-chatting, and then it's like we have a flight of beer and cheese sitting in front of us. We gotta get into this. Yeah. So I'm all for it.
LauraOtherwise, we're just trying to scramble later on to like eat everything at once. Um, so we're starting off with our Capasa Mexican lager. Um, this is one of our most popular beers, also one of our lightest beers that we carry at Boom Island. Comes in at 4.7% ABV. Really nice, uh, evenly balanced, a little bit corn based. You get a tiny bit of sweetness on there, but it finishes a little bit my dry, if you will. Really fun to pair with a lot of different things. Easy one for really any meal, great for the summer, but also works really well for the winter without weighing you down.
ChristineAnd I want to talk quick too about, you know, for people at home that are looking to do their own cheese pairings or beer pairings or whatever it may be. The first step is to take a sip of your beverage. So in this case, we're doing beer. So go ahead and take a little sip of that beer. Really get your palate, you know, used to that. So as soon as you take a bite of that cheese, because of the fattiness of the cheese, it's gonna kind of coat your tongue and it's gonna affect how the flavor of that beer is. So you want to try that beer by itself first. You know, I I love that. This is like my new favorite beer. But this pasta is so very good. And we're gonna start off with the first cheese, too, which is gonna be this long whitish triangle with this orange on the rind. So that rind on the cheese is like the crust on a pizza. It's the most outside part of the piece of the cheese. It's still part of the cheese. This cheese is called Bel Air, so it's made by Horde's Dairyman Creamery. So, us uh farm nerds out there, there's a big magazine called Horde's Dairyman, and it's a big information magazine. It's got all sorts of different topics from I mean, they do a big judging contest in there. They're really involved with a lot of stuff that um we just had World Dairy Expo last week, which is kind of a big deal. It's a huge cow show, they have a lot to do with that. And with their magazine, they also have a herd of Guernsey cows. So Guernseys are like the brown and white cows, not the ones that look like deer. Those are jerseys with a J. The Guernseys are with a G, um, and they're kind of like I always say like an orange creamsicle color. And they have it's called golden Guernsey milk. So that milk is gonna tend to have a little bit more keratin in it, which makes it a little bit like keratin. Think about carrots. It's gonna give it a little bit of that more orangey color, and so sometimes the cheese gets a little bit more of that orangey hue as well. And just the kinds of fats and proteins that they have in their milk makes it really, really great for cheese making. So when you take a bite of this cheese, it is super ultra creamy. It's got a little bit of this like buttery notes to it, it's got some density to it. That chew on it is really, really nice as well. That texture of a cheese is such an important part of it, and then with the brightness and the lightness of that K passa, I think that combo is just awesome. I was telling Laura earlier that I was getting almost like corn nut, like you know, corn nut set notes with that. That crispiness of the beer comes in and it really just cleans up your palate. They say champagne is a cheesemonger's best friend, so cheese monger is somebody that sells cheese. Those bubbles do a really nice job of cleaning up your palate to kind of get rid of some of those little fatty particles that stick in your mouth, I guess, for lack of a better way of saying it. And so this combo, I think, is just uh it's a really great intro, a really great way to get into it in the first place, too.
LauraYeah, it really balances between the beer and this cheese. Is it's one that we we had started this cheese off, I don't remember, when we were working out our little pairings earlier, even just before the podcast. Kind of part of our process. Anytime we're planning for one of our classes together, we schedule a day ahead of time to Christine brings in all the cheeses that she wants to use for the class that time, and usually they're seasonal based or just something fun and new she found, or sometimes we'll even just do all your favorites, something like that.
ChristineThat literally was the theme of a class. Christine's favorites. It was my birthday. Oh yeah.
DanI mean, that would be the class I'd want to attend.
LauraIt was a lot of fun. So then we take you know the flavors of the cheese and think about how it might pair best with certain beers. We're not just grabbing all of the beers at once and tasting all the way through, because there are certain flavors and certain textures of not textures of beers, but you know, dryness, juiciness, you know, depth and stuff like that that like obviously are not gonna work with certain flavors of cheese and certain, you know, mouthfeels. But we kind of predict and choose you know, two or three to try with it. Usually that is kind of the process that we repeat, and then as soon as we find one that just they usually just end up singing to us, honestly. Like we just we'll we'll take a bite of the cheese, we'll take a a sip of the beer, and we'll just look at each other like, oh my god.
CourtneyThat's it, that's it, we got it.
LauraA one nailed it.
CourtneyI think this is something I was super impressed about when I I signed up for the class before. Dan signed up for the class, and then I was in here one night talking to Casey, your husband, and he was mentioning how you guys were gonna be getting together to work out the pairings before the class. And for some reason in my head, I was thinking they're just gonna like look at a list, a description list of the beers and be like, oh, that one has notes of this, so I think maybe it'll be okay with this cheese. But you guys sit down with the pairings and really work this out before the class.
ChristineI like joke that it's hard work that we have to eat cheese and drink beer. But sometimes they do throw us for a loop. Like every once in a while we'll have a cheese. And sometimes it's like this is good with about six different beers because that's the beautiful thing about being at a brewery that you really love. The whole lineup of beers is good. There's not a bad beer in the bunch, and every once in a while we'll find a pairing that it's like, oh, something in there is not working, something isn't, but with the combo. But I mean, for the most part, you know, we do actually it's a really you'll just have to like happen upon us one day while we're doing it, and you can join in because it's uh good to it's a very thoughtful process.
CourtneyIt's not just to show up and we're putting random cheese with random beer. You guys really put work into this and think it through. It's awesome.
LauraYeah, I mean that there's sometimes, you know, certain pre-class meetings where it takes us, I don't know, maybe 20 minutes to find all six pairings, and it it just goes fast because it I don't know, we got lucky or just made really, really conscious decisions. I don't know. And then other times it takes us like a good I don't know, the longest has probably been like what an hour or so?
ChristineYeah, yeah.
LauraBut half the time we're just having fun at the sample.
ChristineI mean, the one time so we get little sample glasses of the beers, and I mean the entire bar was full of little beer glasses, like partially full, and then I'm trying to like organize them by like what it looks like on the you know, we just we our organization system is it's like wait, which one's this one again? Okay, someone smell it, and that's what it is. So yeah, but it's it's really it's really pretty.
LauraOh, we make such a mess, and then uh my poor staff has to go wash all those glasses. Luckily it's a dishwasher, but and I give them cheese, right? I mean they're happy after me.
DanLet's not feel too sorry, F. Cheese is amazing.
LauraThey love working those days because they don't know when it's gonna happen. And all of a sudden Christine walks in and I'm I'm here and they're like, Oh my god, is it cheese day? Is it cheese day? We're like, oh yes. And we've got a lineup for you.
DanSo I think this the the pairing that we're we're enjoying right now is is really nice. I like the difference. The cheese is very creamy, like you mentioned, buttery. What's the thought process when it comes to trying to start? Like what where where's your where's your beginning point? I think a lot of people when they associate pairing, they think wine and cheese. Beer is quite versatile because there are many different flavors. But what's like the 1.0 beer and cheese pairing? What's where do you start?
ChristineI mean, I think it comes down to three specific points. It would be the texture, the flavor, and the intensity. And so for me, actually, intensity is usually where we start off. So this cheese, well, it's it's a very mild cheese. And so we actually did start off. I took a wine and spirits class in college, which it's a Thursday night class, let me tell you. Oh, super top, super top class. Um, we always had to sit through the lecture before we got to the tasting part. But it always made me laugh because at the end of the semester we had to do our own lineup of of pairings together or of like a curated menu of, you know, wine and food pairings in that case. So, like you said, wine. You know, it was okay, you can do mild with mild, you can do intense with intense, or you can do mild with intense. It's like well, what other options are there? Yeah, I think we hit all of the options. Typically with the beer, you know, Laura and I very consciously talked through this as well that we tried this beer with like the pumpkin pie um beer that is also on tap. You know, we tried it with that, and it was um it was overpowering. You completely lost the cheese within the beer. And then we've done vice versa. We have a really strong cheese that this beer, especially the capasa, it's so crispy, it's so mild, it's so I mean it's perfect. I love this beer. Yes, light and bright, that's perfect. And so, you know, if you we did this with a cheddar or actually it was really good with the blue. I did that was a that was a really good case of mild with intense, but they complemented each other perfectly.
DanSo I'd imagine like the effervescence of this would cut through kind of like m maybe the the fattiness of the blue, and maybe it's did it accentuate the tang and funk of the blue cheese?
ChristineBut like in a really good way, yeah, you know, like it it it had that perfect, it rounded it out in what I think is a really nice way. It actually made the beer pop as well, and I think that's our goal is you know, what's gonna we are we trying to make the beer better? Are we trying to make the cheese better? Both. Yeah, and our goal is both. Our goal really is both.
LauraYeah, I'm my favorite is when we find a pairing that I mean you can have the ones that complement each other really well, and then you have the ones that just blend, but then like they'll they'll be separate when you're starting out with your bite and your sip, and then the flavors in your mouth just blend really well, but then they separate back again and bring out the best of each other. I think that's my favorite part is finding those pairings that just all of a sudden commingle perfectly, but you don't lose either of them at the end of the day.
ChristineAnd I think you know, it it is important as you're going through this, if you're trying to do something like this at home as well. Trying it is an important part of it. Like you were talking about, you know, do we sit down with a list of here's all the flavor attributes? I have done that and it has failed me spectacularly. It's actually easier for me to send a list of suggested wines to like for a private in-home class to send a list of suggested wines because they tend to have a little bit more consistency. I mean, okay, don't tell all the winemakers that, right? But I mean they do tend to have like a little bit more of a similar flavor attributes. But if you have one IPA versus another IP, I mean, you know, there's a whole spectrum. And I mean, you can talk maybe a little bit more too about wine has only so many things you can add to it.
LauraWhere beer. Yeah, I mean your beer, you I mean, wine is you know, grapes and water, and depending on what else you need to add to it. I don't usually drink the wines from the grape stomps, but uh, you know, to each their own. No, but I mean with the beers, you're working with, you know, your malts, your grains, your your hops, even where the brewery is located, the type of water that's being used makes a massive difference with all the minerals because every municipality has a different makeup in their waters, and so that alone can make beers between two different breweries across the city or across two cities, whatever, just taste so so different with the same exact recipe. So those variations are really interesting to take in.
DanKind of along those lines, what role does terroir play in cheese? I know that you mentioned the Guernsey cows, their milk has like a keratene element to it. Where does that come from? Does that come from their diet, or is it depending on what part of the farm they're on, they're eating different things? Yeah.
ChristineThat's a great question. A lot of the things Laura just talked about with beer, beer can also have that terroir too, right? So terroir means sense of place. It's a French word, and it it means so much more than the acidity of the soil or what kind of water it is, right? It's so many more aspects of it than that. And when we're getting down to cheese, you know, one of the first ingredients that's gonna make a huge difference in it is that milk. And so this herd, um, this specific cheese we just tried is what's called a farmstead cheese, which means those animals being milked are milked right outside of that processing facility. And so you're getting this whole sense of you're getting this terroir down to such a minimal region. You know, it's just one herd of cows, one farm, and this cheese might taste different made at different points of the year. Again, depending on what those animals are eating. I like to quote um Napoleon Dynamite and they have that scene where they're trying this little like lineup of milks at an FFA competition, and they get to the one and they're like, oh, this cow got an onion patch, and that's like for real. Yeah. If you have wild onions in your pasture, you're gonna have an off flavor in your milk. It's not gonna be an onion flavor, but it is going to be an off flavor. And so you need to, you know, pay attention to those kinds of things as well. And so as we continue to kind of spread, if you picture it like a little dot on a map, as we continue to zoom out on that, we're gonna get even more, you know, it's gonna be a little bit less of that, you know, specific terroir, but still regionally you're gonna still have that same sense of place there. Um, uh example that I haven't gotten a cease and assist yet, but I haven't done a lot of businesses on the podcast before.
DanWe have lawyers on retainer. Happily represented by blah blah blah blah blah blah blah. Got the reference.
ChristineUh well, I mean, and and as a as a high school teacher, you obviously have like, you know, right, the the budgets there to have lawyers on retainer cheese. Oh, yeah, yeah.
DanBig, big, deep pockets of debt. Pockets of debt.
ChristineAnyway, back to the cheese. And so what I had done that I did a class for not that you guys aren't intimidated to talk to about what cheese tastes like, but it was a group of professional tasters from a larger corporation. And I was like, so what do you think this cheese tastes like? Because I will take notes back. But one of the ladies that was there used to work for Yoplay, like Yoplay yogurt, and they have two plants in two different parts of the country. They were having a hard time getting that plain yogurt to taste the same at those two different plants because they were in two different parts of the country. The cows, the average, you know, the average gallon of milk travels less than 200 miles from cow to creamery and back to your grocery store shelves. So milk in general truly is a local product, no matter where you're at, no matter where you're buying it. And so they were having a hard time though at these two facilities getting that yogurt in this case to taste consistent because two different parts of the country, you're able to grow entirely different crops, you're able to feed entirely different things. Therefore, that milk is gonna taste different and that cheese is gonna taste different too. Kind of like Laura was talking about one more thing on that terroir is that when creameries move facilities, they have a very hard time getting consistency and flavor, and it does come down to exactly like you were talking about the water that they're using in their cheese make, all the way down to there's a curated microflora in the caves that um cheeses are aged in, and that difference in microflora makes a huge difference in what that final product is gonna taste like. So I don't think that's anything to take for granted.
DanI have a I have to ask a stupid question. What does microflora mean?
ChristineOh, good question. So during the classes, we talk about the ingredients that go into making cheese. Then one of the ingredients is mold. Mold, bacteria, and yeast, but for the sake of a nice word to listen to, we're gonna call it cultures. I think that this um sourdough boom has been huge for people to understand that mold, bacteria, and yeast are not necessarily a bad thing. They're what's giving diversity to so many products that we're eating these days. I mean, the world wouldn't run the same. We wouldn't have good beer, we wouldn't have good cheese if we didn't have cultures. That you can either inoculate the caves with a specific culture that you wanted on there, or like if it's a natural cave, which there are some that are in the US but more in other countries, they have a natural microflora already that's really gonna give them that sense of regionality too.
CourtneyYou say cheese cave, and I'm really thinking of a hole in a hill that you'd like to crawl into. Pretty much.
ChristineThere are some, so like there's a cheese upright.
DanI'm gonna show you about the safe room in my house. You'll be you'll be wild.
ChristineUm, there are some, so a lot of them are humidity and temperature controlled coolers these days. Caves of Fairbow, Don of Fairbow, Minnesota. That is literally caves dug into it's called St. Peter's sandstone, which has an amazing ability for the humidity and the moisture level needed to create this perfect aging environment for cheeses. So there are like actual legitimate caves. Yeah, there's actual legit caves. That makes me happy. Can I do one more side tangent? I usually bring a bell with. I mean, I think we can talk about this with beer too, but it's the same kind of an idea. How different styles of cheeses got developed in the first place was regionality. So right now we're so lucky that we can make any kind of cheese we want anywhere we want, basically, because we're able to import different cultures. The reason cheddar is called cheddar is because it was made in a town called cheddar, and that was the kind of wild bacteria that they had in the air that was able to bring in that cultures that they needed to make that cheese. You know, Brie was made in a town called Brie, that's where that developed originally. The cheese we just tried is actually it's what's called a port salute style. And so this used to be made by the monks, and the monks were the first people to be able to make cheese with just the milk from one milking, so it didn't naturally acidify during the day, and they needed a way to add more flavor so they would wash the outside in either like a salt brine or beer or liquor or whatever it may be, and that developed a whole different flavor. And so, this cheese is a nod to that style of cheese making that developed in a place because of a specific need. They weren't lucky enough to be able, you know, they were they needed to eat that. That's what a lot of the foods that we eat that are these beautifully fermented foods are foods that were made to sustain cultures. We could travel with them, they wouldn't spoil on us either the alcohol or the salt level or the acidification of it allowed people to survive through things that they maybe otherwise couldn't have survived through. So, I mean, cheers to cheers to eating like the basics, right? Fats, proteins, and carbohydrates with our beers in there. We've got a perfectly balanced smell ahead of us.
DanI mean, I'm not gonna lie, cheese did help me get through COVID.
CourtneyCheese is my everyday.
LauraI've already, even before I got to the brewery today, I'd had three types of cheese. Well, you're from Wisconsin. That's fair. That doesn't count. I have a very, very robust cheese drawer in my refrigerator at home.
DanSee the fact that you have a cheese drawer. How do you not have a cheese drawer? Exactly. No, I have a cheese drawer. I don't trust people that don't have cheese drawers.
ChristineIsn't it like technically for vegetables? Or I mean cheese is better than it.
DanNo, in our fridge, it has a middle thing and it is like the cheese drawer. That's where I keep all the cheese. Some meat, no vegetables allowed. There are vegetables in other areas of my fridge, but that is the cheese area.
ChristineShould we do our next pairing, guys? I'm getting hungry.
CourtneyAnd also, here's a tip that Dan gave me when we went to your class because he saw me like just eating away at the first piece of cheese because it was so great, and I kept eating it, and he like nudged me and he said, You're gonna want to save some of that. You're gonna want to save some of that and still sample it with the other beers, even though it wasn't paired with them, because it's still an experience and it's still gonna change flavors and do weird things.
ChristineThere are two very different streams of thought on this. You can save it, and I think that's the that's the innovator, that's the experimenter in you. And the thing is that you will notice as we get closer to the end, if you come back to that first cheese, it's gonna taste like absolutely nothing. Our taste buds are gonna get a little bit tired throughout this event. I mean, it's definitely worth it to do. I think that's what that's why Laura and I try to start when we do our pairings too. We try to start with the mildest one. Like, I think this is gonna go with something mild. Sometimes it'll blow my palate right away, but we do have little crackers here, little mini toasts that are pretty tasteless, but are a good little palate cleanser, too.
LauraSo and then sometimes we get too excited about a new cheese that you got in, and it's so much flavor, and we're just like, we need to jump into this one right away. Yeah, no, I'm like, okay, well, then all rules. All butts are off, all rules are out the window.
ChristineThat did happen with the pumpkin spice shov that we're trying later on. We did start with that one today.
LauraWe went bold flavor right off the bat. So there's no rules, that's what we're saying. I like it. Which cheese do you want to do next? Let's do the Brie or Little Lucy Boo. Little Lucy Boo. So cute. So that is gonna be with the Oktoberfest, which is your third glass, the coppery looking one. Our Oktoberfest, honestly, I think it's not to sound, you know, well, I'm gonna brag a little bit. No, brag. To be honest. If you listeners and friends at home and wherever you are, if you don't come try our Oktoberfest when you're trying all the other ones throughout the area, I will say you're missing out. Our brewers just, this is one, I mean, okay, they're really good at all of our beers, really, but our Oktoberfest is a work of art, in my opinion. It's so much fun. There's so much flavor, so many levels to it that just come out with each sip and each gulp, even depending on how you how fast you're drinking it. And it's it's just a really fun, awesome beer. It's very friendly to drink overall. It's coming in at 6.8%, so it is, you know, a little bit higher than your standard lighter beers and stuff like that. It's not so high that you can only have one and then start thinking about your choices for the rest of the day. You can have a couple and it's usually still good. Good choices are still good.
DanAnd if you need a nap, there's plenty of open lawn for the city. You got so much grass out here.
LauraYeah, nice grass. You can take a nap.
DanMight wake up uh spooning with a Guernsey cow and happy Oktoberfest, how are you?
LauraWe're a little M well city for that, I think. So yeah, our Oktoberfest is a Bavarian Marson. Again, like I said, it's coming in at 6.8%. It's got a beautiful caramely coppery color. Just a really pretty, pretty beer that follows up with an awesome punch of flavor, but also still very friendly to drink. It's it's super approachable.
CourtneyIt's been my go-to beer here. Like I fight with myself when I come in and I think your beer tenders watch me do it. Like, do I need the Oktoberfest or do I go with the pumpkin pie? Because they're both only here for a short time. I don't know what to do.
LauraMix them.
CourtneyOh, Laura.
LauraYeah. It's so good. It's so good. You get you get your pumpkin pie. What I would do is two-thirds Oktoberfest, one third pumpkin pie. So then the pumpkin isn't like over overstating its presence.
CourtneyI'm intrigued. I know exactly what is happening when we're done recording today.
LauraIt's so, so good. Because you get that awesome Mars and caramely and all that, and then you know the pumpkin comes through with the spices, and it's just, oh, it's very, very fun. I have another I have another blend later too that we could talk about. But another pumpkin blend that lightens it up even more, which I love this.
ChristineI'll keep it a secret for now. Um, I'm gonna introduce the next cheese. So the next one we're going is it's actually a Breeze or it's a bloomy rind cheese. So it's based off of a cheese from Redhead Creamery called Little Lucy Brie. And this is their Halloween version. So you might notice that the center is bright orange, and then there's a little bit of so if you look at it, there's a few different parts to it. There's the very center, which is like you can tell the texture is a little bit firmer, a little bit more crumbly. The closer we get to the rind, the more broken down that cheese is gonna be. So this is a naturally ripening cheese, which means that the longer the cheese, this cheese ages, the more it's gonna break down. So the best time to buy a like a naturally ripening cheese like this is when you feel the outside and it squishes a little bit. That's when you know you're in for a real treat. Now we're recording before Halloween here, but I just couldn't help but bring this one in because it's so fun. Um, and so this cheese in about two weeks is going to be perfect. It's gonna be just at that right texture. And so that outside part that is a little broken down is gonna have a little more intensity to it. You can see there's a little bit of darkness on the outside as well. So to continue on that vibe of the Halloween spookiness, they've rubbed the outside of this cheese in ash. And then there's a white culture, so white mold on the outside. That's gonna actually kind of that's kind of where the breakdown starts of this cheese. So you can try each part by itself, try all the parts together. And let me know your thoughts on the pairing here. Everybody's just deep into thought eating.
CourtneyThat texture was not what I was expecting for some reason.
ChristineWas it more crumbly, denser, creamier?
CourtneyIt was more, is it was drier.
ChristineAnd I think that part of this cheese, like I said, it does still have some time to age yet. This is just at room temperature. With this pairing, I get more nutty notes out of this cheese than I've ever gotten, which I think is so fun. And I think the spices sit on this super, super well too.
LauraI love the earthiness of it. I love I don't like to eat this cheese in just like the separate parts. I need like the outside, the inside, the whole. Like I just take a whole slice right out of the entire thing and get that earthiness, the cultures, the you know, the flavors, the textures. It's I love this cheese. It's a it's really, really cute as like a little ghost cheese. It looks like a pumpkin is wearing like a ghost you know sheet, and it's just like a little round cheese ball kind of. So not only is it adorable, but I love the flavors of it because it's it's super unique in that way. And for me with the Oktoberfest, they just at first it feels like an unlikely pairing, but for me it's one of those blends that just like they're super separate beforehand. You get them in your mouth together and they're just like what up friends? And then, but you don't lose the character of either of them, which is really, really fun. So you still continue to get that earthiness, the creaminess, but then also the awesomeness of the Oktoberfest stays. It doesn't get lost with this super flavorful cheese. It's a really fun one for me.
ChristineAnd this is one that Laura and I did have to work a little bit to get this pairing right. And this actually happened, we had poured the Oktoberfest for something else, and then we came back to it. We just had, you know, a little bit in the end of the glass. It's like, you know, at a certain point in time, we just start trying. I do think one of the really fun things about tasting stuff is the sensory memories that come with a certain taste. So one time I had a really sweet wine with a smoked gouda that brought me right back to my grandpa always used to make me jam and summer sausage toasts in the summer when he'd watch me. And so, like, you know, at the farm or whatever, right? And so it was a very that brought me right back there. This pairing right here, this Oktoberfest with all those sort of it's not pumpkin pie spices, but it's still those same kind of fall notes. So I actually used to work at this creamery. So I have a degree in food science um from UW Stout. And after I graduated, before I was able to come home and farm, my parents said, no, don't come home and farm, go do something else for a while. And so I went and I worked at Redhead Creamery, and so we would bring home some cheese every once in a while. Both of my roommates also worked at the creamery with me. And my friend Paige, she had found a recipe for a pumpkin pie brie. And this is kind of a similar vibe to that. So you take a brie wheel, you top it with pumpkin pie filling, and then you take pie crust and you put it over the top, sprinkle a little cinnamon sugar on top, and then you bake off the rest of the pie as the little crackers. Yeah. It was, and then it gets all super ooey gooey melty in there. It was really, really good.
LauraThat was not fair.
ChristineBut that's the beauty of a pairing like this. It can bring you right back to a certain place in time that I just think is so special. And that's one of the cool things, too, that people don't talk about all the time. Food carries a lot of sentimental and emotional value as well. And it's fun to kind of be transported back in time sometimes too.
LauraOh yeah. I definitely get a lot of memories from various pairings that we do. And I will say though, even so you had kind of asked earlier about how like Christine and I got started on, you know, working together and developing classes and stuff like that. So I used to work for Shram Vineyards and Shram Housebury out in Waconia and Chaska. When I had started over there, Christine had already, I think, started doing classes anyway with you know previous staff and I kind of took that over. And so we actually started off together doing wine pairings with the cheeses. And that was, of course, a lot of fun. And even though like wines can be a little bit more consistent, you've got fewer theoretically ingredients, of course, and things that go into it and other factors, but we still surprised ourselves with a really, really good pairings that were like, Yes, this one sings to me. And then there were other times that we were like, let's try it with this. Like, I think those two flavors could actually work. And it was just like, no.
ChristineLike immediate, like, immediately no. Immediately no.
LauraSo yeah, when I came over to um Boom Island Brewing, then of course I was like, okay, well, obviously we need to do classes here. And with our beers, they're so so good and have such great body to every single one of them. A lot of good depth, a lot of fun flavors. And they pair with so many different types of foods and flavorings and all that kind of stuff. And so of course I was like, um, well, beer, of course. And uh cheese. So we started up um our first class was back in what February, I think? Or yeah.
ChristineSomething like that. Yeah, that's I think it's right. Was the chocolate cheese with that first one too?
LauraI think so. I think so, yeah. So I mean that was our first, you know, beer and cheese pairing and our our meeting beforehand to plan out the pairings and stuff. Oh my gosh, I think we took up half of one of the main like sides of the bar with all of our like lined up little beer taster glasses, and we were trying to keep track of all of them and stuff. And I mean, we've gotten a little bit more efficient since then, but we still know how to make a really good mess out of it. Um that's half the fun. Exactly, exactly. And I purposely don't like we have some of our like regular class attendees now that will ask, or the ones that haven't been able to make it to a class but really want to, but they know that we do these like pre-planning meetings for the pairings, and they'll ask, like, when's your next one? When are you when are you guys meeting next? And I'm like, on the third of never gonna tell you. Like otherwise we're gonna end up with you know five extra people joining us, and which is fine.
ChristineI mean, there's space, right? We'll make space for them. We did get a few attendees after that first class. I was a little skeptical because they always think, like you said, beer or wine and cheese, and they're like, beer and cheese. What do you mean? I think we went around sampling out cheese that first one, and we we filled it up.
LauraIt worked really well, yeah. So, and it helps when we, you know, start a little bit later in the afternoon versus sometimes we'll do like earlier, you know, one o'clock, whatever. But we're not usually open yet at the brewery, which is keeps things quiet. We can stay organized, we don't have to worry about you know taking up too much space on the bar. But it's it's definitely a lot of fun when people start coming in for the business day and see what we're doing, and you know, they get curious and then we get them a little sample of cheese, and we're like, all right, but try it with this beer and then try it with this beer. And they're like, oh my gosh, okay, when's the class? Let me okay, I'm gonna scan the code, I'm gonna get signed up right now. We've gotta we gotta come and try the rest of these. So much fun.
ChristineAnd I think the beauty of having it here too is that sometimes the ticket prices just really they kind of outpace themselves, and here we're able to keep that ticket price. Yeah. First, you know, six beers, six cheeses, and really a good time with I mean we're a lot of fun. Like, I'm gonna say we're fun. There's a comedy show between the two of you. Let's be honest. Laura makes the best. I'm usually a pun person. I mean, the greater good spelled G-R-A-T-E are like a cheese grater, but Laura meets me right there. I do my best.
unknownIt's wonderful.
ChristineNow I'm gonna ask, did you guys try? I know I told you not to, but did anybody try this brie with the capasa still? No.
DanI uh totally blew through my full pint of capasa and the sample of capasa and my first cheese because I was like, well, I'm gonna try a different way now, but um I I ruined it.
ChristineI told you not to, and now you're like, well, here I go. It o this this cheese overpowered the capasa, is what all I was gonna say with it is we did try that pairing as well.
LauraYeah, it's fun to compare those and just see like, okay, well, I thought it could go well with, you know, capasa goes with everything, but to really find a true, like good pairing, where we highlight the capas eye. Yeah, we wanna we don't want to lose the beer and we don't want to lose the cheese. And so that's that's one thing that happens often, actually, is you know, certain beers will overpower certain cheeses and vice versa. And again, that's where that balance comes back into play, and that's what we're trying to find each time. Speaking of that, should we do another one? Yeah, we should. Okay, so we're gonna do light the lamp next, which is your lighter one on the end. So this actually is a seasonal beer for us. It is a hazy IPA. We have another hazy on year-round. Um, it was Finn's Fog. We redid that recipe, and it's now popular demand. I think it is a better beer than even before. Huge kudos to the original recipe and the people that made that one. The popular demand came in and it's more of a classic hazy IPA. I wouldn't call it necessarily dry, but it is drier than a juicy hazy, of course. Now, light the lamp specifically, and if you come in and you see like the artwork for it, you know, the beer sign, and we have a sweatshirt actually for it. And on the especially the can art, when you pick up a crawler of it, it is designed to kind of follow the Minnesota wild hockey schedule. So I think their first like seasonal game is this week, right? And so we released Light the Lamp for this season last Thursday so that people could kind of get into it and really start enjoying this gorgeous, hazy, juicy IPA that's just so much fun and so much good flavor. It does come out at 7% ABV, so you know, around the Actor Fest, but you still want to pay a little bit of attention compared to, you know, drinking K Passas, which again are a little bit less than that. This is this is one of my favorite, favorite seasonal IPAs that we put out. It's just so much fun, and people are asking about it all year long. Anytime it's not on our menu posted, they're asking like when's it next coming back? Even if it like just went off like the week before, they're like, when's it coming back for the season? We're like, well, you gotta give it a couple months. Like we have we have other beers to put on still.
unknownI love it.
LauraWe got stuff to try. So this one, this one's a lot of fun. And this is actually when I poured myself a pint before we started recording, I poured myself a light the lamp because everyone else did K Pas, I believe, right? Yeah. And I was like, no, I gotta go, I gotta go with a lamp. It's too much fun. It's so good.
ChristineSo that's what we're gonna that's what we're doing next. Yep. And the cheese we're gonna do this one is kind of America's sweetheart of cheddars right now. It's these little crumbles you guys have. This is called Prairie Breeze cheddar. Now, you guys did have this at the last class we did, but we do not have the beer anymore that this cheese was with. And this is a case of matching intensity, but in a very unique way. So, this cheese, it's a crumbly, crystally cheddar. You guys might notice it had these little crystal spots in it. Uh, and those are called terosine crystals. They're a little protein or a little amino acid that, as that cheese is aging, as those cultures were doing their job and breaking down those fats and proteins, there's a little chemical reaction that happened there and it formed this little crystal as a byproduct of that. So, this cheese is aged for at least nine months, made at Milton Creamery out of Milton, Iowa. So they sourced from farms within about a 30-mile radius of their creamery. And they're actually a Mennonite run creamery, and a lot of the farms that they source from are Mennonite and Amish run farms. So a little bit, you know, more old school, and their styles are a little bit more old school with that. But this cheddar, so if you have like a British cheddar, it tends to be a little bit not as sweet as the American cheddars are. We love we have a sweet tooth, and this cheese I think plays perfectly into that. You can get some of those kind of like canned pineapple notes, and that was when Laura was like, Should we try it with light of the lamp? And then she's like, It's a little fruitier, you know, than some of the other. Because we had tried this with IPAs the last time too, because usually I like this cheese with an IPA, and we had some some not great pairings.
LauraYeah, it just didn't really well enough. No this, honestly, the light of the lamp, the sweetness in it, the fruitiness, just really helps bring out those extra flavors. And I love it with the texture. I think the texture of the cheese works really, really well with the mouthfeel of the of this beer. A lot of fun. When we paired it for the last class that you guys were at, we did it with our dark horse porter, but it was the flavored one called Man of War, and that was the um chocolate coconut version, which was very, very fun. We actually, as Christine said, we had a really hard time during that pairing meeting finding one that worked for this cheese that just you know, from our menu that we hadn't already paired with something else.
ChristineAnd things were good with it, but nothing was I mean, this cheese is excellent. Like this is really an excellent cheese, and we didn't want to do a disservice to it either.
LauraThis is literally one of my favorite cheeses. Like every time I see you at a market or you know, you bring it in for a class, I have to get myself a good square too. It's just such a fun, fun cheese. And I always love cheddars and I love unique cheddars too. And this one is just excellent. It's just cheese excellence, if you will, like embodied.
CourtneyIt was this paring last time that made me cry. Was it? Yes, it was uh it was that cheddar with the the man of war porter.
ChristineDid you have pina colada vibes with that coconut and the pineapple? No, I'm just like overthinking that.
LauraI think there was a lot more chocolate in that porter than there was coconut, I think.
ChristineThis cheese with a crunch bar is also amazing. Oh and a heath bar, those little caramely bits in there. So I mean, I'm guessing. I don't know.
LauraNot my red I know officially or anything, but no, this one's really funny. What do you think of it with light the lamp as opposed to the portable?
CourtneyIt's such a different beer than last week. She's not crying. I'm not I'm not crying.
LauraI don't expect you to. That's well, you can hold it in this time, that's fine.
CourtneyIt was a moment. But like also how much it's still really, really good. It's totally different. Uh-huh. It makes everything taste totally different.
LauraNo, I would hold on to, I mean, we got a good we got a good couple chunks of this one. And I I don't remember if before we came over here, if I did try it with the regular dark horse, because that's gonna be our final beer for this um this round. But hold on to a chunk of that so that when we move on to the next beer, that see see what that difference feels like.
ChristineI did not try that. I don't remember if I did. No, I know I didn't because I thought that um dark horse was amazing, so I drank the whole thing.
LauraThat's true. No, that's right. I didn't try to get it. Because we started we started up strawberry. I got rid of those glasses because we were done with it. We had it, we had our pairing and it's gonna be a lot of fun. But no, we didn't. That's so funny. Now I gotta fail you guys. Now I gotta, now I gotta do that.
ChristineAnd and I will say, Laura and I do we we will do that sometimes during classes. If we're we're in between and we're like, well, things are really good, really different. We didn't at this class you guys were at, but in the past we have been like, okay, hold on to a little bit of this beer because we're gonna try it with two different things. Yeah. And I want you to pick, you know. That's that's also the beauty of pairing, and that it's so subjective. So just because we think something tastes good together does not necessarily mean that it's gonna be your favorite thing either.
CourtneyHow often do you guys disagree on a pairings? Like one of you thinks this should really go here and this one should go here.
ChristineI don't think we have. I really don't think we have to do it.
LauraIt doesn't matter. We'll have like slightly slightly different, like, oh, I think this is kind of good, but I'm getting a weird flavor and that's usually when we do two. Yeah, that's when we do two, or just like, okay, well, this one could work, this one could work. Let's keep finding, you know, let's keep working, and we could always come back to this one because it does work, but it might not just be like our perfect match.
ChristineAnd I think that's more what it is. It just means we need to investigate further.
LauraSo no, I but we've never we've never like outright disagreed about any of our like standoff fights like no, it has to be this way. Well, I think we have such like similar palettes to that it m that helps a ton that like we have very similar preferences of tastes and how we you know interpret those flavors and stuff. Yeah.
ChristineYou guys want to do the last one? This one's really funny. Dan, what did you think of that pairing?
DanI thought it was really good. When I first smelled the beer, if you wouldn't have told me, if like if you blindfolded me and had me smell it, I would have guessed it was a West Coast because it had like a lot of grassy, earthy aromas. It does. And when you said hazy, I was like, wait, that doesn't make sense. And then I tried it, and you're right, it does pull out a lot of the fruit flavors because there must be I mean the cheese is not necessarily uh it's not dry, but it's like No, it dries your mouth.
ChristineI would agree. It's it's so a cheddar tends to be a little bit higher in acidity than like when we have that Belair, that's like a pretty close to neutral pH on that cheese. Okay. And then whereas this prairie's cheddar, so what a cheddar is doing is you're holding a cheese at a specific acidity, and so it does have more of that punchiness, which is gonna just draw your mouth out. So you're you're totally on on point there.
DanAnd I think it did bring out more of the juiciness, but the beer on its own isn't when I think hazy, I think like I think ripe mango, I think tangerine, I think, you know, supreme of a really perfect navel orange. That turned this beer into like a hybrid East Coast, West Coast beer, which was kind of fun.
LauraYeah, it brings out a lot more of the a lot more of like the lighter citruses, right? So a little more lemony, you might get a little more melon in there versus tangerine or something like that. Yep. Which is really, really fun about this beer is I mean, there's so many layers to it that you know, pairing it with any number of things is gonna give you a whole new palette to work with, right? And that's I think that's that's what's so dang fun about you know our whole process.
DanI think that's the most Minnesotan thing that's ever been said on this.
LauraIt's so much fun, you guys.
DanOh yeah, I do love the cheese. Holy moly.
ChristineI mean, we can't disagree about nothing today, guys. Right.
DanI mean, I liked them all.
ChristineYou know, you get a good cheese and they get a good beer, and there's just nothing better.
DanOh, geez, Marge. I suppose I'll have another wedge of that uh that blue there. It's sure it's spooky.
LauraSpooky cheese then.
DanOh, yeah. Scared the bacheas out of me again.
LauraWas it the be cheeses or the but cheeses?
DanThe bachees.
LauraThe ba cheeses.
ChristineI'm cutting you guys off.
LauraIt's too much.
DanWe're gonna wind up in the punitentiary. Oh my god.
LauraOh no. Oh, is it just getting worse? Or better?
CourtneyI mean better. It's getting better. It's better.
LauraYeah. Anyway, to keep things moving. Um, speaking of dark horse, that is our fourth beer that we're trying this afternoon. Again, this is our classic dark horse. This is a standard porter. It honestly, the reason it's named Dark Horse is based on like dark horse of a race, right? Like thoroughbred racing. Your dark horse is the one that you don't expect to win, but it's awesome. Right. So it's just a classic porter. This one in particular, I think this year has a little bit more smoke than normal, but it's just like the hintiest hint and it comes out more. I just when I we were talking about how we had done the prairie breeze with the chocolate coconut version of it. That was really, really fun. And then I did try it in the meantime just now, the prairie breeze cheddar with the dark horse standard. And that was really interesting. It brought out so much smoke in it for me personally that it was it was almost surprising because this beer doesn't naturally have much smoke to it at all. And if you if you just try it like without anything else, it's just a beautiful, well-balanced order. Just delicious. And this this is a really fun one because you think of darker beers, and oftentimes you're thinking, like, oh, the darker I go, the higher the ABV. If it's a deeper flavor, I'm gonna get, you know, more alcohol in it. This comes in at 5.2. Like it's so, so friendly and easy to drink, and it is honestly one of the perfect, like simple, straightforward winter beers that can it's light enough still in the mouthfeel that you can drink it all year round. Very, very fun.
CourtneyI'm happy to drink it all year round.
LauraYeah, it's very good.
DanThe iteration of this beer that we had at the September cheese tasting with the coconut and the chocolate. Yeah. I like that, but this is like for me, it's very hard to find kind of a straightforward porter or stout that doesn't have some sort of adjunct or additional sweetness to it. I really like this because it in its simplicity is kind of perfect.
LauraRight, and I this one is so much fun because it it is a we'll call it simple, but like every sip you take, you might notice a smoke on one of them. You might notice a nutty, you might notice the chocolate finish. It has so many layers to it that all just blend really, really nicely. And you can pair a ton of stuff with it because of all those different flavor notes that you can draw out with certain, you know, cheeses, certain desserts, certain, I don't know, pizza, I don't whatever. Then it's gonna be good with so much stuff because it it offers such a wide range of flavors within this just beautifully balanced beer.
ChristineAnd I think the beauty of it too is it's not too bitter. So I don't know if anybody else lost their I got COVID in 21. I lost my sense of smell, which was the scariest thing for someone that does what I do. So I completely lost my sense of taste. I do remember, I know this is we're talking about food and beer here. I do remember the exact moment that I was like, I can smell something again. And it was when I was scraping manure paddles in the barn. And I was like, this is a strong enough scent that it was bringing me back. But it was good sensory training. Oh yeah. Um, but after I lost my sense of smell, though, I mean in taste, I came back really sensitive to bitter. That was something that really hit me hard to notice. It was a long time to get back into like even coffee. I love black coffee. And what I like about this beer, it doesn't give me that bitterness. It gives me coffee, but not at that bite or that dryness that it's not too acidic. No, no, it's that that like bitterness to it that I don't I don't get that. It's like very smooth still, which I like. Um, did you try it with the prairie breeze, guys? I did, and it was so good. It was so good. It was so good. Yeah, so so good.
DanYeah, that was really good.
LauraMissed opportunity, but well, compared to what we have with it though.
ChristineYeah. So that is your like the coffee, the creamer in your coffee is the prairie breeze with that. And then go ahead and try it now. So the last cheese we have is a pumpkin spice chev. So this is made by Leclair Creamer out of Malone, Wisconsin. This is a um, this is a goat's milk cheese that does have that pumpkin, pumpkin spice. I mean, it is the season flavor with that.
DanAnd then This is so good. The cheese is so good. This pumpkin, I love anything pumpkin. Unapologetically, love pumpkin. I know a lot of people listening to this are craft beer people, and they're like, eh, pumpkin beer is not my thing. Well, you're all wrong. All 97% of you are wrong. This is so good.
ChristineYeah. Now give it give yourself a little sip of that beer with that, too, because it it's like we were talking about Midwestern desserts before. Now, would you like me to make some coffee for your pumpkin pie? Because that's what's happening right here. It is just this like great creaminess with it. It brings out a whole creamy level of the beer. Good lord, that the kill thirsty reduce.
DanIs it holy crap.
ChristineNow we so you can see why we didn't do it the prairie breeze because this was I mean, we tried this. Oh god.
LauraWe've started with we started off with pumpkin pie, which is our award-winning beer. Our pumpkin pie autumn ale is a pumpkin spice, just beautiful amber ale. I talk about it all the time on the podcast. It um just to refresh everyone's memories, for those of you that have or have not listened to the podcast before or are not familiar with our beer, but our pumpkin pie actually won best in show in the entire 450 plus beers that were submitted to the Minnesota Brewers Craft Brewers Guild competition back in February, March. April. April. This spring. Spring. Somewhere in there. I'm trying to think of when it was. Yeah. And it won, you know, in its category, of course, but then it won best in show too. And that was just mind-blowing to us. That I mean, we know it's a good beer. We know it's so delicious and beautifully balanced. It is dessert in a beer, and it is so good. It does not work very well with this cheese because it's too much rich with too much rich. It overpowers themselves, honestly.
ChristineAnd you it brought out this acidity in the beer that's not there. Yeah, it's not there, and the cheese shouldn't bring it out. It was wild that it didn't work.
LauraYeah, and that's where some of those, like, where we get into some of these pairings that were like, well, this should work with this, and then you get into the actual pairing and you're like, oh, something's coming out that's just not this banner.
ChristineSometimes it's the aftertaste too. Like you have to give it a second. Yeah. Because how it sits in your mouth is a huge part of the process as well.
LauraOh, yeah, for sure. We sits in my mouth very nicely. This finishes so nice. And that's that's our goal is for you to like, when you're done, you know, swallowing.
unknownOkay.
LauraWhen um so women is Oh Lord's gonna win. What noise am I gonna choose in? That is like an order. Sorry. Um, okay, so after both the beer and the cheese have passed through your mouth, um, in order. Oh no. Anyway, the after, you know, the the progression afterwards, you want to have it lingering in a good way. Right. And these, that's that's our goal is to start off great, middle needs to blend nicely, and then you have a really nice aftertaste throughout the rest of it.
ChristineSo that you want more. Yeah. I mean, you want to take another bite and you want to have another.
LauraAnd that's I know that that happens when my mouth starts watering because I I want more cheese and I want more beer, and I want those two together specifically. And this just between the the pumpkin chev and the dark horse porter, holy moly. Like these just pair so so well. And the pumpkin pie autumn ale just didn't didn't provide that as much.
ChristineIt was already there, and it didn't already be.
LauraYeah, there wasn't really any blending to do of flavors because both flavors were I mean, you get a little bit of like cheesecakey almost cream cheesy with and the cheese, and so that provides a little bit more of savory and creaminess that the beer doesn't, you know, have duh its beer. But the the combination of the two just wasn't there, whereas then we were like, okay, well, let's try it with the dark horse, and this is just a really fun berry.
ChristineWell, and I think if we would have had the version that you the man of war that you guys had with all the coconut and all the extras in it, I don't think it would have done as well.
DanNo, that would have been too much. I think I this like that beer is just the regular version goes so well, and I think one of the things that people don't understand about certain things is when they see a dark beer, they just assume heavy, but it's light. Goat cheese is light. Yes, it has a big flavor, but it's very light. Kind of like you were talking earlier, pairing light with light when you think about texture. I think that's why it works.
ChristineWell, and I think part of this is I have a tendency to picture a dark beer like this with almost a syrupy texture. Right. And I do think that the cheese, the creaminess of that cheese, I think gives this beer body. I don't know how else to say that, right? Like I know it makes this beer seem to be a big thing. Well, the beer's really dry on its own.
DanI mean, it's a it's a roasty beer. Like a porter is a roasty style. You know, we've ba become conditioned because if you've been into craft beer for the last five to seven years, most places are dumping all sorts of adjuncts into their stout, and they're kind of bastardizing the style. A pastry stout has a place for sure. Yeah. But I think they've become so widespread that it's like now people just for the same reason why people crave a West Coast IPA now, is because you can't find them anymore. And now it's kind of the pendulum is swinging back a bit. I think there should be room for both. Like you should have, hey, you want an adjunct stout, we've got that. But we also have this traditional, like a dryer stout or a porter, which is kind of like the best of both worlds in my opinion, to go with something that's not as heavy that can like really kind of complement it or as opposed to if we drank this with a pastry stout, that would just like stomp all over the pumpkin goes.
LauraAbsolutely. And I think I love when you can like basically you're getting back to basics, right? Yep. You've got your we've got a straightforward hazy IPA, we've got a straightforward West Coast IPA, we've got a straightforward Mexican lager, a blonde, a porter that isn't it's just telling you, hey, I'm here. It's it's me. This is me. I'm not wearing a costume, I'm not wearing a ton of extra flavors. We tried that, we did some rotating, you know, throughout the summer and stuff, and that was a lot, a lot of fun. But they were great. And they're so good. They were so so good. As soon as I heard that our, you know, just the regular dark horse was back on, I was like, yes. Just that classic. You let the beer speak for itself.
DanThat's the beer I want to drink every day. You know, the man war is like something I'll have like once in a blue moon, but like give me a roasty porter, five and a half percent.
LauraYeah, back to the bigger. Absolutely. Bring it, bring it right on back. Give me this straightforward porter that just, you know, it holds its own. It doesn't need any more.
ChristineWell, I think that's one of the things my boyfriend and I were talking about that we're like, I wish this place was like 10 minutes from our house because it I'm a little bit further out. But it's because you can try every one of these beers is one that I want to come back to. Like I tend to navigate to the Cape Pasa because I can't find that. Anytime I come here, that's what I tend to start off with at least or finish with. I don't know. It always tends to be in my rotation somewhere, but over overall, it's all beers that are just like very well balanced, and I think that's a huge part of it.
CourtneyHere's the problem when you do live that close, because I clocked it today, it was seven minutes for me to get here. Oh that is convenient. The problem is when you come in, you have so many great options to pick from. It's paralyzing. Yeah, absolutely paralyzing.
LauraDecision fatigue, yeah. I want them all. It happens to me all the time, and of course, I'm here nearly every day. And I'm like, I want a beer, but then I stand in front of the taps like, but what do I want? Yeah. Like and again, I I do want to give a huge shout out to our brew team because they are just so exceptionally talented with years and years in the industry, and they have very particular standards for the beers that they put out. They won't put a bad beer out. You know, they had a batch last year, I'll say, that, you know, it was a little questionable. And they were like, nope, that's this is not the quality that we are gonna put out. This is it, it didn't ferment quite right, and it wasn't the it wasn't the quality of beer that we hold ourselves to, and that's I think that's a huge, you know, we're we're okay with not putting a beer out. We're okay with, you know, not using a batch if it's not gonna be something that we're proud of, like genuinely. And so I think between all of them, their their palates and their their noses for the beers are just so fine-tuned. Even I'm always a positive person, like I try to be a very positive person and give I let them know, like, if there's a weird flavor to it, I'll I'll try and say it in a nice way, and they're like, stop being nice. Stop like stop being nice, just be straightforward. I'm like, all right, well, this is weird.
CourtneyOh, that's interesting.
LauraThat's interesting. There's an interesting flavor that's coming through on the back end, and they're like, Yeah, no, we noticed it too to say it.
DanThat reminds me of a time I was eating spaghetti and uh I bit down in a tin can. Is that supposed to be in the in the is that one of the notes you were looking for?
ChristineWe were looking for a luminum of the.
DanNo, just kidding. And that's those are the beers you dump, the sad, the sad beers. You know.
LauraI will say, like, most of the time if I'm making a comment like that, it's because we're working out like a particular like balance of flavors that we are adding because of a special beer that we're making. It's not the beer itself that is off. It's usually like, I feel like it just needs like a little more vanilla or something, you know, something that's you know, a combination of flavors that just needs to like have the tiniest little tweak to it to really balance it out and bring out that true flavor that we're looking for, which is really fun.
ChristineWhat did we do with the push-up one the last time? The push-up beer. Oh, what did we pair that with? Um was that with our group? No, it wasn't.
LauraIt was a couple times ago, and I just keep it was before we released it. Yeah, it was before we actually released it. From the tap. It was yeah, it was from the bright tank. I pulled out pictures from the bright tank before it was kegged. So the push-up is another, it's a hazy IPA with orange and vanilla in it. It's essentially a creamsicle, but in beer form, or like you're chasing after the ice cream truck and getting those push pops, the orange ones. Yeah. And then you turned it into a beer, and that is this beer, and it's oh my gosh, it's so delicious. It is like the ultimatum of summer.
ChristineWe uh did it with the triple cream brie. Because I think it was like ice cream, like it was literally like literally like a black.
LauraLike we made like an orange float, yeah, right? Like it was like a ripper float, but with like orange cream. Yeah, oh my gosh, that was so much fun. And it was fun for people to get that like preview before like we weren't releasing it for another at least few days, if not like a week or so. And so, yeah, they got fresh from the bright tank, and that was really fun. It was a bummer that some of them couldn't actually take it home right away, but then it, you know, they got to come back. They got to come back, they got to take controls, you know.
DanExactly. Oh yeah. Oh, yeah, yeah. It was intentional. It was intentional. All you want.
LauraSo, yeah, it is it did come back on a few weeks ago. We had um saved a few kegs because it was on at CHS Field over the summer for the St. Paul Saints, along with K Pasa, and we were holding a couple of kegs hostage just in case they needed to order more. You know, the it there was a couple rainouts and stuff, so we ended up getting the keep those kegs and we put it back on. And so people have continued to enjoy it with the warm weather that we had recently, and even still in the cold weather, it's still so like it's cozy, but also fresh and just like refreshing, but like nostalgia.
CourtneyThat exactly like what she was saying. It takes you back to a different place, makes you think of different things.
DanSo I've got a I've got a question now. People are gonna hear this, and it's getting colder out. Not everybody loves a place, sorry, on the weekends. So if somebody wants to do a beer and cheese pairing at home, what's the recommended number of cheeses? And so we've got these nice little toasted breads as palate cleansers. What are some of the other accoutrements that people should have if they're gonna have some friends over and try to pair some cheese with some beer?
ChristineI think the first step is come and get some crowlers because I think that's your best way, especially if you're having some friends over. Maybe you don't need a full glass of the beer, but you can pour yourself a little sample of it, and there's hopefully there's enough left at the end that somebody that that was their beer, they get to come back and have a full, like, you know, a bigger pour of that. And then obviously, you know, you can come and pick up your cheeses. This is a time when I'm gonna really encourage you to talk to your cheesemongers. So when I worked at Redhead Creamery, I did a lot of demos in store, kind of demoing out their cheeses, and I got to meet all of these such cool people that work behind those cheese counters. And actually, one of my cheesemonger friends, she just texted me the other day and she's like, Okay, I saw you're doing a Halloween treats and cheese pairing class. She's like, the lemon chev with nerds will blow your mind. Oh what? This sounds amazing. There we go. Yes, it's anyway. So, but talk to that person behind the counter because they likely have experience. At least they can get you four different styles of cheese. I mean, today we had a port. Loose styles. We had a washed rind, we had a bloomy rind, we had an aged cheese, and we had a fresh cheese. So get yourself a couple different styles of that. Um, you know, you can get yourself some nuts and some dried fruit. That's gonna pretty much go well all around. They're pretty, that's a pretty forgiving side on there. I like a little pepper jelly and a little honey on there too. Um, a little jam is fine too. Whatever you have in the cupboard. You know, if you start buying all the things, all of a sudden you're gonna have spent like way more than you want to.
DanIt's like you're you start to like talk about palate fatigue.
ChristineIf you got 78 things on your board and you're thinking, I mean, and I my recommendation if you're going to do this at home with your friends or whatever, or even just by yourself, because like let's be honest, that's what I do every time I try cheeses. It's like, okay. Get yourself a nice neutral cracker. So don't get like a if you're if you're going for a cheese board that you're serving with friends, serving to friends, you know, you know, then you can get more of an herb cracker or something a little more fruity and flavorful. But if you're doing it just for tasting purposes, get yourself a nice neutral cracker. Um, I have these little mini toasts that are great. We used pretzel crackers earlier, and those are really good because they give a little saltiness, but the cheese is already salty. It's great with that anyway. Triskets are good. I'm tempted to why did I want to say chicken and a biscuit?
LauraOoh.
ChristineWell, like how good that would be so flavorful. Imagine that Bel Air, that first cheese with a chicken and a biscuit and pique pasta. I think that talk about cream on cream on cream. Yeah, no, so good.
DanMy first thought when I bit into that, it was like I would put this in a juicy Lucy. Ooh. Like that would just be perfect.
LauraYeah, it would just melt so nice in there. Where's one of our burger trucks when we need them? But you can always get their pizzas, which I do. Oh, yeah. Pizzas are looking for. Somebody ordered a pizza. I know it smells so good. Like and I love I love that those pizzas are they're fresh. They're not frozen pizzas like you normally get in tap rooms. Our pizzas are delivered fresh twice a week, and it is the freshest ingredients from a local, yeah, uh, like lunch cafe, um, classic, authentic Italian chef that's making them. He visits his family in Italy every single year. Oh like it is real deal, all like from scratch stuff. It's so good.
CourtneyThe next class here, the next beer and cheese appearing class here. When is it?
LauraWe've got that going on on Friday, November 7th. Tickets are live right now. I last I looked, we've already sold a few, and the space is limited. So you can find those tickets on our website through our events calendar. Just go to boom islandbrewing.com and click on I think it's just events calendars, honestly. But is what it's called, but you can't miss it.
DanHow'd you come up with the name?
LauraYou know, we really, really thought about that long and hard and just went, you know, just like the store the porter and stuff. We just went straight forward for it. You just scroll down or you can search for it too. There's a search bar in there, just you know, search for like cheese or something like that, and that'll pop up. And um tickets are again, like Christine said, the tickets are really reasonably priced for everything that you get, the experience that you get. And of course, Christine and I are hilarious. We are hilarious. Yeah, they're only 45 bucks for six beers. You get the nearly full five ounces of each of those, plus your six cheeses, and they're all artisan cheeses, and she always brings extra blocks and stuff that you can buy to take home too. So if you are wanting to do an at-home pairing, especially for the holidays or something, come to one of the classes because then you already have your pairings, they're all lined up for you. We did the tough work, you just have to take the stuff home and go impress your friends and family because you can grab our growlers to go, you can get full glass growlers if you want. We've got really cute designs on them. Our newer logo is on those new ones, so that's really fun. But that way you can pour out samples, but then you have enough for people to enjoy like full glasses later, too. So honestly, that's like the easiest way to actually host your own tasting at home is come to one of the classes and then take home your favorites. Or all of them. You could do all of them, but usually. Sometimes we use like a nitro or something. Yeah, sometimes we're not quite as accessible.
ChristineSorry. But it just it just pairs. That makes it even more special. It does.
LauraIt just paired so well last time. Yeah, so honestly, that's my biggest tip for doing your own at-home stuff is attend one of the classes, and then you have we did the hard work, you just take it home.
ChristineAnd we do classes about every other month. We take we slow it down a little bit in the summer just because everybody's so busy and we're both busy too. You know, we don't have anything on the calendar yet for 2026, but I know we will, right? Oh, yeah. Okay.
CourtneySure, yeah, we will.
ChristineYou know it, you bad shot.
CourtneyI will say I I did take one of every cheese home with me last time. Yes, you did. I did, I think. I did. Yeah. And it the problem is they're sitting in my refrigerator, and I see them every time I open the door, and I think, I need like a special occasion. No, just enjoy them. Just bust them open. Yeah.
DanA special occasion is the day ended in a Y. Oh. That's the special occasion.
ChristineI think that's the hard part, though, is like we do get these special foods and these special cheeses and special beers or whatever, and we're like, when am I gonna drink this? Like, when's a good day? Like, I want it to be important. Sometimes just a Tuesday is a good day.
CourtneyJust a Tuesday. Treat yourself. Guess what I'm doing next Tuesday?
ChristineAre you opening cheese?
CourtneyTuesday's gonna be cheese day. Yes. Love that. Love that. Christine, where can people find you if they want more information about Greater Good?
ChristineYeah, so they can follow me um on Facebook or Instagram. So it's the Greater Good M N, and that's greater spelled G-R-A-T-E-R, like a cheese grader. Or you can um check out my website too. So again, thegreatergoodmn.com. And so um obviously I want you guys to come to this class because it's very fun, but I do have all sorts of other classes too, or if you know, whatever. Um I like to come here though. Laura's giving me a lot of things.
LauraIt's a lot of hair against me. No, I love that you host all these different classes. Yeah. Because it really, I mean, like not everyone is into beer, right? And so to have the opportunity to try cheeses with mocktails, even, or candy bars for around the Halloween and stuff. Um, wines, and I think do you do like uh did I see a coffee?
ChristineI've done coffee, I've done hot chocolate, I've done what was the other thing. I did one time we did a mom and me or a kid, kids and me class, and it was for parents to bring their kids to. I did like fruit snacks, goldfish, like I think of veggie straws, all sorts of wild stuff in there too. So I mean I try to be accessible and try to find a place for everyone.
DanSo what's a what's a good cheese to pair with bourbon?
ChristineWith bourbon? Yeah. If I had to pick from what we're just trying right now, there's mmm. Honestly, all four of these would offer such a unique experience. My first thought was that Bel Air because a bourbon is gonna be so sharp on that first. And you want something that all those flavors can really sing on. Yeah. And so that Bel Air with that fattiness and that creaminess. I'm only one of like three cheese shops in Minnesota that carries cheese from hordes. So that's kind of fun as well. Like, that's not one you can find a lot of places. But I do think that prairie breeze would be interesting because I think about that. There's creaminess, there's that crunchiness, but then there's all those other flavor notes in there too. So this is a time where, like, I literally encourage you just to go and experiment for yourself, too, because uh it's hard to know until you try it together.
DanI think I'm gonna go on a bourbon uh cheese side quest.
ChristineI'll I'll report back how that goes. I do have a distillery class, so I'll see you there. It's next week. Love, love. I have a few of my uh my cheese fans that have been to so many classes. Follow you around. They follow me around. They are, they're my cheese groupies, but like they are Megan. I like I love Megan. So she has been to literally 12 classes, I think. Because she's like the fun part is I get to go to all these places that I maybe never would have been before. Yeah. So there's people that have like, they're like, this is my first time at Boom, and they're like, I'm coming back because they like the atmosphere, they like the vibe, they like the beer. So it's a fun way to get to find your next favorite spot, too.
CourtneyIs there like a punch card for going to all these different classes? No punch. I know I really like it.
DanWhere's your punch? Oh, hold on. Hey, hey, well, there it is.
ChristineThank you. Yeah, no, and I do have new sweatshirts coming out that are gonna say the greater good school of cheese. So fun. There, so it's it's like looks like well, I was trying to decide. So I went to a state school and this sweatshirt looks more like a Harvard sweatshirt, but I didn't choose a state school sweatshirt this time, but it looks it's a pretty bougie looking sweatshirt.
LauraSo really cute.
CourtneyVery love it. Well, November 7th, I know where I'm gonna be. I'm gonna be back at Boom. I hope you're coming. I'm gonna drag you with. We're coming back. We'll both be here.
DanSo yeah, you don't have to twist my arm hard to get me to enjoy some beer and cheese and some laughs.
ChristineSo that's oh yeah, that's great.
DanIt's time well spent.
ChristineI have to go home and milk cows, so at some point in time we do have to end this year because I'm gonna be able to hear them for me pretty soon.
LauraWe have initials games starting at 6 30 every Wednesday. I don't know what time it is right now, but Sue's already setting up for it.
ChristineSo is this our Minnesota nice way of being like, oh, I get to go home. It's time to go home. I suppose.
DanNow let's put in our jackets and stand over there for 30 minutes before we actually go out to the parking lot.
ChristineNo, I'm actually gonna go up there and buy a couple beers to take home. So see, we're doing it. We're doing it.
CourtneyWe're doing it. That's gonna be a wrap for us here at Boom Island. Again, that class is November 7th. Tickets are available at Boom Island Brewing.com. Google just it just fills in the money for me when I put it in there. It just pops up. Go get there. November 7th will be the next, the next tasting class. We'll be here. It'll be fun. I have I have more cheese that I need to eat right now.
DanYeah, that's a good problem to have. I had no self-control today.
CourtneyNo, you thought you were done.
DanI was looking forward to this all day long.
CourtneyDan, where can people find you?
DanYou can find a one pint stand on Instagram, Facebook, Blue Sky, Mastodon. Just search up a one pint stand. If you want to read my written content, you can go to a onepintstand.com that has podcast episodes, beer events, all sorts of fun stuff that you can keep tabs on.
CourtneyAnd again, the brewery adventure is on Instagram, and our website is thebreweryadventure.com. Um, make sure you put in T H E in the front because otherwise you're gonna be on a different adventure and it won't be with us.
DanAnd how sad would that be?
CourtneyHow sad would that be babies? Extremely sad. Extremely sad. So that is a wrap for us here. We will see you next time on the brewery adventure. Thank you both for being here so much. This was so much fun. Thanks for having us. So fun. Cheese, beer, laughs.
ChristineIt was very gouda. So gouda.
unknownOh yeah.
LauraI wouldn't have twisted it for the world. Oh my god. She's been saving these up.
ChristineI amuse myself. I only get cheddar from here.
LauraI'm gonna need you to debris it back in a little bit. I couldn't monster myself to do that. Like over the obvious. I can help it.
ChristineIt's just such a great opportunity.
LauraWe gotta edit there, right?
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