The Best Beer To Pair With Light Cheese

While wine may be a more common pairing with cheese, there's something special about sipping a cold crisp beer in between bites of various cheeses. But like wine, for the best experience you need to choose a beer that compliments rather than overpowers or clashes with the flavor and texture of the cheese. If fresh varieties like chèvre, ricotta, and mozzarella or burrata are on your cheese plate, you need to choose your beer wisely since light cheeses are especially prone to being overwhelmed by the wrong beer.

We've tapped Rich Higgins (@maltyrich on Instagram) to help guide us through the ins and outs of pairing beer and light cheeses. Besides being a former brewmaster and certified sommelier, he's a Master Cicerone, the highest level of beer certification around, a distinction only granted after you've passed what's considered the hardest beer test in the world. As such, he's as versed in cheese and beer pairings as he is in telling you how to add beer to your mac and cheese recipe.

In an exclusive conversation, Higgins told Chowhound that fresh cheeses tend to have the delicate flavors of milk and cream rather than the sharp, sometimes funky or fruity flavors of longer aged cheeses. "Cow's milk ricotta, mozzarella and luscious burrata are all mild in flavor and go best with delicate beers that won't compete with the cheese," Higgins says.

When it comes to light, fresh cheeses like burrata, which is similar to fresh mozzarella but with a soft gooey interior (and shorter shelf life), Rich Higgins likes to pair them with ales flavored with herbs or those with fruitier characteristics. "Some of my favorite choices are soft and herbaceous, like eucalyptus-scented Tre Fontane Trappist Ale from Italy or Propolis Spruce Pale Ale, or fruity, like Kona Big Wave or Pure Project Tropical Mist," he says.

Tre Fontane Trappist Ale is a Belgian-style medium-bodied tripel with notes of honey and herbs. SPA Propolis Spruce Pale Ale is an easy drinking American-style pale ale with citrus and tropical notes and a hint of spruce. Kona Big Wave, from Hawaii, is an American blond ale that's light in body, slightly on the sweeter side and laden with tropical fruits. Pure Project Tropical Mist, from San Diego, is also a blond ale and is packed with citrusy notes. While these beers go well with most light cheeses, chèvre is a bit unique and requires a different approach to choosing a beer that pairs well.

Chèvre — soft goat cheese — tends to have a different flavor profile from other fresh cheeses. With its earthy aroma and sour tang, it requires a different type of beer. "Because of these traits, chèvre is perfect with cloudy, yeasty beers, since the yeast adds a creamy smoothness that's nicely balanced by chèvre's gentle tartness, and beer yeast also contributes its own earthy aromas of dough and mushrooms to match the earthiness of the goat cheese," Rich Higgins says.

He suggests several styles of beer brewed using wheat to pair with chèvre, including a Belgian witbier such as Hoegaarden, which celebrity chef Jamie Oliver said he would drink at his last meal. It has a subtle spiciness and peppery yeast notes. Two others Higgins suggests are a German hefeweizen like Andechser Weissbier Hell or an American Wheat Beer such as Bell's Oberon. Now that Higgins has given you some guidance, you can begin your delicious journey into pairing beer and fresh cheese. A beer flight and a cheese plate might be in your near future.