Match of the week

Cherry beer and cheesecake

Posted by Fiona Beckett (Google+) on June 20 2007 at 12:21

If you’ve never tasted a fruit beer you might think this pairing sounds bizarre. If you have you can probably imagine just how good it would taste.

Fruit flavoured beers are nothing new but unlike many flavoured drinks they have real integrity, with a natural fresh fruit flavour. The best examples come from Belgium where they’re called by the Flemish name Kriek. They’re made by combining a lambic beer (one fermented from wild yeasts) with fresh cherry juice and are wonderfully tart and refreshing. The best example is Lindemans which comes packaged in a very pretty bottle with a paper wrapping.

You can drink a cherry beer with savoury foods (my favourite matches are with duck and with white-rinded cheeses such as Brie and Camembert) but I particularly like them with a creamy American-style cheesecake topped with fresh red berries including cherries. (The great thing about beer, as opposed to wine, is that because of the carbonation you can match pretty well identical flavours in your food and your drink without one knocking the other out).

Raspberry beer (Frambozen) is delicious with plain or berry-topped cheesecakes too.

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