Beer cheese - Hertog Jan | Entire cheese 6,4 kilos / 14.08 lbs

Are you a lover of beer and cheese? Then you will love beer cheese. Brewery Hertog Jan and Cheesemaker Joris Mathijssen from Udenhout have joined in a unique alliance. They devised the plan to make a beautiful cheese using the specialist beer Hertog Jan "Grand Prestige". Two unique flavours that complement and reinforce each other beautifully! Of course, you should drink a delicious glass of beer with it.

Ingredients: 
Fat 52+ , unpasteurised cow's milk, Vegetarian (Microbial) Rennet, salt

Quality:
Your beer cheese is freshly cut and vacuum-packaged!
The hard structure of Dutch cheese makes it perfectly suitable for sending by post.

The taste of beer cheese
The result of this special collaboration is a characterful cheese with a distinctive beer flavour. The taste of beer cheese depends of course on the type of beer that is used, but usually this type of cheese is creamy, full, slightly sweeter than regular cheese and has the bitter aftertaste of beer. Often, dark beers are used to make beer cheese. This also applies to our beer cheese, made with Hertog Jan "Grand Prestige", a beer of high fermentation, with 10% alcohol. When you taste this, you can clearly distinguish between ripe, sweet and bitter.

The making of beer cheese
How is beer cheese made exactly? During the making of the cheese, the first phase involves getting the milk to clump together by adding rennet. The thick mass is cut into small pieces. This curd, which consists of the solid components of cheese, is then separated from the whey, or the liquid components. Beer is added to the curd before it is pressed into the round mould. Apart from that, the manufacturing process is the same as it would be for regular cheese. The beer cheese is placed in a brine bath, given a coating and matured for at least 8 weeks on wooden planks. During the ripening, the cheese is turned several times in order to preserve the beautiful round shape. The beer cheese weighs 5 kilos and is at least 8 weeks old.

A cheese with the pearl of Hertog Jan
Hertog Jan "Grand Prestige" beer is only available in the winter, from 21st December. This cheese is not called the 'crown jewel of Hertog Jan' without good reason. A beer for real aficionado’s, which is appreciated far beyond the Netherlands: it has been awarded many prizes at renowned beer competitions. Just as happens with a good wine, as Grand Prestige is kept for longer, its taste develops further and gets more character. Many bottles are being aged in the Hertog Jan cellars.

A delicacy from Udenhout in Brabant
Hertog Jan Bierkaas is made with great care and passion in West-Brabant, on a farm belonging to Joris Mathijssen in Udenhout, where they do everything themselves. Farmers cheese and butter have been made here as far back as 1978. The cheeses ripen in the ripening rooms on the farm. The main ingredient is raw, untreated cow's milk. This way all healthy nutrients remain in the cheese. In addition to providing a healthy, natural product, animal welfare is also paramount at this farm; the cows are bred on the farm itself and are milked twice daily. They eat corn, hay and fresh grass.