Craft Beer Collective

American Cheese Society Conference in Raleigh

ACS is Coming to Raleigh, NC! Mark your calendar: August 1-4, 2012 The 29th Annual American Cheese Society Conference & Competition is coming to Raleigh from August 1-3, 2012! Check out this video for a glimpse of what to expect from the friendly cheese community in North Carolina, including a keynote speech Temple Grandin.

http://www.cheesesociety.org/

From August 1st through 4th, cheese makers from around the nation will come to Raleigh to compete, network, attend discussion panels and presentations in a series of events that culminates with an evening known as Festival of Cheese. The American Cheese Society conference is the GABF of Cheese!

So what does this have to do with a beer blog? Beside the parallel I just drew to the Great American Beer Festival, there are amazing pairing possibilities between cheese and beer. Our friends at Girls Pint Out were recently treated to night of beer and cheese at Mystery Brewing. Then there is the pairing event at Big Boss on April 11th hosted by yours truly! Interest in the subject is growing.

To bring the wonders of cheese and beer to the masses there is still work to be done as Joshua M. Bernstein, author of Brewed Awakening: Behind the Beers and Brewers Leading the World’s Craft Brewing Revolution points out in recent email correspondence: “A beer-and-cheese pairing is a targeted weapon for destroying preconceptions. Wine and cheese have been placed on a pedestal, with advertising dictating that the two foodstuffs go together as well as peanut butter and jelly. That’s simply not the case. Beer is ideally suited for scraping your palate, leaving you lunging for another piece of cheese, then another sip of beer. It’s a delicious loop.”

There’s a lot to learn and a plenty to explore. That’s why I’m excited that the American Cheese Society will be hosting their convention to Raleigh this August.

Bernstein will also be attending the conference as a guest speaker and exploring the North Carolina beer culture. “Over the last few years, North Carolina has become one of the country’s top destinations for craft beer. Every month, it seems like a new brewery is popping up—many of which never distribute their beer outside of the state. For a beer lover such as myself, this is pure torture. The only way to alleviate that is to head to Raleigh and dive, stomach-first, into the craft beer scene.”

I posted a few links to articles below as a rough guide to beer and cheese pairing plus a video of Triangle area food and cheese destinations that was created for The American Cheese Society Conference.

Craftbeer.com – Stone’s Greg Koch on Cheese

Artisanal article

Beer Advocate article

NPR – In Matchup Of Beer And Cheese, Everybody Wins — With A Good Coach