6 Awesome Coffee And Cheese Pairings (**Pro Guide**)

What Pairs With Coffee? (Cheese!)

So how did you get into cheese?

As a cheesemonger and cheese educator, I get this question all the time.

People usually expect some story about culinary school, or working in kitchens or wine bars - you know, cheese adjacent jobs.

But the answer is not one that most people associate with the world of cheese at all.

The answer, my dears, is that it all started with coffee.

It’s true - my first venture into the world of specialty foods was at a small coffee bar in D.C..

That job taught me all about how to detect things like acidity, bitterness, and body.

I learned how to articulate what flavor notes I tasted in different coffees and how they changed from batch to batch. I learned how to divorce my own likes and dislikes from determining the quality of a product.

In short, that job taught me how to taste coffee on a more professional level.

When I eventually moved over to the world of cheese, not only did the same skills that I had learned as a barista apply, but the two products were actually very alike.

Coffee and cheese have similar tasting notes.

They have similar flavor changes from batch-to-batch, balance of taste, body, and texture.

Since there are so many common characteristics held by coffee and cheese, wouldn’t it makes sense that they would pair well together?

As it turns out, they sure do!

While many people think of wine when they think of cheese pairings, there is a whole world of alternate pairings out there, including coffee.

But where to begin?

The world of coffee and the world of cheese are so vast. The idea of sorting through and matching up each individual roast and wheel can seem intensely daunting, especially for the non-professional.

Over the years, I’ve found a couple tips and tricks to make the experience less overwhelming and more manageable.

How To Pair Coffee And Cheese

Flavor

So first, we have flavor.

Yes, that piece of cheese you just ate tastes like cheese. Of course it does. But what else are you tasting?

Once you get past that initial, “Yup, tastes like cheddar” thought, can you detect any flavors that remind you of something else?

It might make you feel strange at first, but trust me, these secondary flavors are what make each product unique. This is how you train your taste buds to pair properly.

Does it taste a little mustardy?

Is there a green, asparagus-y kind of flavor going on?

What about a certain umami, brothy sort of note?

All of these pieces of information will clue you in to what coffee pairing will be the most successful!

Mouthfeel and Body

Next up, we need to evaluate mouthfeel and body. For those of you who have no idea what I’m talking about, the easiest way to describe body is to think about the difference between drinking cream and skim milk.

Cream coats your mouth and lingers for a significant amount of time. That's what we would consider full bodied.

Skim milk, on the other hand, is not nearly as viscous and doesn’t hang around in your mouth after you swallow it.

Because of that lightness, it would be considered light bodied.

Both coffees and cheeses have body.  Think about a light roast pour over with bright, fresh flavors versus a thick cup of dark Turkish coffee.

Yes, both are coffee, but the experience of drinking them is very different. And not just because they have varying flavor. Each sensory experience is distinct.

Taste

Second, a lot depends on your past food experiences.

For example, if you’ve never eaten a mushroom before, you’ll find it really hard to detect notes of mushroom in whatever you’re tasting.

The more vast of a variety of foods you eat, the more precisely you’ll be able to pinpoint tasting notes.

I like to think of it as fun food homework. The more food experiences I have, the better I will be at tasting and understanding flavor nuances.

What Makes A Good Coffee And Cheese Pairing?

Okay, so you’ve got a particular coffee or cheese in mind that you would like to figure out a pairing for.

You’ve tasted it and have an idea of its flavor characteristics and what kind of body it has.

Now what?

You are looking for a complimentary cheese or coffee that enhances your eating and drinking experience.

A really good pairing boosts both the cheese and the coffee so that they taste better together than they do separately.

Sometimes you’ll even get an entirely new flavor from the combination that just blows your socks off.

A bad pairing, on the other hand, means that they taste worse together than apart, which obviously nobody wants.

More often than not, most items put together come out neutral - they’re not bad together, but they’re not great either. Obviously this isn't ideal either. 

How To Make A Successful Coffee Pairing

In my experience, when it comes to pairing cheese and coffee, I’ve found two strategies that have helped guide me towards successful pairings:

1. You can use the flavor notes in your cheese and coffee to recreate flavor combinations that have worked in other dishes.

For example, if you have a very fruit-forward cup of coffee, pairing it with a traditional English cheddar that has a lot of green peanut flavors could give you a peanut butter-and-jelly type vibe.

Or, you can recreate one of my favorite, if a bit unorthodox, cheese pairings - blue cheese and dark chocolate - by pairing a fudgy, lightly sweet blue cheese with a cup of chocolatey, Central American coffee.

2. You can pair cheeses and coffees together that have similar flavor notes in order to marry the two products together.

For example, you could pair a light, bright, citrusy African coffee with a similarly light, bright, citrusy fresh or barely aged goat cheese.

The parallel flavors in both the coffee and cheese harmonize the two products in a complementary way and highlight the salty and sweet notes in each.