Bleu and Brew festival showcases craft beers, gourmet cheese

By Callie Broaddus

When you think of cheese, wine is the alcoholic beverage that traditionally comes to mind. But the owners at Old Bust Head Brewing Co. and Culpeper Cheese Co. are hoping to topple the age-old duo and introduce a new experience to our palettes. 

On Sept. 10, the Vint Hill brewery, which lies about 30 minutes south of Middleburg, threw its second annual Bleu and Brew Beer and Cheese Festival. More than 1,000 people from all over Virginia, Washington, D.C., and Maryland braved the heat for a full day of craft beer, gourmet cheese, live music and local food trucks. The event featured unlimited tastings of the best beers from 17 of the area’s coolest craft breweries, alongside a colorful list of carefully selected cheeses.

Jeffery Mitchell, owner of Culpeper Cheese Co. and one of fewer than 1,000 Certified Cheese Professionals in the country, was glad to be welcomed back to the festival for a second year. “We’ve almost doubled the number of cheeses this year … It’s kind of like Pokémon. You’ve gotta taste ‘em all.” 

The lifelong turophile — the proper name for a cheese lover — hopes the public will come to know the pairing and love it. “Beer, in my mind’s eye, is a better pairing because it has carbonation,” said Mitchell. “Cheese will coat the tongue and kind of nest between your taste buds, and the beers kind of lift it off. So the same flavor combinations can be reintroduced, where wine and cheese are going to sit well together, but they don’t create the dynamic character that you find with beer.” 

Locals who attended the inaugural 2015 Bleu and Brew were delighted to see favorites like Brander goat Gouda — paired this year with Port City Brewing Co.’s Optimal Wit and Mustang Sally Brewing Co.’s IPA — back on the tasting sheet, which was full of exciting and unexpected flavors: Old Bust Head’s gold medal-winning Oktoberfest with smoked Gouda, Vanish Farmwoods Brewery’s Grapefruit IPA with smoked cheddar with chili, BadWolf Brewing Co.’s Lemonade Thunder Punch with New Zealand cheddar, and Escutcheon Brewing Co.’s Reluctant Splice Gose with blueberry Wensleydale … just to name a few.

Tin Cannon Brewing Co. co-owners Aaron Ludwig and John Hilkert were manning their taps for the second year. “They really think about the beers ahead of time. So they ask us months in advance, ‘What are you bringing? Give me the description.’ And they actually put some thought behind what cheese would go with that beer. And it really does change the flavor of both the cheese and the beer when you combine them.” 

But to these small-business owners, it’s not all about flavor. “What we’re hoping is to build a little bit of that brand recognition,” Ludwig said. “There’s like 150 breweries in Virginia right now. You can’t go to all of them.” 

However, Ludwig and Hilkert don’t see the growing number of local breweries as a negative. Hilkert offered some advice to future brewery owners: “It’s a great community if you want it to be. If you want it to be a competitive thing, then … God help you. It’s not going to work.”

Julie Broaddus, who opened Old Bust Head in 2014 with her husband Ike and brewmaster Charles Kling, said one of the two goals of the event (in addition to promoting beer as a complex pairing for cheese) is “to bring together the owners, principals and brewers in our ever-expanding craft brew community so we can connect with and support each other.” 

“It’s a great community, and we’re all so young; we’re all growing together,” said Port City’s Emma Quinn, echoing the prevailing sentiment of camaraderie. “When people come from out of state or from out of town to one area, they can now go to a number of breweries instead of having to just trek out for one.”

The improvements made to this year’s festival were widely praised. However, Broaddus still found room for improvement. The 2017 event may move to the first weekend in October to aim for cooler weather, which is better for the people and the cheese. She is also hoping to offer a “cheese tent,” bring in some bluegrass music, and increase the number of participating breweries.

Last year, Bleu and Brew was named one of the top seven food-related beer festivals in the country. The 2016 edition brought in more beer, more cheese and the widely praised unlimited tastings, and the 2017 event is sure to be even better.

But the best thing about this unique festival may just be the focus on community, and the idea that small businesses like our emerging local breweries are stronger together.  ML