Cheese of the Week: Original Irish Porter Ale Cheese

There’s no better way to kick off St. Patrick’s Day with a cheese review. In what I hope will become a weekly feature here at Absurd Intellectual, let me introduce you to a cheese that I’ve sampled.

The Original Irish Porter Ale Cheese was spotted at my local Sobey’s, and it was on sale for half price. That’s $9.99 for almost a pound of cheese — a bargain, no matter which way you slice it.

Actually, slicing the cheese was a bit of an issue.

You see, like many flavoured cheddars, what the manufacturers of this cheese have done is taken crumbly old cheddar and mushed it together using the flavouring — in this case Irish Porter that is obviously a knockoff Guinness — to hold the pieces in place.

When cut into slices, though, the cheese fails to hold its shape. This is not necessarily a bad thing, but it kind of wrecked my plan to serve it with crackers.

You can see how the pieces have jumbled together! That’s not awful, since there are plenty of cheeses that have a similar crumbly texture (say, feta, for instance) and they are wonderful cheeses in their own right, but I wasn’t prepared very well for a crumbly cheese in this particular instance.

Despite that setback, there were lots of larger pieces that were suitable for placing on a cracker, or just popping into one’s mouth.

Ah, the mouth — so how did the cheese do? Well, it was good, but not spectacular.

Like most cheddars, the Original Irish Porter Ale Cheese has a slightly sharp, almost sour taste, but there’s nothing particularly distinctive about this cheddar. It’s not wonderfully sharp, or over-sour, or very memorable at all.

The Guinness-like flavouring that keeps the cheddar bits together fares slightly better, but it’s still not up to what you would like it to be. It’s too dry, and too bland, to really do the Guinness name justice. Which perfectly explains why this is a nameless, generic “Irish Porter Ale.”

Sadly, while this is a fun conceptual cheese, it is a mild disappointment from a taste standpoint. It barely even stood up to the soda crackers!

I liked it, and I would buy it again — especially half off, for St. Patrick’s Day — but I wouldn’t go out of my way to find it.

I have had in the past — and I looked for but couldn’t find — a different cheddar, with actual Guinness (they claimed) as the flavouring. I remember liking that one more, so if you happen across it, try that one.