My dear friends Dave and Sarah throw a smashing roof top party in Chicago at least once each summer. Last Saturday, after having so much fun at the latest Chicago Beer Society event, I headed over to their place, just south of the loop for the view and the margaritas.  They had a fantastic spread of party food that included a distilled trio of cheeses: Colton Bassett Shropshire Blue, an American made clothbound (Beecher’s perhaps?) and Brillat Savarin, a cheese I have read about many times, but I don’t think I have ever had a chance to really savor.  All three were wonderful, but the Brillat Savarin, was looking really sexy. Seeing as how we had arrived late, the cheeses had reached room temperature some hours before, and there was some nice crusty bread ready for the oozing, soft French cheese. So I dug in and …. Wow!  I’ve had great triple crèmes before, but this was transcendent. Of course I’ve Never Met a Cheese I Didn’t Like.

A classic wheel of Brillat Savarin.

This is a bloomy rind, pastuerized, cows milk cheese from Normandy — the same pastoral region that produces the cousins brie and Camembert. It’s a triple crème that must have a dry matter content of at least 75% milk fat, which makes for a whopping 45% milk fat in the cheese. Super creamy and indulgent, it is named after the famous French gastronome Jean-Anthelme Brillat-Savarin, the author of the ‘Physiologie du gout’ (Physiology of Taste), published in 1826. The cheese was first crafted a little more than 100 years later. It’s typically made in a flat cylinder weighing about a pound. It has a white rind, and an ivory paste, and ripens from the outside in, like all bloomy rinds. Most who have commented on it call it creamy and luscious with hints of salt and lemon.

As I enjoyed the cheese with a New Zealand stout I got some of the salt and the lemon, and oh, the lusciousness!  One source recommends a yeasty champagne with Brillat Savarin. I’d say why not?  Or, how about a yeasty, bubbly beer, like Urthel Saisonniere, Goose Island Sofie, or Ayinger Brau Weisse or Ur Weisse?  With other triple crèmes I’ve had happy results with big malty beers in the vein of a Belgian dubbel or a quad, or a doppelbock.

The petite weighs about six ounces.