(Sorry if this is a rather long one, but Hey! It's my blog and I'll blather if I want to!) The Kentucky Beer Cheese Trail was dreamed up by the Clark County Chamber of Commerce. It mimics the Bourbon Trail and various Wine Trails, in a small, plebeian way, which almost makes it more fun, like going to the Galt House Hotel in Louisville and eating burgers on the outdoor pool patio instead of filet mignons up in the penthouse restaurant.... You get some of the ambiance without the concomitant pretentiousness.
Kentucky beer cheese is a Cheddar cheese spread more or less invented by Johnnie Allman, who ran a small beer joint/restaurant/marina serving sport fishermen on the Kentucky River in the 1940's, one of those places where you could pull up in your boat and climb a precarious ladder/stairway about 100 feet to reach the cold brew and hot food. The place burned several times, was rebuilt and expanded several times until it was a fairly good-sized restaurant (My Dad claimed a large ship's wheel chandelier in the dining room magically survived each of the fires, but I can't confirm that, and I would never besmirch Johnnie's legacy by claiming anything so heinous as insurance fraud occurred). They'd become pretty big by the time my parents began taking me there in the 60's, and by then they were serving a little complimentary appetizer of Johnnie's "Snappy" cheese with crackers, radishes, and celery for scooping. My 9 year-old self LOVED it: That delightful food, along with my father's drinking habits, drew me to bars and beer later in life. The spread was very cheesy, very beery, and very spicy-- everything a Kentuckian could want in a food. Allman's cooked a delicious steak, too, and the romantic river location made for a great high-school date destination, so when Allman's burned for the last time in the late 70's, I was heartbroken.
Imagine my glee, then, when in the early 2000's I learned that Johnnie Allman's descendants began again producing his original recipe Kentucky Beer Cheese! It's available locally in stores in the Lexington, KY area, but I didn't see any provision on their website for mail-order sales, so I have yet to sample the new/old product, DANGIT. Then I heard about the Kentucky Beer Cheese trail, and we just had to go. The trail has eight destinations, I think, and if you make it to five of them and purchase a beer cheese product from each, the Chamber of Commerce will send you a T-shirt, woohoo! I know its cheesy (ouch!), but we went there, did that, and got the t-shirt. The locations vary from little bars to a health-food store (ORGANIC beer cheese? Bleeeeeah!... but actually theirs was pretty darn good) to three riverside restaurants, including Hall's On the River, which is a restaurant a few feet away from where Allman's was. Hall's recipe Snappy Beer Cheese is sold there as well as grocery stores as far away as Louisville, and is itself a very good, if very commercial product. I had a couple of drinks in each of the establishments that served alcohol, so The Little Woman took over driving before we reached the last one. It was all a lot of fun. Despite being a border state, Kentucky folks have Southern Hospitality in spades, and everyone from bartenders to church folk (one of the locations is a Christian coffee house) were as nice as could be.
A few (I swear!) final words about KY beer cheese vs. other types. First off, the beer cheese you get on that Hardee's specialty burger or with the Broadripple Brewpub's Ploughman's Lunch is really just a cheese SAUCE, malty and kind of wheaty and just okay tasting, as far as I'm concerned. My Kroger in Indy dropped Owensboro's Big Russ Beer now sells Merkt's Wisconsin Beer Cheese, which is similar in consistency to the KY stuff and actually may have a little more beer flavor in that it's made in two versions with Stevens Point Brewery craft beers. But EGAD, man, it's got no punch, no kick, no freakin' BITE! The best Kentucky beer cheeses, even the mild ones, have enough nice cayenne or similar spice to get you craving beer to quell that little smoldering fire on your tongue, so DO IT! Drink up!
A few (I swear!) final words about KY beer cheese vs. other types. First off, the beer cheese you get on that Hardee's specialty burger or with the Broadripple Brewpub's Ploughman's Lunch is really just a cheese SAUCE, malty and kind of wheaty and just okay tasting, as far as I'm concerned. My Kroger in Indy dropped Owensboro's Big Russ Beer now sells Merkt's Wisconsin Beer Cheese, which is similar in consistency to the KY stuff and actually may have a little more beer flavor in that it's made in two versions with Stevens Point Brewery craft beers. But EGAD, man, it's got no punch, no kick, no freakin' BITE! The best Kentucky beer cheeses, even the mild ones, have enough nice cayenne or similar spice to get you craving beer to quell that little smoldering fire on your tongue, so DO IT! Drink up!
