When tangy goat cheese hits your palate, it coats your mouth with its creamy richness. Swallowing a sip of a saison beer bursting with a slight tartness, spice and mellow bitterness, your taste buds detect – and your brain perceives – that the two items have matching flavor profiles. Beer and cheese blend because they bring out similar flavors like nutty and sweet, and challenge your palate to discern whether the tastes match.

Pairing beer and cheese is an exercise in complementing and contrasting flavors. Kristin Hueneke, executive chef at Lakefront Brewery, says experimentation is key.

"Just because they have the same flavors, it doesn’t always mean they are going to go well together," she explains.

Mitchell Bushner, bar lead at Uber Tap Room, a Wisconsin-centric tap room and eatery on Old World 3rd Street, says he changes up the menu for each tasting that Uber Tap Room hosts, but keeps a couple of the pairings familiar.

"I usually start my day looking at the tap lines then tasting each beer," Bushner says. "Now that I’ve been doing this for a while, at this point I’ve got a good idea of what's going to go together."

When the pros create beer and cheese pairings, they look at a few factors. First, which cheeses are available to them. The cheeses served at Uber Tap Room and Lakefront Brewery are sourced from cheesemakers scattered throughout Wisconsin. Lakefront actually gets their cheese delivered from the Uber Tap Room's neighbor, the Wisconsin Cheese Mart, operated by the same owner.

Second, Hueneke says she considers what may have mass appeal. She says she looks to mix in a hard cheese, a soft cheese and something unique – a "wild card" as she puts it.

"You either love it or you hate it," Hueneke says of the more unique choices like blue cheese or something with a coated rind like Sartori's Espresso BellaVitano.

Both the flavors and the intensity can be the motivation for creating a pairing. The intensity of an aged cheese needs to pair head-to-head with the intensity of a craft beer otherwise the pairing will be unbalanced, according to craftbeer.com's Beer & Food course.

"Delicate craft beers often pair well with young cheeses, while stronger flavored craft beers tend to work better with strongly flavored, mature cheeses," according to craftbeer.com.

The third step is tasting to see if what was in your head actually works with your palate. Taste the lighter cheeses pairings first and then work into the more intense flavors. For example, you may start with a wheat beer with fresh mozzarella and transition to a roasty porter with Limburger cheese. In addition, serve the cheese at between 55 to 65 degrees. The beer should be served at its preferred serving temperature as well, which is usually between 38 and 55 degrees, depending on the style.

Bushner says some of the pairings Uber Tap Room cultivates are salty and briny cheese with bitter beer, creamy cheese with chocolate – where the textures are similar – and blue cheese with sweet beer. Uber Tap Room serves their blue cheese with honey to elevate this pairing.

Hueneke says one of her favorite pairings is Hennings peppercorn white cheddar with an IPA.

"It totally brings out the heat without washing it away completely," she says.

A favorite of Bushner's is five-year cheddar with an IPA because of the balance between the sharpness and creaminess of the cheddar and the sharpness and bitterness from the hops in the beer.

"You have extreme sharpness upon extreme sharpness," Bushner says. "After drinking an IPA, the aged cheddar has the illusion of being less bitter."

Bushner also enjoys spicy with sweet. He says Comstock Creamery's pepperoni marinara jack, a cheese with flavors reminiscent of pizza, pairs well with Riverwest Stein.

"When I eat pizza, I like to drink Riverwest Stein," he recalls. The pairing works particularly well for him because of this connection.

Hueneke says she meets with people visiting the brewery from all over the world. She says her interactions with customers make her realize Wisconsin is special because of its cheese production.

"Being from Wisconsin, we don’t appreciate how big the cheese is here," Hueneke says. "There aren’t many places in the world that can do what we do."

Cheese boards can be found on menus all over the state, but why should cheese be thoughtfully consumed with beer compared with, say, wine?

Beer, for one, has better pairing capabilities than wine.

"It blows wine out of the water," Hueneke says. "Sweeter [beer] pairs a little bit better than a wine does because it can bring out undertones of flavor. There’s no wine that can pair with spicy heat."

Bushner says the carbonation in beer helps freshen the palate.

"It’s a beautiful thing," Bushner says. "The carbon dioxide bubbles cleanse the palate from the waxy cheese, and it gets you ready for another sip of beer."

Hueneke says to trust your instincts when creating pairings.

"Sometimes the beer brings out the cheese, sometimes the cheese brings out the beer," she says. "There is never a right or wrong answer when you are pairing. It is whatever your preference is."

Sample pairings courtesy of the Wisconsin Milk Marketing Board:

• Try Havarti with a pilsner (like Sprecher Summer Pils)
• Try smoked Gouda with a bock (like New Glarus Uff-da)
• Try Brie with a fruit beer (like Lindmans Framboise)
• Try fresh goat cheese with a saison (like Milwaukee Brewing Company Booyah)
• Try blue cheese with a Belgian ale (like Gouden Carolus D'or)
• Try Asiago with a brown ale (like Avery Ellie's Brown Ale)
• Try aged cheddar with an IPA (like Lakefront Extended Play)