Neal's Yard Dairy x The Kernel Brewery

Territorial cheeses, like Cheshire, Lancashire, and Caerphilly, are traditional British styles rooted in farming and place, now at risk of fading from view. Neal’s Yard Dairy have teamed up with The Kernel Brewery to create Running Porter, a historically inspired beer brewed to complement them and celebrate them.

The Kernel Brewery’s Running Porter: Made for British Cheese 

When we sat down with a selection of territorial cheeses and beers with our friends at The Kernel Brewery, it quickly became clear that porter was the best pairing. It's not just that the malty, hoppy drink is an ideal foil for bright, crumbly cheese. It's that their stories echo each other...

Click here to read more
The Territorial Selection with Running Porter
The Territorial Selection with Running Porter
The Territorial Selection with Running Porter
The Territorial Selection with Running Porter
The Territorial Selection with Running Porter
The Territorial Selection with Running Porter

The Territorial Selection with Running Porter

Price
/

Territorial cheeses, like Cheshire, Lancashire, and Caerphilly, are traditional British styles rooted in farming and place, now at risk of fading from view. To celebrate them, Neal’s Yard Dairy have teamed up with The Kernel Brewery to create Running Porter, a historically inspired beer brewed to complement them. In the selection, you'll also receive a coveted Eat Them or Lose them pin badge!

Many of the British Style cheeses that we sell are the last of their kind. Once they would have been made to sustain the families and workers of farms across a region but industrial cheesemaking has made their production more rare. We're fortunate that there are still people making these cheeses that reflect our unique climate, agricultural and economic history. In fact, there are even new producers taking up the mantle and reviving near lost recipes. We want to support them and the best way to do so is by eating them!

These are cheeses that lend themselves to simple, hearty, comfort-eating. It's one of the reasons we enjoy them so much. Just stripped back, delicious cheese.

Minimum cheese weight 1265g

What do we mean by British Territorials?

Territorial cheeses are traditional British styles rooted in farming and place; they are products of their environment, or 'terroir' and reflect our unique climate, agricultural and economic history.

The map below shows the locations of some of the British territorial cheesemakers we work with.

British Territorials

View all
Sparkenhoe Red Leicester
Close up of a cut piece of Whin Yeats Wensleydale raw cow’s milk cheese showing the golden-coloured buttery, crumbly paste and the rind
Whin Yeats Wensleydale
Close up of a cut piece of Gorwydd Caerphilly cheese showing well developed rind and creamy paste
Gorwydd Caerphilly
Kirkham's Lancashire
Close up of a cut wheel Appleby’s Cheshire cheese showing cloth-bound casing and orange-coloured paste
Appleby's Cheshire
Close up of the mould-flecked green nettle-wrapped rind of a Cornish Yarg cow’s milk cheese
Cornish Yarg

What is British cheese? 

There is no cheese quite like British cheese. More specifically, the low-moisture, high-acid cheeses of Britain. As different as they may seem, Cheddar, Caerphilly, Cheshire, Lancashire, Stilton, and Wensleydale each have more in common with each other than you may think.

British cheese is crumbly.

The texture of cheese has everything to do
with how acid the curd is when the moisture is being removed from it. For British Territorials, the whey is drained in an intricately choreographed dance as the curd acidifies. The curds are also run through a mill before being pressed into a wheel and a lot of that bittiness is actually the structure of the curd that’s been turned into tiny little bits in the mill.

British cheese is bright.

Thanks to the complex microbiological processes that contribute to each wheel of cheese, this acidity can come through in a variety of ways. Over the course of several
weeks, Yoredale Wensleydale alone could taste yoghurty, lively, juicy, lemony, sour, or fresh. Acidity is just one note in a symphony, and some British cheeses let others sing. Colston Bassett Stilton has a bright, sweet base, but it is a blue cheese – and tastes like it.  

British cheese is underrated 

When we say British cheese, we mean styles of cheese that originated here. Why is it necessary to clarify the definition of British cheese? Why is British cheese not mentioned in the same breath as French or Italian? Why are there so few British farmhouse cheesemakers left?  Our mission is to change that. We are proud to sell small-scale, farmhouse British cheese, from Appleby’s Cheshire to Colston Bassett Stilton. Taste a selection – you will find them all to be bright, crumbly, and uniquely British.

Read more