Allgäuer Weißlacker — the Beer Cheese Only One Dairy Still Makes

There is a cheese in Bavaria that was patented by a king, named for the drink it demands, and is now made by exactly one dairy. Its milk comes from farms above 800 meters. It smells like it could knock you over and tastes like it wants to be your friend. This is Weißlacker — literally “white lacquer,” functionally “beer cheese” — and it is the best story in Bavarian cheese.

The story

In 1874, two brothers named Kramer, cheesemakers in the Allgäu, developed a surface-ripened cheese unlike anything around it: salty, piquant, built to be eaten with beer. Two years later they secured a royal Bavarian patent for it — 1876, a cheese with a patent, which tells you something about how seriously Bavaria took the matter.

The name is the serving instruction. Weißlacker became Bierkäse — beer cheese — not because beer goes into it, but because beer goes with it, emphatically. Traditionalists don’t just pair the two; they dip the cheese directly into the glass.

Then came the slow fade. Weißlacker is demanding to make: around nine months of aging in highly humid cellars, milk held to the PDO’s mountain standards. One by one, dairies stopped. Today, reportedly, a single dairy in the Allgäu still makes the PDO Allgäuer Weißlacker, drawing milk from farms above 800 meters.

That makes every piece of Weißlacker you encounter a small act of preservation.

What it tastes like

Expect contradiction. The aroma is powerfully pungent — in the Limburger family, unapologetic. The taste is another matter: savory, salty, piquant-to-sharp, but paradoxically mild once you’re past the smell. Semi-soft, yielding, deeply savory. The smell outruns the flavor, and the flavor is worth catching up to.

Flavor profile: intensity high · funk high · salt high · creaminess medium
Aging: about nine months · Texture: semi-soft, surface-ripened

How to serve it

Keep it simple and Bavarian: small cubes on rye or pumpernickel with sliced raw onion. Serve at room temperature — cold mutes everything interesting about it.

Drink with it: A malty Dunkel or Märzen. Tradition is explicit here: this cheese is for beer. Wine, by common consent, is overpowered — don’t try to be clever about it.

Finding it in America

Honest answer: this one takes work. Weißlacker has no verified national US distribution. Ask a serious cheesemonger or a German specialty importer — and if they can get it, they’ve earned your loyalty. Weisslacker-style “beer cheese” is also made in the US, mostly in Wisconsin, as the accessible cousin — but no current named producer could be verified, so ask for it by name.

The seal

Allgäuer Weißlacker carries the EU PDO seal (2014) — the guarantee that it was made in the Allgäu, to the traditional method. Link: What the PDO seal actually guarantees →