A beer with roasted malts that have coffee
notes is the perfect pairing with Beehive’s coffee-rubbed cheese, Barely Buzzed.

Beehive Cheese is another wonderful artisan food story. Brothers-in-law working in software and real estate traded fast-paced corporate jobs for green acres, and grinding commutes with briefcases and laptops for quiet mornings turning 500 gallons of farm-fresh milk into cheese. Instead of “make it happen—now!,” they now spend months patiently waiting for their cheeses to ripen.

Learning elementary Cheddar-making at the local agricultural college, they opened a shop that also stocked other artisans’ cheeses, plus coffee beans from one of the owners’ brothers, a roaster in Colorado. One cold January morning, inspiration struck to pat some ground Turkish coffee onto some wheels of their Cheddar. The local hit—dubbed Barely Buzzed by the winner of a naming contest—became the first prize winner at the American Cheese Society Competition in 2007 and 2008 (the 2009 competition takes place this week).

We knew none of this when we stumbled upon Barely Buzzed a few months back at the Winter Fancy Food Show. We only know an eye-opening Cheddar when we taste one. Beehive Cheese Co. makes more than one charming cheese, and the Cheddar champs have proved that Amano Chocolate (founded by another Utah software industry emigré) isn’t the only artisan food from the Beehive State that can compete in the bee-g time.