"If you are eating a mild cheese, you should have a beer with low taste intensity. If you go for a very strong cheese, you need to go for a very strong beer."
Most importantly, a good pairing is when "you taste a little bit of both in the aftertaste and something new is created".
The first rule of such a tasting session is that the cheese should always be eaten first (and swallowed) as it leaves a coating of fat and creaminess in the mouth, which the beer then cuts through, explains Soenen.
We start with a light vanilla-flavoured goat's cheese from Normandy (all the cheeses are provided by the award-winning Van Tricht family who have a store outside Antwerp; kaasmeestervantricht.be) and a "caramel-flavoured" 5 per cent De Koninck beer, served typically in the bolleke, or bowl-shaped glass, and then wind our way up in intensity.
The final pairing is a pungent Le Vieux Berger Roquefort and a Duvel Tripel Hop. At 9.5 per cent, the beer packs a punch and is a good match with the cheese. "The bitterness of this beer suits the bitterness of the cheese," he says.