Bacon and eggs.

Peanut butter and jelly.

Sour beers and stinky cheese?

“Why do these things go so well together? Both sours — and any beer — and cheese are living, breathing, things,” says Kevin Brown, a craft beer and pizza boss at The Fridge and one of the minds behind Sour & Stinky Fest.

Some of the beers at The Fridge can be described as tart, fruity, funky and even barnyard.

These sour beers pack enough flavor to interest hopheads like Brown and James Futty, co-owners of The Fridge. Brown even converted his father, a light lager drinker whose medicine messes with his taste buds, with his first sour.

“His eyes lit up. His lightbulb went off. He was like, ‘I can taste it, and I love it,’ ” Brown said. “Now, all he drinks are sours.”

A block away at Mandros Imported Foods, you can smell most of the cheeses before you see them. And that’s a good thing, co-owner Bill Mandros said.

“Real cheese smells,” he said.

Over plenty of beer-and-cheese-fueled business meetings, they came up with the Sour & Stinky Fest.

The fourth Sour & Stinky Fest brings together nine sour brews and 11 stinky cheeses Saturday at The Fridge, 534 N. Mulberry St.

The fest has grown into one of the biggest events at the craft beer and artisan food cafe, where it runs from 11 a.m. through midnight.

The festival’s a chance to try sour beers, which have their own unique nuances based on where they were made. The nine-beer tap list includes wild ales, a Flanders ale, a gose, a lambic, plus a sour cider from Adams County.

Mandros just finalized the cheese list with selections including Ubriaco Di Raboso, a hard cow’s milk cheese with a wine-washed rind, and Graveria, a sheep’s milk cheese from Crete that he’d been trying to buy for two years.

The three men got together to do some research, sip by sip, and talk beer and cheese. This interview was edited and condensed.

Whose idea was the Sour & Stinky Fest?

Brown: “We were sitting here one night having a sour, and (Bill) brought some cheese for us to sample for our cheese plates. We tried them together, just by accident. It was like a lightbulb went off. We looked at each other and said: ‘Do you know what we ought to do?’ ”

Why did you want to do something like this?

Brown: “To celebrate what our customers love and what we love.”

Futty: “It’s also a celebration of Lancaster. ... Mandros is an institution in this town.”

Bill, why did you say yes?

“It makes sense. A lot of people only think you can eat wine with cheese. Not true. I think beer is one of those great unknowns. If you have the right beer and you have the right cheese, you’re good. It’s that simple. At the end of the day, there’s very few things left except good food and good alcohol.”

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How does it work?

Brown: “It’s free entry. It’s pay as you go, beer and cheese. The cheese you buy a la carte by the ounce. For the beer, we do flights or full pours.”

What makes a sour beer sour?

Brown: “Usually beers are made in a closed, controlled system. Sours are left open to ferment wildly. ... And this is what makes them so unique and different by region or terroir, like wine. You’re leaving the vats, whether they’re oak or any other kind of wood, ... open to the air to ferment naturally or wildly, by whatever yeast is indigenous to that orchard, to that meadow, that forest, that region.”

There are nine beers on the tap list. Any of note?

Futty: “Abbaye de St. Bon Chien.”

Brown: “It’s a Swiss sour.”

Why mention that first?

Brown: “You have to order it a year in advance because it’s such limited quantities. It’s aggressive, yet balanced and smooth at the same time. It’s high alcohol (11 percent), which is unusual for sours.”

Mandros: “In Bill terminology, it’s a neo-religious experience. It is complex and outstanding.”

Which of these are good entry-level sours?

Futty: “The (Jolly Pumpkin) IO Saison, it has rose petals and hibiscus. It’s a lighter sour. It’s not a palate wrecker. It’s approachable.”

Bill, tell me about the cheeses you’ve selected.

“We’re at nine right now. I have two wild cards that I’m hoping will arrive on time. Never had them before, have no idea, but that’s half of the fun.

“We tried to do a variety of milks: sheep, cow and goat. We try to do a variety of textures. We try to do a variety of strengths. Even though we call this stinky, the thing’s not just to overwhelm you with smell. There’s a whole slew of cheeses that vary in intensity and have deep, complex flavors that go well with sours.

“We have hard. We have soft. We have semisoft. We’ll have cheese from France and Belgium. We will have two from upstate New York that are simply outstanding. I never thought I would say that about domestic, but yes. We have a blue from Spain that’s intense and really good. It looks like the cat drug it in. It’s ugly, and it looks like it was literally buried somewhere and my cheesehound dog dug it up.”

What are you looking for when selecting the cheese?

Mandros: “I try to look for different countries. I love to describe cheese as hearty. Does it have enough body? Sometimes you get cheese, and it’s like a cheap piece of bubble gum. You get a little bit of a burst, and then it dies on you. There’s nothing there. I want cheeses that are robust.

“The other thing we’re looking for is washed rinds. Some of them are washed with alcohol, and it gives the cheese an intensity.”

How do you pair the cheeses with the beer?

Mandros: “We used to spend time trying to mix and match and suggest. But last year, we said let’s go wide open this time. We thought that worked the absolute best.

“This isn’t a test. This isn’t Wernher von Braun rocket science or brain surgery.

“We want this event to be fun and enjoyable. There’s no pretentiousness.

“Eat it, drink it, try it.”