Favorite Beer & Chocolate Pairings of 2022
Join me for a look back at my favorite beer and chocolate pairings of 2022!
Beer and chocolate belong together. The vast variety in both beer and chocolate leads to countless delicious and surprising pairings. (I published the Pairing Beer & Chocolate zine this year to highlight how to find these pairings, so order a copy today.) From Doppelbock to Hazy IPA and from white chocolate to dark, here were my favorite chocolate and beer pairings of the year.
Mathead Zungenbrecher Doppelbock with Qantu Maple & Maras Fleur de Sel
Masthead makes some of the best classic lagers around, and their Zurgenbrecher is among the best Doppelbocks I’ve had in a long time. Notes of raisin and light caramel with unspiced sticky bun dough and dark bread dough, but in a dry body with minimal but noticeable bitterness.
While watching the snow fall a couple weeks back, I paired this beer Qantu’s elegant Maple & Maras Fleur de Sel bar. The resulting pairing was like maple drizzled figs on rich, lightly salted dark bread crust. A beautiful pairing.
New Belgium Beltane with Amedei Toscano Blond
New Belgium’s Beltane foeder-aged lager brewed with heather flowers pairs beautifully with Amedei Toscano Blond, a 63% dark chocolate made with peaches and apricots. Together, the gentle florals of the heather with the crisp acidity of the base beer combines with the stone fruits to create more of a winesap apple orchard motif, and I’m instantly in mind more of autumn than spring, walking through a sunny apple orchard. A beautiful pairing.
Branch & Bone Campfire Candle with Nostalgia Guatemala Chivite 70%
Branch & Bone use Violet Sky cacao in all of their chocolate beers, and I had the chance to talk with Brett from Branch & Bone and Hans from Violet Sky back in Episode 10. I recently sat down with Campfire Candle, an Imperial Stout brewed with graham cracker, vanilla, and Guatemalan & Ugandan cacao from Violet Sky, to find a good chocolate pairing. I don’t often pair with high concept beers like this, because it can throw off the existing balance of the adjunct ingredients in the beer (adjuncts are basically inclusions in chocolate), but I had a feeling a bar from one of these origins would work well, and I was right. This paired nicely with a couple different Guatemalan bars, most especially with Nostalgia’s Guatemala Chivite 70% bar. Notes of smoky caramel with gentle acidity curving around a core of dark milk chocolate, but never tipping into being too sweet. A gorgeous pairing.
Chimay Première with Moka Origins Dark Milk Ghana 58%
Chimay Première is one of the best and most widely-available Dubbels in the world, with notes of plum and cherry and brown sugar in a dry body with mild bitterness.
A pairing with Moka Origins 58% Dark Milk bar with Ghana cacao yields silky caramel with gentle fruit notes of sweet grape and dried dates in milk with a touch of nutmeg.
And don't get me started on these velvety textures together...Dubbel and Dark Milk is always a luxurious pairing.
Check out my complete guide to pairing Chimay’s beers with chocolate here.
12 Bones Drowned in Sound with Cleveland Golden Coconut
IPA isn’t a style of beer most people think of for chocolate pairings, and for good reason—the bitterness of many beers in this style is a dealbreaker in almost all cases. However, the juicier, lower-bitterness family of Hazy IPAs can work beautifully with the right chocolate. The fluffier texture, slightly higher sweetness (at least in perception, if not in actual sugar level), more tropical fruit character, lower hop bitterness, and subtle fermentation character can find a beautiful match with many white inclusion bars or low-percentage milk bars.
12 Bones Brewing Drowned in Sound is a fruit basket of tropical and citrus fruits with a touch of pine and dankness (beer code for the smell of mary jane - a plant closely related to hops), with a relatively light body for its 9% strength and low bitterness that increases the sweet perception of those fruit flavors. I paired it with Cleveland Chocolate Golden Coconut, a Peru white chocolate with turmeric, cardamom, and candied ginger. The pairing was, appropriately, golden, with the spices in the bar seasoning the fruit and the bar’s creaminess amplifying the body of the beer. Together, these felt like a spiced, fruity daiquiri that’s just the right amount of sweet.
Burial Hellstar with Map Squirrel Stash
Burial Hellstar is a dark lager (elements of Schwarzbier and Munich Dunkel) with notes of light cola-like caramel, black coffee, and a touch of toasty bread with a light body and low but adequate bitterness. I paired this recently with Map’s Squirrel Stash, a white chocolate bar made with hazelnuts and seasalt, and the union was simple but delightful, like hazelnut brittle with touches of coffee. The flavors and textures were light without being thin. An excellent early spring pairing.
Noble Beast Shucks! Oyster Stout with Seligo Smoked Black Pepper 70%
Noble Beast Shucks is an Oyster Stout made with smoked Maine oysters and sea salt. The aroma offers light, dry roast, a hint of sea air, and the perception of creaminess to come. The flavor has lovely gentle dry roast with the slightest hint of that sea air funk. A touch of dry smoke emerges, along with a twang of salt.
To pick a chocolate pairing for this beer, I looked to culinary flavors and went with Seligo’s 70% Smoked Black Pepper chocolate cubes. These unrefined chocolate cubes are gritty with a green, pungent, freshly ground peppercorn character highlighted by herbal smoke.
Together, the pairing was redolent of seaside greenery, salty air, a driftwood campfire. I had the image of a quayside hut with old wood, a fire, moss, and sea air. The beer’s roast and the underlying chocolate were vehicles for these living aromas and images.
Spencer Monks’ Reserve Ale with Manoa O’ahu Usland Waimanalo 70%
Belgian Quads often have the flexibility and range of flavors to find good companions with single origin dark chocolates in the 70-80% cacao range, particularly fruitier origins, which can typically be a tricky chocolate type for many beer styles. Spencer Monks’ Reserve Quad (r.i.p.) for example worked beautifully with Manoa O’ahu Island Waimanalo, yielding flavors of cinnamon brownies with sweet concord grape and blackberry jam, with a slightly bitter finish.
Branch & Bone L’Internationale with Somerville Chuncho 75% with Chaga
Branch & Bone L’Internationale filled the room with notes of musty attic funk and bready dark malt with flits of apricot and cherry as soon as I opened the bottle. It poured a deep red orange with quite good clarity, and the acidity was more restrained than I expected. Dry as could be, there was a gentle hay/grass bitterness.
I had a hunch the funkiness of the beer would pull forward the earthiness of a mushroom bar, and that definitely proved the case with Somerville Chuncho with Chaga. Sweet peach melding into chanterelle mushroom with some underlying earthiness made this a gorgeous combination, and a great example of a pairing bringing forward new flavors that weren’t present otherwise.
Wolf’s Ridge Dire Wolf Imperial Stout with Miette et Chocolat Alpine Chocolate 60%
This classic Imperial Stout is beautifully structured, with smooth, creamy, thick chocolate roast climbing an ascendingly more aggressive roast to luscious green pine bitterness from the hops. Wolf’s Ridge releases a lot of doctored variants of their workhorse Imperial Stout, but the base version remains my favorite.
Miette et Chocolat Alpine Chocolate 60% is made with conifer needles foraged during Chef Gonzo’s wilderness runs, and I paired it with this beer to pull forward to pineyness of the hops. Together this pairing was chocolate-covered pine needles. So great.
St. Bernardus Wit with Jcoco Cayenne Veracruz Orange
Witbier with a spiced white chocolate was one of the first pairings that ever made me realize what beer and chocolate could do together. St. Bernardus Wit with Jcoco Cayenne Veracruz Orange overs a wave of candied orange with a creamy base washed over with gentle heat. Simple and delightful.
Pretentious Indigenous with Cleveland Chocolate Avocado White Chocolate
Pretentious Indigenous is made with Ohio-grown and malted corn and has a yeasty bread dough aroma with subtle fruit and a stony acidity. Paired with Cleveland’s unique Avocado White Chocolate you get bright, tart lime with dry graininess behind. Dry, bright, and sunny.
Branch & Bone Cinnamon & Coconut Feral Dawn with Baianí Caipirinha
During a pairing I led at Branch & Bone in November we paired four chocolates with four rare, barrel-aged beers from the Branch & Bone cellar. The most popular was a one-off treatment of their Feral Dawn anniversary bourbon barrel-aged Imperial Stout made with cinnamon and coconut. Leaning into those tropical flavors, I paired it with Baianí’s Caipirinha made with cachaça and lime zest. This was a wave of indulgent, sweet tropical flavors melting together.
Lady Justice Have You Heard the Buzz Bock with Omnom Black n’ Burnt Barley
I got to lead a beer and chocolate pairing with my friends at Lady Justice Brewing in Denver in October, and the most popular pairing was between their Have You Hear the Buzz Bock made peach vanilla black tea with barrel-aged honey malt and Omnom’s Black n’ Burnt Barley bar. The almost-burnt caramel notes of the bar pulled forward the peach and vanilla of the beer and snapped them into focus.
Upland Prim with Somerville Hickory Smoked Chocolate 65%
Upland Prim is a barrel-aged sour brewed with cardamom and plums, and it’s a spectacular exploration of flavor. Paired with Somerville’s Hickory Smoked 65% dark chocolate made with Dominican Oko Caribe cacao, the character of a smoked plum cocktail emerged, with a balance of sweet, tart, and savory base notes with gentle spice.
Lindeman’s Oude Geuze Cuvée René with Ritua The Après Bar
Lindeman’s Oude Gueuze Cuvée Rene is the product of spontaneous fermentation, years of aging, and careful blending, and the finished beer is assertively sour and quite funky—orchard fruit shares space with earthy and herbal funk and even a whiff of diesel. Gueuzes are the bold cheeses of the beer world—the flavors don’t always sound appealing on paper, but in context can be exciting and delightful.
On the other side, Ritual’s Après bar is a dark chocolate infused with dried raspberries and made with cacao nibs soaked in champagne. It’s classy but flirty, luxurious but bright. It’s the opposite of challenging.
Together, these unlikely dance partners find unexpected grace. The acidity of the beer brings the raspberry into blooming life, while the chocolate itself absorbs and tames the beer’s funk, allowing its underlying fruit notes to tease out the timid champagne in the bar. What’s left is a surprisingly simple and refined combination with the bolder beer snapping the bar’s concept into focus: clear notes of sparkling white wine bolstered by gentle orchard fruit and spangled with bright raspberry. A fantastic pairing.