5 Chocolate Beers for Mother’s Day!
By David Nilsen
Let’s be honest—what mom really wants for Mother’s Day is a drink. And if that drink includes chocolate, all the better! More and more craft breweries are working with ethically-sourced cacao to create delicious and nuanced chocolate beers. Here are five great chocolate beers to enjoy with mom this Mother’s Day.
Casa Humilde Tempestad
Chicago’s Casa Humilde Cerveceria founded by brothers Jose and Javier Lopez uses ingredients and flavors from Mexican culinary tradition to infuse their culture into their beer. Tempestad is an Imperial Stout brewed with Mexican vanilla and Ecuadorian cacao from TCHO. Tempestad is an indulgent but precise composition, with flavors of chocolate-covered cherry and dark fudgsicle and just the right balance of bitterness. The cacao and vanilla accent the roasted malt of the beer without taking over, allowing the base beer and the flavor ingredients to work together.
(You can hear more about this beer and Casa Humilde in episode 06 here!)
2. Humble Forager Nomads Paradise
The Humble Forager Brewery folks have roots in Minnesota and Wisconsin, and often combine the comforting flavors of the upper Midwest with the bright flavors of the tropics. Nomads Paradise is brewed with toasted coconut, vanilla, roasted almonds, and Ugandan cacao from Chocolate Alchemy. It’s like a boozy liquid Almond Joy!
(You can hear more about this beer and Humble Forager in episode 20 here!)
3. New Belgium Fernandito
Lauren Woods Limbach at New Belgium Brewing in Fort Collins, Colorado, is one of the country’s best brewers and blenders of sour, wood-aged beer, and she’s taken a liking to chocolate as well. This sour brown ale was brewed with Ghana cacao husks from neighboring Nuance Chocolate and then aged in bourbon and fernet barrels from Leopold Bros. Distillery. It’s a curious and complex sip, with earthiness, herbal tartness, and elegant wood and spirits undertones.
4. Aeronaut CocoaSutra
Aeronaut Brewing in Somerville, Massachusetts, brew this Milk Stout with Colombian cacao nibs, and they don’t have to go far to get them—Somerville Chocolate operates out of the same building. This one is rich, luscious, and creamy, but the fun doesn’t stop with the beer. Eric Parkes of Somerville Chocolate takes the beans from the beer, dries them, and makes a dark chocolate bar from them that bears the unmistakable influence of the beer.
5. Brazos Valley Slippin’ Into Darkness
Brazos Valley Brewing in Texas brews Slippin’ Into Darkness Jet Fuel coffee from Independence Coffee Company and cacao from Cholaca, a Colorado company that ethically sources cacao from several South American countries and emulsifies them into a liquid for brewing. Along with the expected roast and robust coffee aromas, this beer surprises with a subtle but uncanny aroma of strawberries and cream, likely from some alchemy of the coffee acidity, cacao, and fermentation. On the tongue the beer blooms with spicy coffee tinged with green cardamom and acidic dark chocolate in a full and creamy body. A slowly crescendoing bitterness to keeps all that richness in check.