The Chocolate Conspiracy’s Beer-Infused Chocolate Bars

By David Nilsen

From Schwarzbiers to Double IPAs, The Chocolate Conspiracy in Salt Lake City is bringing variety and creativity to the idea of beer-infused chocolate. 

Creating The Chocolate Conspiracy’s best-selling Black Lager dark chocolate bar combined two things founder AJ Wentworth loves: drinking beer and making chocolate. The bar was one of the first beer-infused craft chocolate bars on the market when it debuted several years back, and AJ had to figure out for himself how to combine the two artisan products. He used a legendary Utah craft beer in Uinta Baba Black Lager, one of his favorites. 

“The main idea came from the fact that most chocolate makers used bourbon, whiskey, or wine for their chocolate,” he explains. “I hadn't seen any beer-infused bars on the market and wanted to figure out how to do it and fill that niche.”

The beer he chose is a 5% ABV Schwarzbier from Uinta Brewing in Salt Lake City. Schwarzbier is a dark German lager style, and Baba was first brewed as a collaboration between Uinta and a local homebrewer. It was intended to be a one-time brew. The beer ended up medaling in the Pro-Am competition at the Great American Beer Festival though, and then-Uinta brewmaster Kevin Ely (now at Ohio’s Wooly Pig Farm Brewery) realized the brewery had a potential hit. He tweaked the recipe a bit, and one of Uinta’s flagship beers was born. 

Crafting a Process

Baba Black Lager’s gentle notes of coffee and chocolate offer an easy complement to the flavors of dark chocolate, but AJ had to figure out how to incorporate them in the chocolate-making process. Liquids can’t be used because they’ll cause the chocolate to “seize” or clump up, so AJ landed on a more patient approach.

“We actually soak the cacao nibs in beer for about nine days, stirring and rotating the nibs every two days,” he says, explaining that the specifics of beer-to-cacao volumes and timing for the soaks and rotations took a lot of trial and error. “After the soak, we dehydrate the beans, then continue the chocolate making process.” 

With the popularity of the Black Lager bar, AJ has decided to experiment with other beer styles. He’s found the flavors of chocolate and the gentle sweetness of the honey he uses to sweeten his bars round the edges off many beer styles and pulls forward their flavors.

A Range of Beer Styles

The Chocolate Conspiracy’s latest beer bars use a Double IPA and a Coffee Cream Ale to explore the possibilities between beer and chocolate. 

The Double IPA bar was made in collaboration with Level Crossing Brewing in South Salt Lake. Brewer Chris Detrick has been using AJ’s cacao nibs in his homebrewing for over a decade, and used his Peruvian nibs in Level Crossing Red Sea Rift, an Imperial Stout that also used locally roasted coffee. When AJ wanted to play with IPA flavors in a bar, he knew where to turn. 

The Double IPA bar is a 75% dark chocolate made by soaking cacao nibs in Level Crossing Soul Rex Double IPA. The beer is brewed with Ekuanot, Azacca, and Strata hops, which provide intense tropical fruit character to the beer. Those flavors subtly lift from the underlying chocolate to provide accent notes, much like the jazz notes emerging from the T-Rex playing an upright bass on the bar’s label.

For the Coffee Cream Ale bar, AJ uses the same 75% dark chocolate base to support graceful coffee notes in the eponymous beer from Kiitos Brewing in Salt Lake City. The beer is a pale, light-bodied Cream Ale brewed with coffee, and those coffee notes gentle layer into the flavors of the chocolate, providing a softer coffee presentation than many bars that use coffee directly. 

Check out other beer-infused chocolate stories here.

Future Connections

The partnership between The Chocolate Conspiracy and Kiitos Brewing goes beyond this one bar. AJ makes Kiitos their own set of bars that they sell exclusively. He’s just getting started with his quest to bring beer and chocolate together.

“We already have four or five more beer bars in the works, all with Utah breweries,” he says. “Three are already done and perfected.  We are just fine tuning the packaging and want to release them next year.  Our goal is to make a cute box that looks like a beer bottle box and holds six beer bars, like a little beer bar 6-pack.”

He’s also talking with Harmons, a local grocery store chain, to make them their own branded beer bar. They already partner with Red Rock Brewing on an exclusive beer.

I’ll be talking more with AJ soon for an episode of Bean to Barstool where we’ll dig into all of these beer bars, so make sure to subscribe on your favorite podcast platform. 

You can purchase these bars and others on The Chocolate Conspiracy website.