French Broad, Burial, & a Beautiful Beer & Chocolate Friendship

By David Nilsen

The creative folks at French Broad Chocolates and Burial Beer in Asheville, North Carolina, enjoy an ongoing creative partnership that has led to some of the most interesting (and tasty) beer chocolates and chocolate beers in the country. You can listen to Episode 03 of Bean to Barstool to hear deep dive interviews with Jael Skeffington of French Broad and Jess Reiser of Burial Beer.

Burial is well-known for their elegant and indulgent Imperial Stouts and other beers brewed with ethically-sourced cacao from French Broad.

You can read more about this partnership and Burial’s use of cacao in an article I recently wrote for Good Beer Hunting. 

This isn’t a one-way collaboration, however. For the last two years for Father’s Day, French Broad has worked with Burial on a collection of four bonbon bars infused with different Burial beers. 

The first is an IPA Caramel & Peanut bar. The filling is peanut butter nougat and IPA-infused caramel with crunchy peanuts, coated in milk chocolate and sprinkled with sea salt. The bar was made using Burial’s Rationality Shall Run Its Course IPA, a hazy IPA brewed with a range of hops that together express juicy tropical fruit aromas and flavors with some supporting citrus. The beer is also brewed with lactose, which imparts a subtle impression of sweetness and creaminess, amplifying the tropical fruit perception. 

The Fig & Almond Stout bar with Coconut and Almond features Imperial Stout-infused ganache layered with coconut cream and whole almond, wrapped in dark chocolate. The Burial stout used for this was Faint Glimmer of Hope Notwithstanding, an imperial stout brewed with house-roasted and caramelized Turkish figs, toasted almonds, whole Madagascar vanilla beans, sea salt, and maple syrup.

For the Imperial Stout, Caramel, and Peanut bar, French Broad is cagier with which Burial beer they used, saying only that it’s “a Burial Imperial Stout.” This bar features Imperial Stout chocolate ganache and Imperial Stout caramel studded with salted peanuts and wrapped in dark chocolate. 

Finally, the Coffee Porter & Hazelnut Crunch bar is made with Burial Metallic Vessels Black Lager brewed with coffee beans from Onyx Coffee Labs (if you want to hear an interview with the cool folks at Onyx, listen to Episode 13). The bar is filled with the coffee beer ganache, crunchy hazelnut, and milk chocolate and wrapped in milk chocolate.

To hear tasting notes and more details behind these bonbon bars and the beers used in them, listen to Episode 23 of Bean to Barstool!