Pairing Non-Alcoholic Craft Beer with Chocolate
by David Nilsen
As discussed in a recent post, there is a lot of good non-alcoholic (NA) craft beer available now. This segment is a little more challenging to pair with craft chocolate, but it is still possible to find enjoyable pairings. Let’s talk about some of those challenges.
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NA beers tend to be quite light-bodied. This lack of body doesn’t give much cushion for chocolates with sharp edges and intense flavors, and these pairings can come across as thin.
Closely related (or just stated differently, really), NA beers are usually quite dry-bodied. This lack of sweetness doesn’t offer much of a bridge to pull in chocolate flavors and help sell “sweet” aromas, as sweetness can help pave over any uneven joints in typical pairings.
As explained in the NA beer guide mentioned above, the range of beer styles that translate well to the NA space limits the possible options for pairings.
It might sound obvious, but the beer styles that most succeed in NA versions are the same ones that most lend themselves to chocolate pairing. This isn’t just because the best beers = the best pairings, but because the same pairings challenges listed above also apply to the beers themselves. Overcoming thin bodies, as well as a lack of residual sweetness that fails to sell the beer’s aromas to our senses, will doom a beer and the pairing you hoped to use it for.
Here are the NA styles that tend to work best for pairing with chocolate:
Porters & Stouts. The roastiness of these styles—even if its dialed back from the standard versions—dovetails naturally with chocolate, so even if the pairing is lighter than expected, the flavors can still line up.
Fruited Sours. The acidity and sweetness of the fruit additions in these beers not only helps cover over what’s missing (alcohol), but also provide much more forgiving bridges with chocolate flavors.
Hazy IPAs. The bag of tricks brewers use to simulate fluffy mouthfeels for these beers helps to mask their lightness and dryness, and the hop flavors can often find something to grab onto on the chocolate side.
Amber Lagers. This one is a bit tricky, and the one exception to “what works well as an NA beer probably pairs well as an NA beer.” NA amber lager styles are sometimes dogged by a wort-like flavor—the flavor of unfermented beer, or sweet barley malt. On its own, this isn’t an unpleasant flavor, but to a beer fan, it signals something isn’t quite right. When pairing with chocolate, this can ironically actually help, as the combination of chocolate and malt is a familiar and beloved combination (malted milk balls, chocolate malt shakes, etc).
Here are some specific recommendations to check out:
Porter/Stout
My chocolate pairing guidance for non-alcoholic Porters & Stouts is more or less the same as what I recommend for their standard-strength cousins, though the lighter bodies of the NA versions require scaling things back just a bit. Where a 65% dark bar with classic “chocolate” flavors or sweet-leaning inclusions would work great with a 5.5% Oatmeal Stout, we’re going to look more at the 45-55% range for an NA.
Athletic All Out with Jcoco Mango Plantain 47% is a good example. The mildly roasty Stout with the sweet milk chocolate with subtly sweet and nutty/fruity plantain gives notes of malted milk balls and even a touch of cherry cola.
Amber Lagers
Athletic Cerveza Atletica (sorry for doubling up on one brewery, but they’re leading the industry for a reason) is an NA Mexican-style Lager that shows some of the trademark wort-and-sun-tea flavor common to NA beers of this style, but those flavors are pleasant on their own, even if they deviate from the standard style. I’ve found beers like this to pair well with chocolates made with beer ingredients. A great example is found in pairing Atletica with Somerville Beer Dark Chocolate.
You can learn more about this bar here, but it shows both hop and malt character in a moderately sweet dark chocolate body. The alpha acids in the chocolate (yep, you read that right) are cushioned by the subtle sweetness of both the bar and the beer and actually help sell the beer’s hop character a bit, which the combination of unfermented malt and chocolate is a familiar and enjoyable combo.
Fruited Sours
Fruited Sours—particularly more boldly fruited examples—come the closest of any NA beers to tracking with the standard versions’ pairing guidance.
Untitled Art in Wisconsin makes several excellent examples, including this Dragonfruit Mango version. It made a great companion for Kaitxo’s Dark Milk & Earl Grey Tea 50% bar made with Peruvian cacao. The tea and fruit together came through as spiced peach and mango, with bits of thyme, clove, and green tea in the mix.
Hazy IPAs
The same things that make Hazy IPAs so surprisingly eager to pair with chocolate are at work in NA versions, albeit with a more limited range. Soft bodies, slightly sweetness, and bright hop aromas together allow many examples to work quite nicely with white chocolates with fruit, floral, or tea inclusions. However, where standard Hazies an often pair with milk and even dark chocolates with these same inclusions, NAs generally will not have the heft for these.
Sam Adams Just the Haze has a lovely peach and lightly sweet white bread profile, and pairs well with bars such as Just by Melt Down Kaju Katli 34%, a white chocolate made with cashews, rose powder, cardamon, and saffron, pairs excellently here. Together, they create the impression of floral and tea-spiced peaches on pale toast.
In summary, NA craft beer can pair well with craft chocolate, but there are more limitations and less wiggle room than with standard strength beers. I’d love to hear your own experiments with pairing NA beer and chocolate!
You can find much, much more pairing guidance in my new book Pairing Beer & Chocolate available here: