Nostalgia Chocolate’s Hop Aged 70% Bar
By David Nilsen
Nostalgia. When I talk to chocolate makers or other chocolate professionals about the tasting experience, about what drew them to chocolate and what happens when they close their eyes with a piece of chocolate on their tongues, that’s the one word that comes from their lips more often than any other. Flavor can pluck the strings of our memory to make our hearts and minds play songs our fingers never could.
Nostalgia Chocolate was founded on the idea that flavor—delivered through bean to bar chocolate—can open rooms of memory and throw on the lights. Co-founder and chocolate maker Tyler Cagwin wanders these rooms with a range of single origin and inclusion chocolate bars, but he loves beer as well, and he’s used locally grown hops in a limited edition bar that brings these passions together.
Nostalgia’s Hop Aged 70% Dark Chocolate bar with cacao from Kokoa Kamili in Tanzania is pretty remarkable, particularly if you already know and love the aroma of hops. It smells like orange creamsicle with green tea and fresh, green hops layered over the underlying chocolate. The flavor keeps that basic shape but diversifies with orange zest, lemon pepper, and berry notes from the cacao. There’s a subtle underlying acidity, some green bitterness from the hops, and a bit of earthiness. It’s a bit like biting into a chocolate-covered orange slice in the middle of a hop field.
And on that note, let’s talk about the hop farm that provided the whole cone hops infusing this unique bar.
New York state was once the largest grower of hops in the country. The combination of Prohibition and a fungus called downy mildew largely knocked off the New York hops industry in the early twentieth century, and hops growing shifted to the Pacific Northwest to take advantage of better growing conditions. In recent years however, hops have returned in a big way to the Empire State, and one great example is The Bineyard run by Chad Meigs in Cazenovia, just outside Syracuse.
Read my explainer All About Hops here.
Chad founded The Bineyard hop farm in 2010. He had started growing hops as a hobby with just four plants, growing Galena and Perle hops against his barn. He now has 4,000 hop plants on 4 acres, with Cascade, Chinook, Comet, Crystal, Galena, and Santiam varietals, and he also processes hops for other small farms. He’s worked with about 50 of the 450 craft breweries in New York, but so far, he’s only worked with one craft chocolate maker.
“We ended up having Tyler over to the farm and we did some sensory with some of our hops,” explains Chad. “He had an idea of what he wanted to put into the chocolate, but he didn't know a lot about our various varieties. We were opening up bales, sticking our faces down on the hops, doing a little rub-and-sniff.”
Tyler knew he wanted a variety with citrusy notes to contrast with the cherry flavors from the Tanzanian cacao he had in mind. Fortunately, several classic American hops showcase bold citrus aromas.
“We smelled a few different kinds,” he recalls. “Chad felt that the Chinook hops would be the best ones to try. They’re piney with a little fruity bitterness, but a tinge of sweetness.”
The challenge was getting that flavor infused into the bars. Tyler tried using ground-up hop pellets in the chocolate, but that led to an overly strong and bitter combination. He ultimately decided to take advantage of chocolate’s tendency to absorb aromas from its environment. He filled plastic bins with hops and stored the bars inside.
“I would put a layer of the hops down and then a layer of bars, layer of hops, layer of bars, and did that until I could fill up the airtight bins,” he explains. “I just shut them up and didn't open them for about three weeks. That's why we always encourage people to not put chocolate in a refrigerator or spice cabinet because the chocolate is very absorbent of other flavors. As this proves, we now have a chocolate bar with notes of wonderful cherry and citrus and cream that tastes like there's an IPA mixed into it.”
Chinook is a classic American hop variety that became popular in the 1980s with the rise of hoppy craft beer styles. Chad says the variety has done well in the New York climate. Its local success proved fortuitous for Tyler’s bar.
“They're very common here. The characteristics that we were both getting out was a piney citrus, and that's what he was looking for,” says Chad. “I think the pine really blended well with the chocolate.”
Read about Tyler’s collabs with craft breweries here.
Tyler agrees, crafting the perfect description for this bar that brings together such different flavor worlds.
“You get that IPA sweetness and bitterness, all of the mystery that you get with each different IPA you taste,” he observes. “You get that in the first notes of the hops, and then as the chocolate melts in your mouth and the flavor of the chocolate really starts to shine, it almost kind of hugs the hops.”
One of the things I find fascinating about the tasting experience is that memory and nostalgia can begin layering upon themselves. A good beer or a chocolate will make me think of an earlier experience in my life, but tasting that same beer or chocolate later might make me remember the first time I had that beer or chocolate. Those experiences build on themselves, and the nostalgia compounds, reaching far back to a memory of childhood or travel, but also reaching into recent history to remind me of a previous interaction with this creation. What we eat and drink is never just about the food or liquid in front of us. It’s about stories—those of the growers and makers, as well as our own. Check out this bar from Nostalgia Chocolate, taste the stories it has to tell, and remember and share your own.
You can listen to my full interview with Tyler and Chad here: