Pairing the Beers of Chimay with Craft Chocolate
By David Nilsen
The Chimay line of Belgian ales are brewed at Scourmont Abbey in bucolic Chimay, Belgium, under the supervision of the Trappist monks who call the abbey home. The monastery was founded in 1850 and has been brewing and selling beer to support the upkeep of the property and the lives of the brothers since 1862. Chimay also produces a line of excellent cheeses, some of them with rinds washed in Chimay beer.
Chimay is a Trappist-certified brewery, a legal designation protected by the International Trappist Order. In order to earn the certification, a brewery has to meet the following qualifications:
The beer must be brewed on the grounds of the abbey.
The brewing operations must be directly overseen by the monks (though they are allowed to have laypersons as employees).
All profits from the sale of the beer must go to supporting the abbey or to the abbey’s charitable causes.
The beer must be of a quality deserving of the Trappist name.
There are currently only 10 Trappist-certified breweries in the world, and half of them are in Belgium, which has a rich monastic brewing tradition. Accordingly, the beer styles most commonly associated with Trappist brewing are all Belgian: Dubbel, Tripel, and Quadrupel. While these styles do roughly scale upward in strength, you can ignore the multipliers—a Dubbel isn’t directly “double” anything, and so on. Belgian brewers aren’t always too worried about sticking to style guidelines, as we’ll see below, but all of these styles share the distinctive character of Belgian ale yeasts, which tend to contribute a lot of their own flavors and aromas to the finished beer—typically gentle fruitiness and baking spice notes.
Pairing with Chocolate
Many Belgian beer styles pair beautifully with craft or bean to bar chocolate, and the beers of the Chimay line exemplify this. Let’s talk about craft chocolate pairings for Chimay’s Trappist ales!
Dorée (gold label)
Dorée is Chimay’s lightest beer, and it has only recently been released here in the U.S. Dorée is a Patersbier (“fathers’ beer”), a relatively low alcohol beer consumed by the monks during their daily meals. This 4.8% ABV example is spiced, and though Chimay does not share the specific spices they include, it’s pretty obvious coriander is the dominant addition, and there seems to be some orange peel in there as well. As both of these spices are commonly used in Belgian Witbier, Dorée is very similar in flavor profile to that style. Dorée has notes of peppery coriander, background orange peel, and gentle pear with some lightly toasty malt flavors.
Dorée is a fairly delicate beer, so it needs a laid-back dance partner on the chocolate side. Caramelized white chocolate provides an easy complementary option, but I opted to scale up just a bit to Manoa Haupia Coconut, a 60% cacao dark milk bar made with coconut. Coriander has a light coconut note to it, and this bar pulls that forward without losing the spice. The soft fruit notes from the Belgian fermentation also harmonize nicely with the tropical coconut, and the silky smooth dark milk chocolate pulls out some of the toasty notes from the malt. For a subtle variation, you could also pair with Manoa’s Mai’a Banana bar of the same percentage.
Première (red label)
Première is one of the most popular and widely available of Chimay’s beers, along with Cinq Cents and Grande Réserve, which we’ll get to in a moment. Première is a Dubbel, a brown Belgian ale of moderate strength and a balance of malt and fermentation flavors. This beer isn’t spiced, so it’s all about those foundational ingredients.
Dubbels find a perfect textural union with dark milk chocolates. The fullness and moderate sweetness of these bars play on the smooth mouthfeel of the beer while pulling forward its caramel and dried fruit flavors. Additionally, bars highlighting alternative sugars such as maple can work well too.
Première weighs in at 7.0% ABV, and has notes of plum and cherry and brown sugar in a dry body with mild bitterness. A pairing with Latitude Dark Milk from Uganda yields silky caramel with flavors of dried dates with milk and honey, with the roasty “chocolate” flavor provides a bookend to keep those sweeter flavor notes in check.
And don't get me started on these velvety textures together...
Cinq Cents (white label)
Cinq Cents was first brewed in 1986 for the 500th anniversary of the town of Chimay, and it proved so popular it became part of the brewery’s permanent lineup. Cinq Cents is a Tripel, a pale Belgian ale style of considerable strength. Despite being quite high in alcohol, Tripels are quite light and drinkable for their strength. This is due largely to the use of Belgian candi sugar during brewing, which ferments out entirely without leaving behind body or weight. This allows a brewer to achieve a high alcohol content without a correspondingly heavy body. This has to be done carefully though so the alcohol flavor doesn’t become harsh.
Tripels shine with bars with spice or sugar flavors that complement their malt and fruity esters without amplifying their bitterness. Milk or dark chocolates in the 50-70% range that features dark sugars or warm but gentle baking spices are ideal, and bars at the lower end of that range with herbal or floral inclusions can work as well, so long as the planty notes aren't overly bitter.
Cinq Cents is 8.0% ABV and has soft pear and young banana notes against a grassy, bracing hop bitterness, with light background spice. I paired it with Moka Origins Lemon Ginger, a 72% cacao dark chocolate made with Ugandan cacao. The lemon, ginger, and pear notes combined to give the impression of a lightly spiced lemon apple tea. The ginger played against the grassy hops without getting harsh, and even tugged forward some of the beer’s fermentation spice.
Cent Cinquante (green label)
Cent Cinquante is the newest of the Chimay beers. It was first brewed in 2012 to celebrate the brewery’s 150th year (“cent cinquante” means “150 years”), and was released more broadly last year. This is a beer that defies easy categorization, and demonstrates the Belgian impulse to brew the beer how the brewer wants and then worry about what it will be called later. This 10.0% ABV beer is blonde in color and is most like Cinq Cents, though there are definite differences.
Cent Cinquante has a little fuller body than its Tripel cousin we just read about, though it shares that beer’s firm hop bitterness. Yeasty notes of banana and pear rest over an earthy spice foundation, though the brewery does not release what spices they use. There is a touch of orange zest on the finish, so perhaps that’s in the mix.
I felt this beer had the bravado to wrestle with a bold bar I’ve had trouble finding many other pairings for. Omnom Lakkris + Sea Salt is a white chocolate bar from Iceland made with licorice root, an ingredient common in Icelandic cuisine. While there are tell-tale black licorice notes to the bar, licorice root has a far rounder flavor than typical black licorice candy, bringing in notes of vanilla and rooibos tea. Paired together, the malt base of the beer absorbed much of the sharpness of the licorice, allowing the secondary (and more pleasant) flavors of licorice root to layer in with the fruit notes of the beer, while the beer’s spice notes were clarified a bit too.
Grande Resérve (blue label)
The most regal and esteemed of the Chimay line, Grande Réserve is a Quadrupel, the strongest of the Belgian ale styles. Beers of this type have historically been brewed as feast beers for special guests or holidays at abbeys, though they are now mostly brewed year-round. Grande Réserve was first brewed in 1954 as a Christmas beer before eventually migrating to the year-round list. Good Quads pull a magic act of simultaneously feeling quite sweet while in reality being fairly dry, and this beer exemplifies this.
Grande Réserve has notes of plum and dried fruits, with a creamy and full perception that belies a relatively dry body. You might pick up flavors of dark, sweet bread, and as the beer ages, you might get more oxidative flavors of tobacco or sherry.
Quadrupels are often excellent candidates for experimenting with single origin dark chocolates due to their complex but gentle flavor profiles and impression of sweetness. Grab some single origins bars and a Quadrupel like Grande Réserve and see what your favorite is!
One bar in particular that dances gracefully with this bold beer is Firetree Philippines Mindanao Island 73%, an earthy, “chocolatey” bar with subtle fruit notes of orange and banana. The pairing yielded the impression of rich brownies made with a fruity chocolate origin. For two complex halves, the whole was luxuriously simple.
Now it’s your turn!
The beers of Chimay are pretty easy to get anywhere in the U.S. If you can’t find them in a bottle shop near you, you can have them shipped to you from Belgian-Style Ales (full disclosure: I periodically lead virtual tasting events for Belgian-Style Ales). Grab some chocolate (Bar & Cocoa is a great source), invite some friends, and start pairing. Let me know what you find!
