A quick digest on Bean to Barstool covering the latest craft chocolate bars using beer, wine, spirits, or cider!

In this peek at taprooms and travel through the eyes of a touring musician, artist Anna p.s. shares what she wants brewery taprooms to know about live music.

What does the word "local" have to do with being "craft"? Does it matter where beer and chocolate are made, and where their ingredients come from?

Belgian abbey ale styles like Dubbel, Tripel, and Quadrupel can pair really well with craft chocolate with just a little bit of planning. David Nilsen, author of Pairing Beer & Chocolate, walks through how to pair Belgian abbey ales with chocolate in this blog post.

If you’re a chocolate fan curious about beer, here are a few things craft chocolate fans are often surprised to learn about craft beer, from a professional beer writer.

Porter and Stout styles such as American Porter, English Porter, Oatmeal Stout, Milk Stout, Irish Stout, and some American Stouts can pair well with a wide range of craft chocolate bars, making them good to have on hand for impromptu pairings. The trick here is transcending the good pairings to find the great ones.

Ale Sharpton tells the story of the label art for City Built Brewing in Grand Rapids, talking with founder Edwin Collazo and artist Aaron McCall.

Kitu Chocolate Artesenal de Ecuador in Quito, Ecuador, makes bean to bar craft chocolate using Ecuadorian cacao and unique Andean ingredients like Ishpingo cinnamon flower and Togte walnuts.

Fruited sour ales can pair wonderfully with craft chocolate. The fruit flavors and bright tartness of these beers can find harmony in many inclusion bars. Here David Nilsen breaks down how to pair craft chocolate with fruited Goses, Berliner Weisses, Wild Ales, and more.

Beer writer David Nilsen reflects on a visit to Denver’s erstwhile Wah Gwaan Brewing, and the loss of great breweries during the current craft beer downturn.

Aeronaut Brewing recently brewed a Baltic Porter—a strong lager style that has some of the roasted malt flavors of Stouts and other Porters, but without the intensity—and aged it in bourbon and rye whiskey barrels for a year. After that, they split the batch into two casks, and dosed them separately with cacao and vanilla from Somerville Chocolate.

What is yeast, what happens during beer fermentation, and what tastes, flavors, and aromas does it contribute? Advanced Cicerone David Nilsen explains the basics of yeast and beer fermentation.

Non-alcoholic craft beer can pair very well with craft chocolate, but it comes with both limitations and challenges. In this guide, Pairing Beer & Chocolate author David Nilsen gives guidance for pairing NA beer with craft chocolate.

Hoppiness is an over used word in beer. Hops impact more than one sensory aspect of beer, and perhaps the best way to demonstrate this is with an unusual companion: two craft chocolate bars.

Beer writer and Advanced Cicerone David Nilsen recommends non-alcoholic craft beers to try. He lists recommended NA breweries, individual NA beers by style (the best non-alcoholic IPAs, for example), and things to keep in mind when trying NA beer.

Dark milk chocolate brings together to robust cacao flavors of dark chocolate with the slightly creamy, sweeter, and more approachable rewards of milk chocolate. They pair beautifully with several beer styles. Their creamy mouthfeel, medium intensity, and lack of sharp flavor edges makes them fairly versatile for beer pairing. Let’s look at some beer styles to pair with dark milk chocolate.

Beer people don’t talk about beer the same way chocolate people talk about chocolate. What can both learn from each other when it comes to helping consumers make decisions and know what to expect when they’re making a purchase?

Pairing beer and chocolate isn’t always simple or straight-forward, so having types of beer in the fridge that can work with a variety of chocolate bars can be really helpful, especially when you’re starting out and just playing with pairing combinations. These are the styles we recommend to have on hand for home pairings, particularly if you’re just having some friends over and want to try some beers and chocolates together without too much strategy and worry. Between these, you'll be able to find a dance partner for the majority of bean to bar chocolate bars. 

IPAs are the most popular styles of beer in modern craft beer, but they aren’t the first beers most people think of for pairing with chocolate. While IPAs can pair beautifully with craft chocolate, it’s not an effortless pairing. IPAs present challenges that can lead to chocolate pairings with harsh, bitter, astringent, and/or clashing flavor qualities. In this guide, we’ll look at some common styles of IPA, discuss their sensory attributes, and discuss chocolates to seek out and chocolates to avoid when planning pairings with each.

Beer and chocolate can both be made with a wide range of added flavor ingredients, including coffee, spices, and fruits. Craft beer and craft chocolate use different words to refer to these additions, but they have many of them in common. Here’s what’s what with adjuncts and inclusions.