This Valentine’s Day you could go with the heavily marketed red wine or champagne with a box of chocolates approach, or you could delight in a match more made in heaven!
Wine can offer you fruit with your chocolate, but beer is basically carbonated, malted bread. Bread and chocolate are a perfect match!
As you go from sweet milk chocolate to dark and bitter expressions, bread can follow along! It can be toasted, caramelized, or smoked. All sorts of spices and fruits can be brewed into beer from raspberry to vanilla beans and coffee! The amazing possibilities with chocolate are endless..
Beers That Pair With White Chocolate
- Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout (UK) $4 an 18oz
- Firestone Velvet Merlin Nitro Milk Stout (USA) $10 for 6pk
- La Fin Du Monde Tripel (Canada) $12 a 4pk
- Lindeman’s Framboise (Raspberry) Lambic (BE) $12 a 750ml
White Chocolate And Beer
We start with the lightest, sweetest, and least bitter of the bunch. This is because it’s made with cocoa butter and not cocoa solids. It’s creamier, more buttery, and more vanilla forward.
This makes it a perfect partner with slightly bitter beers like a Milk or Oatmeal stout to create the “bittersweet”combo. Like a dash of whipped cream in a mocha latte!
Fruity beers like Belgian Tripels and sweeter style fruit lambics can be knockouts. The mandarin citrus and bubblegum of a Belgian Tripel meet the vanilla of the white chocolate and create a light orange creamsicle mix!
Sweet raspberry Lambic playing around with white chocolate create raspberry pie or raspberry Danish like “Entenmann’s Raspberry Twist.” A staple in my formative years. Only a few Lambic are tart and sweet so go with Lindeman’s so that you avoid a super sour Lambic.
Milk Chocolate
This next, most creamy and sweet, of the chocolates is great with a slightly bitter or caramelized beer. The stouts mentioned before will work but Porters and Doppelbocks are great to play with now. They have a nice dark malt and sticky caramel backbone that melts into the milk chocolate.
My favorite pairing for milk chocolate is a Belgian Dark Strong beer. These slightly sweet Belgian beauties have raisin, fig and date notes that when married with milk chocolate remind me of “Raisinets,” “Chunky, or Cadbury’s “Fruit and Nut” bar.
Beers For Milk Chocolate
- Fullers London Porter (UK)
- Weihenstephaner “Korbinian” Doppelbock (GE) $4 an 18oz
- St. Bernardus Abt 12 Belgian Dark Strong (BE) $13 a 750ml
- Chimay Blue Belgian Dark Strong $13 a 750ml
- Lindeman’s Framboise (Raspberry) Lambic (BE) $11 a 750ml
Sea Salted Chocolate Covered Caramels
Accentuating the caramel element and offering a touch of bitterness will really set off the sweet and salty chocolate! Try a British ESB, an American Steam beer.
If you’re feeling adventurous, go for a pale ale and see how sweet and bitter can truly play!
Beers For Salted Choc. Covered Caramels
- Fuller’s ESB (UK) $10 a 4pk
- Anchor Brewing Steam Beer $10 a 6pk
- Sierra Nevada Pale Ale (USA) $10 a 6pk
- Deschutes Mirror Pond Ale (USA) $12 a 6pk
- Samuel Smith’s Oatmeal Stout (UK) $4 an 18oz
Chocolate Covered Nuts
Simple, delicious, and perfect with a Nut Brown Ale. You may know of Newcastle, a classic introduction to the nutty ale. It’s good to move on from there though to other remarkable Nut Brown Ale’s. Samuel Smith’s is the gold standard.
Beers For Chocolate Covered Nuts
- Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown Ale (The OG) (UK) $4 an 18oz
- Alesmith’s Nut Brown Ale (USA) $12 a 6pk
- Avery Brewing “Ellie’s” Brown Ale $12 a 6pk
Brownies And Dark Chocolate Flourless Cake
Intensity and depth increase as we head into rich, chewy brownie and cake with bits of dark bitterness. Now it’s time to move from the Stout up to an Imperial Stout.
The Belgian Strong Ale still works wonders here as Belgian beer has more carbonation in their styles than any other country. This helps to cut through the richness and clear the palate!
It’s nice to keep that Lindeman’s Raspberry Lambic around from earlier. It’s perfect with chocolate cake because it has gobs of raspberry and that high Belgian carbonation to cut the cake!
Beers For Brownies And Dark Chocolate Flourless Cake
- Samuel Smith’s Imperial Stout (UK) $4 an 18oz
- Guinness Export/ Tropical Stout (Yellow Label) (IE) $16 a 4pk
- St. Bernardus Abt 12 Belgian Dark Strong Ale $13
- Lindeman’s Framboise Lambic (BE) $11
I do hope you have a beer and chocolate epiphany on this upcoming day of love. The good news is that world class beer is far less expensive than champagne and decent red wine. This means you can revisit the magic more often on that day or any other random days that you want. Happy Exploring! Cheers!
