In the carefree days of my callow youth, your intrepid liquor reporter was perfectly content to munch on chicken wings while chugging a Molson Dry straight from the bottle.
With the fullness of time, and the gradual yet persistent increase in beer snobbery as I have aged, those halcyon days of youth are now behind me.
Indeed, pairing a beer with food is now a matter of import, not only to enhance and complement the flavors of both the food and the beer, but also to impress your drinking companion with your dignified and refined tastes.
While I have not given up pairing beer with traditional pub fare like nachos and chicken wings, I sometimes try to impress the ladies by pairing beer with chocolate.
Faithful readers may have noticed your humble narrator describing certain types of beers as having overtones of cocoa or burnt chocolate, which is a happy coincidence that occurs when the brewer roasts the barley malts prior to fermentation.
Since roasted barley malts are most commonly found in darker beers like porters and stouts, you will often find hints of chocolate flavours on the nose or palate of such brews, which makes them great candidates for pairing with a good quality chocolate.
Guinness is the world’s most popular stout beer, and pairs well with milk chocolate. Be sure to avoid cheap drugstore chocolate bars with a waxy sheen, as the flavours never really get to mix on your palate. I like to pair Guinness (and other stouts) with a few nice milk chocolate squares from Papa Chocolat, the latest chocolate retail store from Calgary’s own Bernard Callebaut.
English Brown Ales like Big Rock Traditional Ale tend to have flavours of caramel from the malting process, so they pair well with caramel or nutty chocolates. The Pot o’ Gold caramels that everyone receives around Christmas are a perfect pairing this beer style.
Hoppy beers like India Pale Ales go well with salted or chili pepper chocolates, as the intense bitterness of the beer is complemented by the spicy flavour of the chocolate. I like to pair the Wild Rose IPA with a Lindt chili dark chocolate bar.
Sadly, mild beers like Pilsners and Pale Ales have insufficient structure to stand up to a rich and creamy chocolate, so you won’t be very happy if you try pairing your chocolate with a Bud Light.
If you would like to try a pairing at home, look in the sweets aisle of your local supermarket. There is generally a varied selection of Lindt chocolate bars with different levels of cocoa. More cocoa means less sugar, which means more bitterness.
Get yourself 3 or 4 different types of chocolate, and 3 or 4 bottles of beer. This might be a good time to invite a few friends over, or at least a special someone you are trying to impress. Try not to nibble too much of the chocolate before you crack open the beers.
You will want all your chocolates to be at room temperature when you begin, or the flavor compounds released by the cocoa butter will be too cold to melt in your mouth.
Break off a small piece of chocolate and pop it in your mouth. Chew a few times to break it up, but then let it sit on your tongue while it warms up to body temperature.
As the chocolate warms and melts in your mouth, volatile flavor compounds in the cocoa butter will be released. Breathe in and out through your nose, letting the aromas work through your nasal passages.
At this point, take a swig of beer, and draw it through the chocolate on your tongue, gently mixing the two. If you have paired appropriately, the flavors of both will be enhanced.
For example, if you are tasting a wheat beer like Wild Rose Velvet Fog, you will taste citrus overtones, which are well complemented by a bitter dark chocolate. The sweet citrus notes in the beer will roll generously over your tongue, melding with the bitterness in a high-cocoa chocolate bar for a flavour that is more than the sum of its parts.
Luckily, this is an event you can mix up and have fun with. Try different beers with different chocolates. After all, the worst thing that can happen is you will have spent an evening eating chocolate and drinking beer!
