by Nathan Hak
Beer Sommelier at Beerwulf
21 June 2020
Celebrate World Chocolate Day, July 7th, with the world's two best ingredients, beer and chocolate. Our in-house Sommelier has come up with some chocolate and beer pairings and beer blogger, Yvonne van Houtum, has some suggestions of how to get creative in the kitchen with some mouth-watering recipes!
Beer is tasty. Chocolate is tasty. But does it go well together? For some people it's a divine combination, for others it's something you eat separately. Taste, try and discover your own taste, that's what it's all about!
Beer with chocolate taste
Roasted malts can give all sorts of flavours in beer, from lightly caramelised flavours to very roasted espresso tones. And of course, chocolate! Stout and porter almost always have a touch of dark chocolate. Belgian Dubbel and Quadrupels are also examples of beers where you can often taste chocolate. All these beers are worth trying with dark chocolate: the chocolate flavours in the beer form a nice bridge with the chocolate.
Tips for beer and chocolate
When we combine beer and food, we usually first look at intensity: with a light dish you choose a light beer, with a heavy dish you choose a stronger beer.
With sweet dishes you're more likely to look for a beer that is at least as sweet as the food. Combining chocolate with beer can therefore be quite a challenge. Especially with sweet chocolate, the obvious choice is for a sweet beer, which limits the options. If the chocolate is sweeter, it quickly overpowers the sweetness in the beer, causing the taste balance in the beer to disappear. This is also the reason why dark, less sweet chocolate often goes better with beer.