World Chocolate Day 2020
7th July is World Chocolate Day, a special tribute to one of our greatest culinary achievements, chocolate. Chocolate is tasty. Beer is tasty. So, why not take this opportunity to celebrate beer too!
Beer with chocolate
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.
Beer with dark chocolate
A combination you often encounter is a stout or porter with dark chocolate. Kees Export Porter 1750 with dark chocolate is a great example, a tried and tested combination!
The sweeter your beer is, the sweeter the chocolate can be. A good indicator is the cocoa percentage. With a dry stout choose chocolate with a (very) high percentage. An oatmeal stout (Fourpure Last Train Oatmeal Stout) is a bit sweeter, so you can try a sweeter chocolate with it. Same with the Thornbridge Little by Little milk stout, it's also a little bit sweet. It's a new one in the Beerwulf shop! Or, try Boon Kriek with dark chocolate for a mind-blowing cherry chocolate experience.
Beer with milk chocolate
Milk chocolate is always sweeter than dark chocolate, so it can be difficult to combine with most beers. Very sweet beers can handle that and in turn make a beautiful combination. Milk chocolate with coffee can also be a good option. The coffee tempers the sweetness and with a stout you can taste the tones of coffee and chocolate in both beer and chocolate.
Beer with white chocolate
White chocolate with an intense porter or stout can also turn out surprisingly well. Often the chocolate is sweeter than the beer, the intensity of the beer makes that interesting combinations can be made. Try it with the Export Porter from Kees.
As you probably already know, white chocolate is the sweetest chocolate. A sweet fruit beer with red fruits like strawberry and raspberry and maybe even blackcurrants (Affligem Cuvée Carmin or Lindemans Cassis) can work well. The beer will reveal its fresh-sour notes more and the fruit is a nice addition to the chocolate.
White beer with white chocolate sounds better than it is, unless you give the chocolate an extra dimension, like Yvonne has below with her white chocolate lemon fudge with brittle.
Beer recipes
....with chocolate
White chocolate lemon fudge with brittle
This creamy, sweet white chocolate lemon fudge with brittle is easy to make and melts in your mouth. It’s soft but crunchy, due to the brittle, and has a dominant fresh and sour lemon flavour. The fudge goes great with a fresh, fruity and slightly sour white beer such as Blanche De Namur 4.5%.
You'll be surprised at how well porters pair with white chocolate - it's truly a delicious mix. Try the fudge alongside a tasty porter and experience an explosion of flavours, reminiscent of a cappuccino with a dash of caramel.
Chocolate kisses
Crunchy, airy and coated in a generous layer of creamy milk chocolate: there’s nothing better than homemade chocolate kisses. Not only are they delicious, but they also look pretty and are very easy to make. You do need a certain measure of patience, however.
If you try these chocolate kisses with a fresh and fruity beer, the sweetness in the kisses will be reduced somewhat. This combination also helps the fruitiness in the beer to shine through better.
Dark chocolate muffins with blueberries
These intense dark chocolate muffins have a nice chocolatey bitterness and a fruity, sour flavour thanks to the generous portion of blueberries. To make these muffins as delicious and beautiful as possible, we recommend you use high quality chocolate and sturdy muffin cases.
These muffins are chock-full of chocolate and go great with beers that have roasted flavours and notes of coffee and chocolate, such as Fourpure's Last Train Oatmeal Stout. When this muffin is combined with intense beers, the chocolate takes centre stage and harmonises beautifully with the lovely, long aftertaste.