The Brew Master

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Red wine and chocolate — a pairing for the ages, right? The romance of red wine’s deep, dark berry notes, the rich and slightly bitter notes on the chocolate — it’s a great match and can help set hearts a-flutter on Valentine’s Day.
   
Often overlooked in talks about booze and chocolate is good old beer. Food and beer pairing is an increasingly popular pastime (sport?) among lovers of fine brew. So why not give beer a chance when it comes to having a bevvie with some chocolate this Valentine’s Day?
   
Like wine, not every beer will work with every chocolate, and some probably won’t work at all. A lemony, doughy wheat beer, for example, wouldn’t be my first pick when choosing a beer to go with chocolate. Rather, I’d start with darker beers — porters, stouts and darker ales. These brews are often made with roasted barley, which typically produces chocolatey notes in beer. Heck, some are even made with chocolate malt, a type of the grain that you’d think would produce a chocolatey flavour. In fact, chocolate malt typically imparts caramel or vanilla notes more often than not — a good thing when pairing beer with chocolate, no?
   
Stouts and porters bring many flavour and texture characteristics that are remarkably similar to chocolate — they’re rich, creamy, mouth-coating, and often bring a hint of bitterness. Coffee and berry-infused beer — stouts, porters or otherwise — bring secondary flavours that often complement (or are eaten on their own with) chocolate, too.
   
So grab that tacky box of heart-shaped chocolates, pick out a few brews and get wooing, Winnipeg!


Chimay Strong Ale
(Belgium; $4.25/330 ml)
   
The "silky taste on the tongue and a slight touch of bitterness" description on the label got me here — descriptors that bring chocolate to mind (although I’m more familiar with the texture than the taste of silk — saucy Belgian trappist monks). Murky walnut brown in colour and with a long-lasting, fine white head, the nose on the Chimay brings to mind dried fruit, toast, malt and light spice. It’s fruity, with fine carbonation and great malt notes with just a hint of bitterness. Great with milk chocolate.


Tree Brewing Company Raspberry Porter
(Kelowna, B.C.; $5.55/650 ml)
 
Sort of cola-ish in colour and with a light head, this English-style ale delivers mocha, dark chocolate and raspberry aromas on the nose. The carbonation is very soft on the palate, with the raspberry flavours rising to the top of the heap, working well with the dark chocolate notes but without much sweetness. This will be a knockout with chocolate cake — instead of (or in addition to) drizzling a raspberry sauce on top, drink this on the side.


Young’s Double Chocolate Stout
(United Kingdom; $3.99/500 ml)
   
This very dark stout (with a beige head) is brewed using chocolate malt and also has "natural chocolate flavouring" in the bottle. Shocking: it smells chocolatey. Other than toasty malt, a hint of mint and espresso, it’s all chocolate here. Even the rich texture makes me think of hot cocoa — it’s creamy and just a bit sweet with a hint of bitterness. With milk chocolate it tasted sweeter, while with dark chocolate the bitterness came out. Interesting stuff.  

 
Like most wine columnists/judges, Ben MacPhee-Sigurdson is also passionate about beer, and has a hybrid beer-and-wine gut to prove it. Follow him on Twitter at @bensigurdson and/or email him at uncorked@mts.net.