I recently overheard a customer in a wine and beer shop proclaim: "I don't want beer with dessert. That's just weird."
I kept quiet in the shop, but here, to rebut, I reprint this 2007 lede, and more, from Maggie Dutton, writing in her Wine Offensive blog in the Seattle Weekly:
Red Wine and Chocolate: arranged marriage. Beer and Chocolate: hot sex.
Red Wine Doesn't Go With Chocolate
Try beer instead.
December 12, 2007
Red wine with chocolate is like an arranged marriage. The only thing they have in common is fruit: Red wine tastes like it, and chocolate sometimes tastes good with it. However, red wine's overbearing tannin, oak, and acid affront a fine chocolate's complex creaminess, and neither lets the other finish a sentence. They don't belong together.
Chocolate needs something like beer, a beverage that can be supportive. They speak the same language. They share the same bittersweet nature. Think of the beer as you would a chocolate's center: chocolate-covered malt balls, toasted rice, toffee. They like to go to the same places on your tongue <...>
<...> With beer and chocolate, it's not a matter of getting it wrong. It's more likely to be just right.
In the mid 1990s, I was the original brewer for the Manayunk Brewery, a brewpub in Philadelphia.
Rich Pawlak —a freelance writer and, at the time, a newly converted good beer fan— stopped in to talk one afternoon.
Rich had been intrigued that the brewpub was listing beer pairings for the food items on the menu. That might be common now, but it was not then.
We both agreed that the international style lagers normally served at Indian restaurants might be a good wash with the food's aromatics and spice, but that a hefe-weizen (a German-style wheat beer), with its sweet food-spices notes (cloves, allspice, banana, etc.), would be a complimentary flavor mate.
German and Indian: call it international food diplomacy.
Our discussion was wide-ranging: The brewpub neither served Indian cuisine, nor was I brewing a wheat beer.
I lost touch with Rich in the intervening years, so I was happy to hear of him thriving, and that he had begun a blog he calls The Omnivore.
In a recent post, Rich lists some beer and food pairings, but omits the dahl-with-weizen we had discussed. I'll remind him.
Brewer Garrett Oliver, in his book The Brewmaster's Table, has written similarly of this flavor 'hook':
Many of the spices of Indian cooking are mirrored in the spiciness of weissbier.
A few evenings ago, I led a beer-tasting discussion at Red, White, & Bleu, a Falls Church, Va. wine and gourmet shop (and beer).
I recently updated my Beer And Food web page.
I include links to cooking-with-beer recipes, beer dinner menus, articles on beer-and-cheese, blog posts on beer-with-chocolate, beer cookbooks, and other topical sites.
It's bit of a slap-dash affair at present: just basic html coding. At some point, I should spend the cash on real web design.
It was SAVOR, a national food-and-beer exposition, Friday and Saturday at the beautiful neo-classical Mellon Auditorium in Washington, DC.
The event was sold out for all three sessions. The sponsoring group was the Brewers Association, the national advocacy group for small breweries. Well done!
In the photo, it's Clipper City Brewing's Loose Cannon Hop3 Ale (an IPA or India Pale Ale), hoppy and herbal, paired with washed rind cheeses (to the rear, Italian Tallegio, and, in front, Grayson from Meadow Creek of Virginia), citrus-infused chocolates (from artisan chocolatier Christopher Elbow) and beef-stuffed empanadas with mango salsa.
Clipper City was the only brewery to pair one beer three ways. With the empanadas, the spicy and fruity character of the mango salsa paired with that same character of the melange of American hops in Loose Cannon.
The cheeses? What a delight! I had recommended Grayson to the Brewers Association and was pleased to see it included. Local food, local beer, after all. Pungent IPAs mate almost perfectly with the aromatic (okay, stinky) character of washed-rind cheeses.
And then to mate the beer with chocolate after the first two choices was a delight. Citrus-infused with the citrusy tasting Pacific Northwest hops. Again, a flavor hook.
I stayed behind the table talking the tasters through the pairings throughout most of the evening. This is something I delight in; and the pairings, while delicious, were quite illustrative of the theme of the event: beer with food.
I worked the Friday session only, with owner Hugh Sisson and other members of Clipper City's staff covering the Saturday sessions.
More from SAVOR:
There's a short write-up in the Washington Post about this past Monday's Sweet Charity event.
Monday night's Sweet Charity fundraiser at the Mandarin Oriental hotel featured tons of free samples, beer and wine bars, and a runway fashion show with models wearing chocolate. Amid the edible hats, jewelry and purses on the runway, two Wizards players' wives (plus the spouse of the team's director of player personnel) stole the show, reports our colleague Dan Steinberg.
The trio -- Jackie Songaila, Sonia Daniels and Shalaun Newton-- emerged half-dressed in thigh-skimming slip dresses covered in chocolate by chef Eric Johnson of Krishon Chocolates. Looking like they just emerged from a sweet, dark bath, the "chocolate pixies" deservedly caused a sensation.
"Chocolaty," said Wizards guard Antonio Daniels. "I wish she would wear that home."
Beer and chocolate? You bet!
Actually, nearly 50 pastry chefs and chefs from the D.C. created special pastries, chocolates, and non-sweet desserts, last evening, at the annual gala fundraiser and silent auction —Sweet Charity— to benefit the Heart of American Foundation and its literacy programs.
From its website:
[Heart of America] combine[s] character education, literacy, and service learning. We are a national,nonsectarian, non-partisan, nonprofit, humanitarian organization
Washington D.C. is the host site for the first-ever SAVOR, a national craft beer and food exposition, a culmination of American Craft Beer Week, Friday and Saturday, 16/17 May.
Nearly 50 breweries will be participating, with 95 different craft beers, and 35 savory and sweet appetizers. There will not be any hot dogs or pretzels.
Each brewery will pair two of their beers with 2 different foods. But at Clipper City Brewing's table, we are taking a slightly different tack. We're pairing one beer —our hop-aroma-heavy Loose Cannon Hop3 Ale— three ways:
Beer and food lectures and demonstrations are integral to the event. SAVOR calls these —in somewhat raised-pinky-fashion— salons. I don't believe Socratic dialogue will be evident!It's Valentine's Day tomorrow; today it's Chocolate in Beer in the Washington Post. Described are beers like Youngs Double Chocolate Stout and Rogue Chocolate Stout, both of which contain chocolate.
Columnist Greg Kitsock mentions some marvelous pairings with these beers, but none of them are with chocolate itself. Doing so might be overkill, he states.
Clipper City Brewing Company annually participates in Sweet Charity — a gala fundraiser against illiteracy, for the Heart of America Foundation. Chefs from throughout the area create incredible—if I say so myself—desserts and pastries for the festivities.
In the photo above, taken at the 2007 event, that's Carole Palmer of the American Cheese Society in the foreground. If you look closely, you'll see Clipper City Brewing's booth and me in the background.
We'll be there again, later this year, 5 May.
Jump here for the post on the 2007 gala.
Jump here for the post on the 2008 gala.
At parties, I would say, "I'm an artist," said Chef Eric Johnson. "In what medium?" they would ask.
"In chocolate," I'd reply.
They would make a funny face and turn away!
Over 600 paying attendees sampled spectacular desserts from nearly Washington area chefs, filling the banquet room at the swank Mandarin Oriental Hotel in Washington DC on Monday evening.
The gala raised funds for the Heart of America Foundation to buy books and provide suport for at risk children in the US.
Honorary chair was Sheila Johnson, owner of the Washington Mystics women's basketball team.
Nearly 50 chefs created fabulous and often 
visually stunning confections. The wacky and very creative highlight of the evening was the parade of models actually adorned in candy, which had been applied on them by creative DC area chefs.
See more photos.
This is the third year in which Annette Mayr-Nowe, one of the organizers from Albert Uster Imports, has invited Clipper City Brewing to be the only beer donator. I brought along Small Craft Warning Uber Pils, Clipper City Gold Ale, Loose Cannon Hop3 Ale, and Peg Leg Imperial Stout. The last one I selected specifically as a mate for all the chocolate.
I was fortuitously placed adjacent to Carole Palmer, a board member of the American Cheese Society. She supplied the cheese selections for the event, and what an amazing board it was! Several attendees paired our Loose Cannon Hop3 Ale with a particularly aromatic goat cheese and our Peg Leg Imperial Stout with one of her blues. There are plans afoot to have Carole and me co-host a beer and cheese dinner at Tuscarora Mill, in October 2007.
If eyebrows are arched when I talk about beer and cheese, the reaction is even smirkier when I link beer and chocolate. But think about it: with a stout, you're mating the complimentary character of roasted barley malt with that of the roasted cocoa beans of chocolate!
Chef Stephanie Zonis describes the synergy effect of beer (or wine) with food, if they pair well, thus:
It takes unique pairings to find ones that I call the “one plus one equals three” effect. That is, a great chocolate and a great wine combine to create a third flavor that is better than the sum of the parts. These pairings create the WOW effect.(Garrett Oliver refers to this harmonious accommodation between beer and food as the flavor hook.)
This time, the two were contrasts in flavor. The malty flavors paired well together and although the bitterness of the beer and sweetness of the malt crunchies were opposites, they ended up working together.To borrow the catch phrase used by the cartoon pitchmen for that
dark beer from Ireland: Brilliant! Chef Zonis says that, in her experience, only 10% of chocolate and wine pairings are successful. She finds a much higher percentage of success when it comes to beer.
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