With apologies to Starbucks, which coined the phrase “When coffee dreams, it dreams of chocolate,” I have a news flash: when chocolate dreams, it dreams of craft beer.
Yes, chocolate is good with a rich, dark cup o’joe, but if that’s all you’ve tried, you are really missing something special. In particular, if you’ve not sampled Éclat Chocolate’s signature inventions paired with a Victory Brewing Company libation, you’re simply cheating yourself.
Éclat’s manager Dana Boyes and Victory’s quality assurance manager Whitney Thompson put their creative heads together and matched four exquisite chocolate bites with four craft beer standouts. What made each pairing work so well was the play between key tastes in each delight.
The nearly 100 women who attended “Girls Just Wanna Have Suds: Beer + Chocolate Night” used handy Food and Beer Pairing charts to rate each taste, from sweet to earthy to silky and beyond, and to link the chocolate and beer with descriptors such as blooms, highlights, refreshes, etc.
No beer-snob tasting here: the interactive event featured Dana and Whitney’s remarks and analysis, making each morsel and sip both filling and fulfilling.
After noshing on light snacks and a Prima Pils welcome beer, we got down to business. First up: Aleppo Chile Truffle paired with Festbier. The Syrian spice finish – wait for it, ah, yes, feel the burn – came after the dark chocolate ganache melted away. Our hosts advised sipping the beer first, then taking a nibble of the chocolate, then back to the beer, which allowed the caramel, nutty and slightly sweet lager to cut through the spice. Sweet-tooths around the room were smiling.
The recently tapped Ranch S, a double IPA featuring Yakima Valley hops from the award-winning Segal Hop Ranch, had a bitter, grapefruit and lemon tartness that cut lovingly through the Ginger Caramel Chocolate. A unique caramel, it’s “liquid gold” with an edgy hint of fresh ginger and topped with Hawaiian sea salt. These two wrestled, but in the end it was a delicious draw.
Next up: Passionfruit Chocolate paired with Baltic Thunder. This duo was selected to complement, each one hearty in its own right. The French-style square of just-bitter dark chocolate encased a milk chocolate ganache mixed with passionfruit puree, offering an unbelievable cascade of sweet-tart flavors. It’s partner was a seasonal Baltic porter, a dark, malty lager that gets its roasty, almost chocolaty muster from fermentation magic (think special yeast and warmer temps). If they could have, these two would have nodded to each other with a knowing glance: well done, my friend, well done.
Of all the marriages put forth during “Suds,” the one destined to last also was star-crossed: Fortunato No. 4 Traditional Truffle and Dark Intrigue. The exquisitely simple combination of cacao rolled in powdered cocoa, however rare, was perfectly highlighted by the complex flavors of the bourbon-kissed imperial stout. And while the once-thought extinct cacao’s first harvest is being used exclusively by Éclat to create this nutty-bitter-silky jewel, it’s partner, the oaky-bourbon-vanilla Dark Intrigue, has come and gone once again, perhaps for the last time (hence the intrigue). Will it return to pair again with its truffle love? Only Whitney knows ….
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