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CRAFT BEER AND CHOCOLATE’S SECRET LOVE AFFAIR

by Jeff Mendel

For the past 15 months I have been working with Sarah Amorese, owner and chocolatier at Piece, Love and Chocolate in Boulder, Colo., conducting Beer & Chocolate Pairing Classes at various breweries in our area.  We have so far conducted four such classes, with our fifth edition to take place at Avery Brewing Company’s Barrel Room on Wednesday, May 15, during American Craft Beer Week.

Consuming beer with chocolate in and of itself is not necessarily a new idea, but what Sarah and I have discovered in our work together is that both beer and chocolate are very versatile food products.  Each on its own can complement a wide range of flavor characters, yielding endless opportunities for interesting matches across the flavor spectrum.

I joke with our students that a lot of hard work goes into determining the pairings we choose to share with them.  Someone has to step up and taste the beers and chocolates, experiment with pairings both good and not-so-good to arrive at the combinations that best highlight the wonders of beer and chocolate together.  Alas it is true.  Sarah and I spent many sessions tasting craft beers together with truffles, tarts, tortes, cakes and pies, all of which incorporated chocolate in some manner.

The idea of pairing beer with chocolate has really been gaining in popularity over the last decade or so.  Prior to that, wine was the popular choice to accompany dessert and chocolate.  When Sarah opened Piece, Love and Chocolate two years ago, she immediately offered wine and chocolate pairing classes.  “In my industry, wine and chocolate pairings have been popular for awhile, especially for women,” Sarah says.  She believes the idea of wine and chocolate emanated from their common health benefits but was “…quickly elevated to an elegant affair.”

However she finds pairing wine with “straight-up bar chocolate” is tricky at best.  The tannins in many wines are not well suited to chocolate.  The flavors provide interesting, though not necessarily pleasurable, contrasts on the palate.  She has found her most pleasurable wine and chocolate pairing occur in the realm of late harvest sweet wines, ports and well-aged red wines.

When Sarah and I started developing beer and chocolate pairings, we had to first learn about each other’s products.  I had to teach Sarah about the raw materials used in beer, the sensory experience of consuming beer, explain the different flavors and aromas and their origins, whether process or raw material.  Sarah had to teach me about the chocolate fermentation process, the raw cocoa pods, the richness of cocoa butter, the difference between dark, milk and white chocolate.  I like to say that I thought I loved chocolate.  But when I walked into Piece, Love and Chocolate for the first time I learned that I didn’t know what chocolate really was.   What a revelation!

Through all of our R & D we have discovered that beer and chocolate can not only be paired on the basis of flavor but also on mouthfeel, or as Sarah calls it, “the feel of taste.”  The rich, fatty feel of the cocoa butter melts at body temperature and coats the palate, and the lively carbonic bite of carbonation activates the trigeminal nerve, creating a round and full flavor AND feel experience.

We have encountered some challenges along the way to finding some really pleasurable pairings.  Certain styles of beer do not naturally lend themselves to pairing with chocolate.  Generally more moderate alcohol, lighter-bodied sessionable styles, such as pilsners, pale ales, ESBs do not hold up well to the rich, fatty cocoa butter.  We even found this to be true with a mild milk chocolate.  There have been a few notable exceptions.  We have had great success pairing hefeweizen with chocolate crust lemon custard tart and a lavender chocolate cake.  In both cases the chocolate component acted as a maid–of-honor to the pairing of the fruit/spice characters of the beer and the desserts.

We also found the Left Hand Good Juju Ginger Ale to be an excellent candidate for pairing with chocolate desserts.  Ginger and chocolate are already known to pair well together from a flavor standpoint, but could this lighter-bodied spiced ale stand up to the richness of a chocolate dessert?  Sarah and I randomly chose to try the beer with her Honey Lemon Tart, a honey gelee topping white chocolate mousse and a light lemon custard.  The snappy ginger spice worked beautifully with both the sweet of the honey and white chocolate as well as the tart of the lemon custard.  The ginger character also helped offset the heft of the cocoa butter.

IPAs continue to be a challenge for pairing with Sarah’s chocolate treats.  The intense hop bitterness of most of these beers often creates a real clash of flavors, making it difficult to find a truly pleasurable pairing.  I think the right IPA is out there, one with enough malt flavor and body so as not to be dwarfed by the hops, to pair roundly with a chocolate treat.  I just haven’t found it yet.

As one might expect, bigger, richer, and maltier beers seem to pair best with chocolate.  Porters, Stouts, Barleywines and barrel-aged styles.  Higher alcohol beers tend to stand up to the cocoa butter better, while the malt sweetness of these bigger styles often offers a nice compliment to the sweetness of chocolate.  These styles of beer also tend to blend well with other flavors (from wood, coffee or other added ingredients), much like chocolate does.

Sarah likes to take the idea of pairing craft beer and chocolate beyond just putting a chocolate next to a beer and tasting them together.  As Sarah explains, “I am not a fan of pairing simple bar chocolates with spirits. I prefer chocolate desserts for a more comprehensive and exciting culinary experience. Some of these desserts have beer incorporated into them, and others are just really delicious consumed with certain beers. “

“When we integrate a selected craft beer from a local brewery into a recipe at my shop, R & D starts with a concept. What will we make – a ganache? a mousse? a cake? Not all beers make good mousses, and even fewer make terrific ganache. Sometimes, in a baked good like a cake, we will first reduce the beer down to a more concentrated flavor. However, so as not to sacrifice some of the nuances and delicate flavor notes in the beer that might have been lost to heat or evaporation, we may fold the beer in its original state into an additional component of the final dessert or pastry, thereby retaining all of the unique flavor notes of the selected craft beer.”

As with any culinary experience, finding pleasurable craft beer and chocolate pairings is an entirely subjective endeavor.  Our best suggestion is to pick out a particular flavor component of a beer to try to pair with a particular flavor component from the chocolate, and see how compatible you find the marriage.  As I stated at the top of this piece, both beer and chocolate are versatile enough to accommodate and complement many flavors, so there is room for a lot of creativity in imagining how the two can pair together.

Below I have provided a list of some of the best pairings we have developed over the past year:

Left Hand Milk Stout Nitro w/Left Hand Milk Stout Chocolate Mousse Cupcake

Avery Hog Heaven Barleywine with Pecan Tart

Left Hand Good Juju Ginger Ale with Honey Lemon Tart

West Flanders Woodshed Smoked Porter with 64% Dark Chocolate Liquid Salted Caramel Truffle

Sierra Nevada Kellerweiss with Lemon Tart

Avery Tweak Espresso Imperial Stout with Hazelnut Espresso Shortbread topped with a Hazelnut Ganache

Upslope Foreign Style Stout with an Espresso Truffle

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Thank-you, Jeff!

Working with Jeff on this project has been a lot of fun. In addition to being so incredibly knowledgeable about the craft of brewing beer, he is wildly entertaining, funny and sweet. Developing and teaching this class has been a true joy, indeed! Working with many of the local breweries and getting to know this age-old craft and the passionate people behind these companies has touched my artisan heart! Each class we conduct is highly customized to the local craft beers that are available at that specific time of year – no two classes are ever the same. This coming class, Avery has thrown in a beer brewed with passion fruit – can you even imagine!?! Here’s to ongoing research, Jeff! Cheers!

By the way, Jeff teaches other beer and food pairing classes (yes, other than chocolate!). If you would like to know more, please visit Boulder Valley Schools Lifelong Learning website:

http://bouldervalley.augusoft.net/index.cfm?method=ClassInfo.ClassInformation&int_class_id=5047&int_category_id=0&int_sub_category_id=0

Today, I find my heart warmed and inspired!

I must share with you my experience working with Boulder High School’s catering instructor Jean Lange, fellow chef mentor Chef Ben Keesler (Giam and Via Toscana) and the Boulder High School Pro-Start program.

What is ProStart, you might ask? ProStart is a national career-building program for high school students that pairs culinary educators with restaurant industry professionals to teach real-world skills. We work together, after school once a week to teach culinary and hospitality management skills.Eventually, a menu is created and a team of four of the students is chosen to practice and train to prepare for the a big competition in late winter.

This year’s competition will be a match between 29 Colorado high school teams. You might equate it to a culinary olympics of sorts. The teams have 15 minutes to arrange their mis en place. The meal has to be cooked on only two butane burners, plated and presented to judges within 60 minutes. No electrical or battery operated, time or labor-saving devices are permitted. Organization, safety and sanitation, communication in addition to some well-honed knife skills are a must. These kids also have to source and cost their menus with a keen attention to portion control. All this has to be artfully arranged and incorporated into two plates each of a delicious appetizer,  a tasty entree and a delectable dessert.

The Colorado Restaurant Association Education Foundation and Sysco Foods helps to sponsor the yearly event in downtown Denver at Johnson & Wales University. This year, the competition takes place this coming Friday March 1, 2013.  There will be more than 250 ProStart students from from 29 high schools across Colorado competing in the 14th Annual ProStart Student Invitational & Sysco Denver Hospitality Cup Competition. They will demonstrate their mastery of culinary and academic skills achieved from their studies and working with industry. These teams will compete for more than $500,000 in scholarships!!! That’s not small potatoes!

The competition consists of both a Culinary Competition and Hospitality Management Competition. The school that accumulates the most points at the end of the contest will take home the “Sysco Denver Hospitality Cup.” The winning teams from the state competition will represent Colorado ProStart at the National ProStart Invitational in Baltimore, Maryland from April 19-21, 2013.

Boulder High School is one of three BVSD high schools that currently have this additional after-school opportunity as a part of the culinary and catering curriculum thanks to the tireless efforts of Mrs. Jean Lange. Jean asked Chef Ben Keesler and myself to help mentor these kids as “the restaurant industry professionals”. Ben has worked with the kids on the appetizer and entree and I am helping with the dessert. Jean does all the rest which includes working with the kids on the academics side of this competition and all the fund-raising that is involved to ensure that we actually make it to the competition. It has been challenging at times but, I think the three of us would all agree, it has bee a very rewarding experience.

We have been planning, practicing, training, and timing since January with our final four students.

Go Boulder High ProStart team!

Our amazing and talented team consists of Eric Stern (entree), Anna Cutler(dessert), Xee Her (appetizer),  Dakotah Fozzard (entree & dessert) .

If you would like to see our team in action, the next link will take you to our Piece, Love & Chocolate Facebook Album showcasing our culinary adventures. We will be adding to this from time to time – so please check in:

http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=509008912485413&set=a.509007242485580.122194.109306945788947&type=1&theater

Next Friday, March 1st, is the big day for us!  Our team takes the stage at ‘kitchen stadium’ in Denver at 12:00. Wish us luck!

As for winning… I think we already have!

A big heartfelt thank-you to the parents of these amazing kids, Jean (my hero), and Ben for asking and allowing me to be a part of this amazing adventure!

Hugs, Sarah

A very interesting thing happened to me yesterday! I received a very curt Cease-and-Desist order from Chef Hasty Torres, a 90210 chocolatier in Beverly Hills . Ms. Torres is the really, real Madame Chocolat and does not appreciate me brandying about the name in any way or fashion. Madame Chocolat is the name of her company and she legally registered that name four years ago, it is hers and hers alone; lock, stock and chocolate mold! Ah, but it is more than just that…

Intellectual property or not, Ms. Torres is, in true life fact, the wife of Jacques Torres – “Mr. Chocolat” himself! That makes her Madame Chocolat not only by business registration, but also by marriage. Nuptially speaking (in French),  Madame is the spousal counterpart to Monsieur Chocolat. Mr. runs his infamous chocolate empire on the East Coast (NYC) and the Mrs. is manifesting hers on the West Coast (LA). How cute is that!?!

However, cuteness aside with the addition of formal East and West Coast etiquette and/or fury, sauced with a little legal action, you can see how things can get out of hand pretty quickly! I have been given 10 days to rid myself and my business entity of anything and everything affiliated with the name,  ”M_ d_m_e Ch_c_l_t”. Please note that Erin, my beloved web-site guru, left on a much needed vacation yesterday for two weeks – we will move as quickly as we can on this motion, but some things will have to wait until she returns – we are trying! For instance, this very blog will say “posted by M_d_m_e Ch_c_l_t on August 22, 2012″ next to it – disregard it until I can figure out how to fix it! Please, have mercy and patience with us.

I am no longer “M_ d_m_e Ch_c_l_t”, and I never was – it was only a cute pet name my customers and friends gave to me years ago and has shown up sporadically and spontaneously throughout my career. Henceforth, I renounce any affiliation with the already spoken for title, or, in my very humble case, nickname. I am just Sarah, or Chef Sarah (I worked so hard to earn that title & toke!) – please everyone, refer to me as such.

And, for the record, I am not French by any stretch of the word or ancestry, for that matter. I am a Colorado girl through and through! There is something rather humbling about us Westerners that tempers us from taking ourselves too seriously. Mostly, we are all peace keepers at heart – so lovers, not fighters! The thought of getting all lawyered up surely chaps our backsides and, at the same time, sends shivers up our spines. I, in no way, would ever choose to be the burr under anyone’s saddle, especially to two colleagues of whom I cherish, admire and deeply respect.

I would like to take this opportunity to formally apologize to both the Chefs Torres. I, in no way, ever meant any disrespect or infringement, nor did I ever plan to associate my own career with that of yours or hijack any fame or fortune from your esteemed reputations.

Please forgive me! Please forgive my customers and friends! I am sorry! Mea culpa! Mea culpa! Mea culpa!

It is unfortunate and strangely ironic that I have gleaned the attentions of some of the most reputable icons of my industry through this and not of my hard work. Honestly, I am emotionally confused by all of this. How can I feel humbled, hurt and strangely honored at the same time? Perhaps, that is a question for a different kind of professional…

Thank-you, Just Sarah

The other day, a writer for Eat, Drink Boulder did a review of local chocolate croissants and, of the three she tried from various bakeries, she rated ours the best. Yea!!!… well, maybe. However, this lady was a tough customer! After having read her review several times, over and over, as this is what we do when a food critic criticizes our babies, I still am not all that convinced that she even liked our chocolate croissants.

Sense of taste is just so very subjective, indeed!

She revealed a very fine metric as to how she arrived at her judgement – Oh, how I agreed with that (applause!, applause!)! However, she then described how laminate dough is made and that is when I found myself becoming the critic because she described only how croissants de patissier (akin to phyllo dough) are made with melted butter and NOT, at all, how laminate doughs (croissants de boulanger) are made; a very different method, indeed. I keep reminding myself not to allow my feelings to be hurt, because she was describing taste and not giving instruction. But, the part where she refused to come into our shop based solely on our name alone (too “punny” for her), really? How unfortunate! What’s in a name… “a rose by any other name…”

Please read her very entertaining and well written article and weigh both of our very opinionated opinions on this subject…  http://eatdrinkboulder.com/2012/07/19/le-tour-des-patisseries-2/

… a day in the life of PLC: Chocroissants

Our Chocroissants are not our biggest sellers, and for the life of me, I cannot figure out why! The business owner in me is saying to just drop them from our menu and move on already, but they are just tooooo good – we all love them! We have worked so hard for so long to develope them to this point. So, being a stubborn person, I am determined to get the word out on these lovely pastries. Surely, it is a matter of marketing and display! Anyone who has tried them, and we have sampled them often, has come back for more!

How do we love them? – oooh! oooh! Let me count the ways!

1. Well, first of all, the housemade dough itself is infused with chocolate; most “pain au chocolat” only has a pocket of chocolate in the very middle. Our Chocroissants are a rich, dark brown because they are chocolatey, chocolate croissants – inside and out! We use both French made Valrhona chocolate and their superior high-fat cocoa (24%) to create a very chocolately taste, but not at all sweet.

2. We use only fresh yeast (not instant or active dry) – a very small amount – and cold ferment the dough for three days – YES! 3 DAYS!!!, letting those fresh little yeastie beasties grow and propagate themselves. This is so exciting and I feel the most important part of the production process, because with a long cold ferment, the finished pastry is blessed with such a rich and complex flavor with a hint at “sour”, unmatched by any quicker method. Michelle, our beloved “Cocoa Confectionista” who is in charge of this beautiful process, affectionately calls this mass her “dough baby” and lovingly nurtures it to fruition.

3. Butter – this is the real deal – no skimping here. Because the primary flavor profile of a good croissant is butter, it has to be of a superior quality. Butter is also a crucial mechanical component to proper baking. Because butter is not all fat, 10% or more is H2O encapsulated in the fat and not at all absorbed by the flour, during the high temperature baking (425′ F), that small amount of water is what creates the steam pockets between the layers of dough keeping them autonomous from each other

4. We use our sheeter, “Sheila” (think huge, mechanical pasta roller), to roll out the dough. This is necessary because, unless you are a huge Olympic shot-put thrower, there is very little chance of being able to roll all the folds/turns into the dough by hand without over developing the gluten strands and heating up the butter layer thereby creating a bread-like consistency rather than a flakey, layered wonderland of 729 alternating “leaves” of butter, dough, butter, dough, butter, dough…aaahhhh! I lost myself for a moment!

R & D… Last Wednesday when Genny and Michelle walked in, Bev, Tracie, Sam and I had five different butters splayed out on the display kitchen prep table. Although we are currently using a beautiful butter from France, I am not convinced it is the best we can do, so I requested a taste trial of other butters. I had everyone try each butter sample at room temperature; Yes!, straight up on a fork! It was a veritable butter buffet! We had butters from Vermont, Wisconsin, Oregon, and two from France. I had everyone take a small sample and allowed it to melt on their palate. Butter is primarily about taste, but it is also about mouth-feel. Although some of the butters we tried were salted, I cautioned against being romanced by the saltiness and focus on the promenance of the taste and feel… just another day of research at PLC!

So you see, although I whole-heartedly believe that taste is entirely subjective, please take a moment and reflect on what went into one of our (not so simple) offerings, our Chocroissants, and know that on some level, we go to this extreme with EVERYTHING we make!

After all, we love you and we only want to present you the very best that our love and expertise has to offer.

I am grateful to you all for allowing me this pleasure…

Hugs, Sarah

I owe you all a sincere apology -I am sorry!

A month ago, Chase (my beloved bank) in cahoots with Living Social, sent me a very unassuming email about a promotion to win a chance at a $250,000 small business grant. “Grant” of course meaning “free”. All we had to do was harang our beloved Facebook fans and friends and beg them to deem PLC worthy by making them jump through various difficult hoops to vote for us on their Facebook page. That, and for me to write a few short essays basically defining what makes us unique and how would we spend such an exorbitant amount of money to ensure our long-term growth and stability…

Ah, but alas, I went against my own intuition, good sense and experience and decided to jump into this bizarre competition.

Mea culpa, I can no longer subscribe to this because it goes against my heart – it feels greedy and just plain wrong.  I am not saying that PLC couldn’t use a nice little cash injection to invest in our future, but this doesn’t feel like the right way to go about it. And, while we and other businesses run around begging for votes, tripping the light fantastic, we are all sure as heck doing a whole lot of advertising for Chase and Living Social…? I can’t but help to ask myself if this is a contest or a test of cons?

It seems wildly ironic to me that a banking institution would participate in such a contest! Because, for those of you like myself, who courted various banks for start-up funds, they made it very, very clear that nothing short of sure thing, a large chunk of interest, and three times the amount of collateral to back it up would be worth batting an eye lash at… “dream” and “chance” do not exist in banking terminology and that is a very good thing, indeed!

There is no magic pill! I know this! I’ve always known this! Immediate gratification is what you get by eating chocolate, but not running and growing a successful small business. I will not jeopardize our long-term growth with short-term band-aid strategies. Free money… yeah, sure! But at what cost?

So, to the 73 of you that voted for us – thank-you! I will give you each a truffle of your choice – BTW this would be considered a “bribe” by the contest standards and against the rules. Phooey! Consider this an official disqualification!

I still love you Chase! – you are a great institution and you have helped my business a lot – Thank-you, but no thanks for your contest!

What makes PLC unique? You do, our wonderful customers!! We are like small, giddy children doing what we love to do each and every day- playing with chocolate, and looking to you for acceptance. And you have rewarded us with an abundance of kindness and your love in return; you buy our products and come back and buy more – and sometimes you reward us with the most special gift of all – you bring in a guest or buy a gift card or gift from us for someone you care for. What a great honor! We are so very grateful!!! What more could we ask for?

This was a good exercise for me personally and professionally. In writing these contest essays, I was able to review and  re-vamp our business plan – always a good idea!

We will continue to grow the old fashioned way; by providing you the very best quality products and service that we possibly can. Is it really that simple? Yes, I believe it is!

Thank-you!

Hugs, Sarah