Favorite Beer & Chocolate of 2020
A normal year would see me tasting exciting new beers at festivals, in distant brewery taprooms, maybe even on foreign soil. After February, almost every good beer I had this year was consumed at home. I’m eager to go exploring again, eager for the times when setting influences flavor perception, when I’m in a new place and the moment is just right to make a flavor burrow into my long term memory and become part of my sensory landscape. Let’s hope that happens again sooner rather than later.
2020 was a hard year, but at least there was good beer and chocolate. In no particular order, here were my favorites from the past year.
Jester King Das Wunderkind is only 4.5% alcohol, proving strength and complexity don’t directly correlate. Spritely notes of bread dough, peach, white pepper, minerality, lemon, and grapefruit frit about on a lightly acidic and gently funky foundation.
Warped Wing Barn Gang is a dry, moderately bitter saison, but this particular 3-year-old variant was aged in chardonnay barrels, and the wine relaxed the beer’s farmhand shoulders, brought it into the house, and taught it to dance. Dried pineapple, gentle wine-like acidity, Juicy Fruit gum, and the subtlest remnants of the barn - hay, earth - peek in around the edges.
While all of Ritual’s bars are amazing, their Peru 75% bar with Nacional cacao from the Maranon Valley stood out above the rest for me. Initial aromas of raison, rum, tobacco, and light florals gave way to a much brighter and more delicate flavor profile that revealed itself it layers like waves gently lapping at the sand. The boldest notes hit first - what others perceived as marshmallow and oolong tea stood out to me as a fresh maduro cigar. After that, gentle and cool floral and berry flavors emerged, like blackberries and orchids growing side by side in the shade. The bar is acidic and slightly astringent, but silky smooth.
I’d tasted Brink Moozie Milk Stout before 2020, but I got to sit in their taproom and enjoy a couple pints of it for the first time back in February. Moozie offers beguiling complexity with layers of chocolate and roast, despite remaining quite drinkable at 6.2%. This beer has won Gold at GABF three straight years. By any measure, it’s one of the best milk stouts in the world.
Von Trapp Brewery in Vermont pay homage to their homeland with this perfect representation of Vienna Lager, with notes of toast, light caramel, a dry finish, snappish bitterness, and a subtle shale-like mineral undertone. It’s flawless, showcasing the indulgent but austere paradox of great European lagers.
Rose Hill Estate’s Trinidad 68.9% bar made by Amano Artisan Chocolate in Utah came to me by surprise as an add-on to an order, and I ended up liking it more than the bars I had actually ordered. Initial aromas were grassy and floral, with note of sunny dandelions and nutty undertones, and then building to underripe banana skins, heady floral notes, and even some green cardamom, with moderate acidity and bitterness and an abstract fruitiness I couldn’t quite pin down.
Live Oak Brewing in Austin, Texas, makes some of the best authentic European style ales and lagers in the country, and earlier this spring they sent me some to try out. Gold, their German-style Pilsner, was perfect, and that’s literally the only tasting note I wrote down as the glass disappeared far too quickly.
Live Oak Primus Weizenbock warranted a little more reflection, however. The malty foundation of the beer combined with this fermentation character often leads to flavors of spiced banana bread. Primus is redolent of overripe caramelized banana and honeyed bread crust with clove and allspice, a touch of higher bubblegum as well. Despite these sweet, rich flavors, the beer finishes dry enough to help those aromas hold their shape, with just enough balancing bitterness.
Cleveland Chocolate’s Colombia 60% Dark bar made with cacao from the Arhuacos region of Colombia is a perfect example. The bar offers warm notes of honey and honeysuckle with just a kiss of lavender, and an underlying nuttiness with a touch of coffee. These flavors lead to a slightly sweeter impression than the percentage would indicate.
Little Fish Consent was brewed in collaboration with Survivor Outreach Advocacy Program, a southwest Ohio non-profit advocating for and supporting survivors of sexual assault, and was released during during April, which is Sexual Assault Awareness Month. The inspiration for the beer came from the popular Youtube video that uses tea as a way of explaining the basics of Consent. Aside from supporting an incredibly important cause, the beer itself is absolutely gorgeous. Initial aromas are of spiced cherry, brown sugar, and dark bread, and the sip carries that stone fruit forward with dry peach pit and the tart dark red flesh right around it. Around that is a gauze of light floral notes, quickly carried away by the dry and tannic finish, though that dryness is kept hydrated by the tart acidity. There’s a bit of cedar to the tannins, and you don’t taste the tea and rose directly so much as feel them. This was incredible.
Seventh Son brews several coffee beers, and perhaps the most notable is Qahwah, an imperial stout brewed with coffee from Columbus roaster Mission Coffee, as well as cardamom, cloves, cinnamon, and ginger. The beer is inspired by Turkish or Arabic coffee drinks, and is one of the most fascinating coffee beers I’ve tried. The spice profile is robust but not hot or overwhelming, and offers an intriguing twist on the imperial coffee stout model.
Antidote Chocolate Hestia is a 77% cacao dark bar with banana chips and cayenne pepper, and it balances sweet and fruity elements against earthy and spicy flavors, which is a contrast I love. The chocolate itself starts out dry and woody with a faint spice, almost like unpeeled nutmeg pods, before the cayenne heat begins to creep in through the gaps. The banana is initially present more as a mild sweetness than an actual flavor, though it does make itself more known after a bit. Hot cocoa and brownie from the chocolate hold it all together.
Carillon Brewing Porter from Dayton, Ohio, bears the rusticity of its creation while maintaining a modern drinkability, with notes of dry coffee and a gentle curve of acidity from the dark roast malt. Sitting under the ancient sycamores in Carillon’s sun-dappled beer garden, it’s endlessly satisfying. Their Spruce Ale makes the colder months easier to get through. Flavors of pine needle, faint smoke, and even distant mint come through this strong dark ale that makes me think of wandering in a snowy stand of pines on a lonely winter night, the closest human miles away.
Theo & Philo 65% Dark Chocolate with green mango and sea salt was one of my favorite discoveries of the summer. The bar is funky in the best possible way, with briny mango skin & sap, musty earth and moss, subtle sea salt, and just enough sweetness to the chocolate itself to keep the whole thing from veering too far into the esoteric.
Branch & Bone Modern Business Hymns from Dayton was the the brewery’s first collaboration with Violet Sky Chocolate, and this partnership is sure to produce many more excellent beers. Aromas of pistachio pudding, maraschino cherry, and vanilla hit first, with fudgy and slightly acidic chocolate just beneath, all cradled in the muscular arms of a 11.5% imperial stout with its own layers of chocolate and subtle coffee. It’s thick and luxuriously creamy, but not cloyingly sweet, with the acidity of the cacao providing a roundness to curb the sweet body. Listen to Episode 10 to hear more about this beer and the burgeoning collaboration behind it.
Oxbow Loretta from Maine is a low alcohol Grisette brewed with spelt. The beer is dry, light, and gracefully athletic, with notes of dry wheat supporting gentle peach and apricot fermentation notes that meet a crisp acidity and firm bitterness, like clear water over rock. Phenolic aromas of clove and black and white pepper combine with the fruit esters to trigger a sense memory I couldn’t immediately place until I was walking to our car one day, caught a whiff of something, backed up, and stuck my head into a cluster of white flowers on one of our bushes - snowball viburnum. That was it, and I’ve picked it up in other Belgian beers as well. Every time we step outside there’s a chance to expand our sensory vocabulary.
Manoa Chocolate Kohana Rum Bar is a 75% dark bar made with agricole rum from local farm-to-bottle distiller Ko Hana. Ko Hana grows their own single varietal sugar cane to produce their rum, and Manoa then soaks cacao nibs in that agricole rum for this bar. It’s dazzlingly complex but instantly enjoyable, rewarding any amount of attention you want to grant it. If you love complex, funkier rums, you have to try this. A panoply of herbal, grassy, floral, fruity notes come off of this, from coconut flesh to star anise to honey to sweetgrass. This was spectacular.
I had two other pretty much perfect Pilsners this year. Noble Beast Union Pils from Cleveland, Ohio, and Jack’s Abby Post Shift Pilsner from Framingham, Massachusetts. The Noble Beast is brewed in the Czech tradition, with a decoction mash and fuller malt profile, while the Jack’s Abby is brewed with German hops and malt with a drinkable American bent to it. As the name of the latter indicates, Pilsner is the style you’re most likely to find a brewer drinking after their day in the brewhouse, because the style is just endlessly enjoyable and encourages ready conversation.
Ritual Chocolate appears here again, not for a single origin bar, but for an unusual inclusion. Their 55% cacao Pine Nut bar reflects the Utah landscape that inspired it. Pine nuts are the seeds of Pinyon pine trees native to Utah, and here their earthy nuttiness comes through as gentle hay, pumpkin seeds, and warm sawdust. I’ve only been to Utah once, hiking the narrows of Zion Canyon as a teenager, but this bar instantly brought to mind images of this state’s alien beauty.
Toppling Goliath King Sue out of Iowa is a double IPA hopped with Citra hops, and the two-week-old can I had in balmy June was absolutely gorgeous. The aroma offered underripe pineapple, a wiff of old gasoline, a touch of guava, and some dankness. That sounds a bit...much...I know, but it was harmonious and everything came together and settled out on the palate, with creamy, super sappy pineapple & mango, and a touch of greenness from the hops that brought to mind Iron Goddess tea. Perfectly calibrated bitterness seated nicely within the fuller body. This earned its hype.
Twin Oast To Helles and Bock is a Maibock from the shores of Lake Erie in northwest Ohio. Maibock is a pale, moderately strong German lager style that balances a regal strength with sunny drinkability when well made. And this one is. Light caramel and bread, like bread crust baked with a sweet wash, with gentle herbal and floral hops sloping away from that malty headland with a pleasantly dry finish despite the early sweet impression. I could drink this on Twin Oast’s rolling rural property all day.
I’m cheating with this next pick. When I had the chance to taste Firetree’s range of single origin bars during Cacao Magazine’s chocolate tasting course in August, I was bowled over by not only the quality of their chocolate but also the dazzling variance in flavor profiles from cacao from different Pacific islands. Vanuatu Malekula Island 72% was sunny and soft, with strawberry, lemon flower, and cotton candy, while the Papua New Guinea Karkar Island of the same percentage was earthy, with notes of mushroom, tree bark, and moderate acidity. It was eye-opening to taste these side by side.
Fonta Flora Brouwerbier is a 4.5% hoppy saison that instantly made me think of the sublime Belgian beer Taras Boulba from the Brussels brewery Brasserie de la Senne. Brouwerbier offers up a gorgeous interplay of yeast and hops that yields aromas of clove, field grass, and lemongrass, with faint pear, lime, and prickly pear cactus. Bursting with aroma but dry and drinkable with a snappy bitterness. I want a never-ending supply of this beer.
Last winter MadTree Brewing in Cincinnati released Local Blend, a porter that was offered in 4-packs, each can brewed with a different coffee from each of Ohio’s four largest metro areas - Cincinnati, Dayton, Columbus, and Cleveland. Tasting these side by side was a fascinating exploration of the subtle differences different coffees bring to a beer, from the spicy notes of the washed Kenyan Kifahari beans from Dayton’s Boston Stoker Coffee to the acidity and earthiness of the dry process Panama beans from Cincinnati’s Deeper Roots Coffee.
I was fascinated to learn this year about Somerville Chocolate run by Eric Parkes, who produces his bars inside Aeronaut Brewing in Somerville, Massachusetts. I interviewed Eric this fall, and you’ll hear from him on Bean to Barstool soon. One of his most fascinating bars is his Beer Dark Chocolate, a 65% bar made with nibs that steeped in Aeronaut’s Cocoa Sutra Milk Stout while it fermented and were then dried and used in the bar.
In episode 5 we looked at the fascinating world of smoke in both beer and chocolate, and talked with Caleb Michalke at Sugar Creek Malt in Indiana, who produces a wide array of unique smoked malts. I had the chance this year to try three beers brewed with his Sainnhus malts - Fifth Street Brewpub Gratzer and Lock 27 Stjordalsol, both from Dayton, and Fonta Flora Sainnhus from North Carolina. Beyond being brewed in different styles, each was completely unique from the use of different wood smokes for drying the malt. Fonta Flora’s was like the entire life of a wood fire was distilled into a glass. Ash, coal, dry smoke in cold air, warm wood, the comforting smell of the fire on your favorite flannel shirt. The Lock 27 beer was funkier, with a sweeter impression to the smoke up front along with some sharp, almost medicinal phenolics that softened into fruity and lightly meaty flavors that eventually dry out to an ashy, smokey char. The Fifth Street Gratzer, a Polish wheat ale that was only 2.5% alcohol, drank considerably bigger, with clean wood smoke notes from the oak-smoked wheat and none of the meaty notes found in the Lock 27 beer from across town. These beers are a lot, but they’re fascinating, challenging, and intriguing.
Madhu Chocolate Dark Masala Chai is a 60% bar made with the same five spices Harshit’s mom uses in her chai tea every day (we heard from Harshit in Episode 06). This bar is an autumn sunrise, with a complex but interlaced spice profile with vanilla, cardamom, and clove, and underlying notes of black tea and orange peel, and some subtler plum like notes peeking through, possibly from the cacao itself. It’s comforting but energetic, like a bright October morning.
One of the most exciting beers I tried this year was New Belgium Exquisite Extraction. This beer is a single foeder dark sour ale blended with a small amount of stout and infused with Ethiopian Worka Chelbessa and Gera washed coffee beans from Black & White Roasters in Raleigh, North Carolina, and Dominican Republic cacao nibs and husks from Videri Chocolate in Raleigh. The beer announces itself from the glass long before it’s tasted, with notes of creamy milk and acidic dark chocolates revealing concord grape and plum in the deeps, with that funky smell of a burlap cacao sack - hay, burlap, sour vanilla. The sip is both regal, beguiling, bizarre. Cacao husk, acidic coffee, unripe plum, tart grape, straw. The sourness is present but restrained, the body is creamy and smooth, the finish is dry but not thin or astringent.
In Episode 08 I talked with the folks from Ethereal Confections in Woodstock, Illinois, who provide cacao for dozens of breweries around the country. Shortly after that episode I had the chance to taste a few of their bars, and their Haiti 70% bar stood out as an immediate favorite. Notes of honey and dried fig with pops of blueberry-like acidity and whispers of lily and just enough sweetness to amplify the subtle undertone of vanilla.
The best Oktoberfest lager I had this year was from Sonder Brewing in Mason, Ohio, a relatively young brewery co-founded by one of the former brewers at Wisconsin’s legendary New Glarus Brewing. Dry bodied with snappish bitterness and a regal malt profile that isn’t as soft as many tend to be, with bread toast, an impression of caramel, and underlying shale-like dryness, this is a fall treat I will seek out for years to come.
Witbier was one of the first beer styles that made me realize I loved Belgian beer many years ago. Lock 27 Brewing in Dayton brought home the bronze medal in the style at the Great American Beer Festival this year for their Volk Witbier, which means I have one of the best witbiers in the country close at hand. Wolk shimmers like antique gold in the light, and offers spicy coriander, quiet wheat, gentle fermentation notes, and a light but fluffy texture. The perfect patio beer.
The best coffee chocolate I had this year was Belvie Good Morning Vietnam. This 70% dark bar is made with cacao and coffee both from the Lam Dong province of Vietnam. My first impression was of sunshine on a citrus grove, but that was quickly eclipsed by coasting waves of smoky, earthy, and nutty coffee beans, and finally the coffee cherry itself emerges, bright and robust, bolstered by the acidity of the cacao. Good morning indeed.
Columbus Brewing Company makes some of the best IPAs in the country, and their Yakima Fresh Wet Hop IPA is absolutely gorgeous. It’s brewed with Mosaic wet hops less than 24 hours after they’re picked, and it’s a beautiful expression of old school citrus and pine hop character with a bit of tropical honeydew melon thrown in. It celebrates hop bitterness but not so much it obscures hop aroma and flavor. It’s perfect.
Casa Humilde Cerveceria in Chicago brew an array of excellent beers that are often infused with flavors and ingredients from Mexican culinary tradition. Campesino Saison is dry and effervescent, with light lemony hop notes, a subtle underlying minerality, and gentle clove and pepper fermentation notes. It perfectly balances on the rustic but refined tightrope the best beers of this style walk.
While most of the bars on this list are dark, I am in no way averse to sweeter milk chocolate or even white chocolate. There is a nostalgic comfort to milk chocolate, and one of the best I had this year was Original Beans 42% made with cacao from the Esmereldas Coast of Ecuador. Creamy and silky smooth, this bar caramely and lightly nutty, and just a bit like the best fudgsicle you’ve ever had. Good doesn’t always have to mean complicated or challenging.
When I saw a few months ago Orpheus Brewing in Georgia had aged a spontaneously fermented sour ale on cacao fruit pulp and seeds, and I knew I needed to try it. Artifice of Eternity is only 4.5%, but it’s a starburst of flavors, with flavors of bread dough, grape must, lychee, passionfruit, and clove layered over quiet funk and round, bright acidity. I interviewed founder and brewer Jason Pellett in December, and we’ll be hearing from him in an episode in February.
Brazos Valley Slippin’ Into Darkness is an imperial stout brewed with cacao nibs and Jet Fuel coffee from Independence Coffee Company. Along with the expected roast and robust coffee aromas, this beer surprised with with a subtle but uncanny aroma of strawberries and cream, likely from some alchemy of the coffee acidity, cacao, and fermentation. On the tongue the beer blooms with spicy coffee tinged with green cardamom and acidic dark chocolate in a full and creamy body and slowly crescendoing bitterness to keep all that richness in check.
Tales Chocolate from Stockholm, Sweden, makes what I consider the most visually beautiful bars in all of chocolate, with each bar offering a topographical map of either the Swedish Archipelago or the city of Stockholm itself. I hope to have the folks from Tales on the show soon to talk about the role of presentation and how it impacts the reception of the bar. Fortunately, their chocolate tastes as good as it looks. Their Tales of Archipelago Sea Breeze 70% bar is made with Dominican Republic cacao and sea salt, and that simple description belies the beauty of this contoured bar. Fudgy and lightly acidic with notes of red raspberry dappled with warm pockets of sea salt, like islands in a dark sea, this made me imagine a languid holiday on the Swedish islands, patches of sunlight on the calm waters. Maybe someday.
What were your favorite beers and chocolates from 2020? Drop me a line at beantobarstool at gmail or on Instagram @beantobarstool!