As Easter approaches, many Americans are stocking the larder with candy. This holiday, which makes a dynamic duo of a religious prophet and a rabbit that apparently lays eggs, some made of chocolate and sugar, has become, in many families, a Sunday chiefly for the kids.
That leaves millions of adults looking to entertain themselves, and some have taken Easter as an opportunity for a little extra beer drinking while dipping into the kids’ candy stashes. A recent article in the Mercury News discussed the art and science of matching iconic Easter sweets to classic beer styles.
Writer Jay Brooks, a celebrated beer author, explores the rights and wrongs of matching craft beer to candy. He starts simple, with an old-fashioned classic of Americana junk food — the chocolate bunny. This historic candy, according to Brooks, is the “easiest to pair to with beer.” He suggests eating chocolate bunnies while drinking a raspberry lambic.
“[R]aspberry and chocolate are a match made in heaven,” Brooks reports.
If you give this a go, Marin Brewing’s Raspberry Trail Ale, for a locally made example, offers the fruit character to match the chocolate.
He suggests pairing Peeps with bourbon barrel-aged beers. Booze-barrel beers in the bottle are easy to find these days. Marin Brewing occasionally bottles up one of its stronger beers after barrel aging, and Anderson Valley Brewing now offers a bourbonified stout throughout the year.
While eating crème eggs, Brooks suggests drinking a light-bodied beer, “like a weissbier, witbier, American wheat beer or helles.” On the other hand, “[a] cream stout or milk stout would also work nicely, because of the milklike notes they often have.”
Of all candies, writes Brooks, jelly beans “may be the toughest to pair simply because there are hundreds of jellybean flavors.” He said that “[j]elly bean pairings are ideal for experimentation” but can lead to “disastrous combinations,” as well. Yikes. I won’t venture to make recommendations for such treacherous candy-beer pairing except to suggest you invite an experienced friend — someone who identifies as a “foodie,” as a minimum credential, and bonus points for them if they A) know the difference between an ale and a lager and B) know what a Peep is.
Pairing beer and candy isn’t an entirely new idea, and it surfaces from time to time around Halloween. At The Growler Guys, an undated blog post tells beer drinkers with nothing better to think about “what delicious treats pair with tasty brews.” The post suggests Reese’s Peanut Butter Cups with porter; M&M’s with “a crisp, clean Pilsner to cut through the sugar and refresh your palate”; Snickers with a strong Belgian dark ale, since both candy bar and beer are particularly complex; and Hershey’s chocolate with “the perfect fruit or berry beer” for “a match made in heaven.” (It isn’t clear who first coined this term — Shakespeare would be a good random guess — but “match made in a heaven” has become the jargon of choice for describing positive results in beverage-food pairing experiments.)
I am usually skeptical about statements made in food-drink pairing discussions. What has never made sense to me is the notion that one pairing “works” and another doesn’t. When my electric drill’s battery is drained, the tool doesn’t work, period. But in pairing food to drink, the stuff still passes through one’s mouth and, usually, down the gullet. Generally, what’s more, whatever you’re eating and drinking taste good, regardless of the order in which you consume them. Thus, deciding that something didn’t “work” is an entirely personal assessment. And if it does “work,” what happens that doesn’t happen when the pairing doesn’t “work”?
Another sticking point for me with pairing is just how many combinations one will have to test to decide what works best? If you have five types of candy and five different beers, that’s 25 syrupy mouthfuls. Not only will the average person be sick on candy at the of the session, they will also be drunk, and after the first five or 10 matches, I would say that most of the combos will taste roughly the same, anyway — a goopy blend of sugar, chocolate and beer. That, in fact, is why seasoned tasters eat yet more food — generally some white flour cracker or bread — between tastes. (No — it’s not a healthy sport.)
Finally, even if one comes across some chemistry by which a certain confection combined with a certain beer makes fireworks go off, what is the point of it all if it means spending a sunny Sunday afternoon eating candy?
Alastair Bland’s Through the Hopvine runs every week in Zest. Contact him at allybland79@gmail.com.
