Meantime Chocolate Beer and Zotter Beer Chocolate

Mixing beer with chocolate seems like some unthinkable crime has been committed, yet no-one was caught, no-one was arrested, and no-one was strung up by their dangly bits. I try to be open minded on these blogs… no really! But ever since the early days of me blogging for Cinabar, I’ve gone through weird tasting beer trials that read like some duff horror movie set in a dodgy pub. Chocolate flavoured beer, beer flavoured chocolate? Come on… that’s not even funny! Last time I made the error of drinking chocolate tainted beer, in a Scottish mix up, whilst eating a bag of crisps. This time I decided to go the whole hog and have the beer and chocolate bar for pudding. I sat down to a hearty and quick meal of mixed meats, olives, a spicy samosa, a fat Onion Bhaji, and some kebab things on sticks. I must admit, I was strangely looking forward to my pudding beer and chocolate bar treat at the end of my dinner. I could feel the hairs in my nose begin to tingle, or this could have been the spice in the samosa.
On finishing the meal I popped open the beer, immediately noticing the chocolate smell from the brew as I poured it. Brewed by the Meantime Brewing Company at the Greenwich Brewery, this strong, almost stout beer has a dark chocolate liquor type taste to it. I’m sure this would make the perfect liquid pudding for any beer lover or perhaps it could be mixed in to make a rich fruit cake. I savoured the taste of the strong chocolate beer for a few moments (feeling Christmas had come early this year), and then pealed back the wrapper on the Zotter Organic Beer Chocolate bar. Quoting the inside of the wrapper; “the organic beer Lava Rossa lends the dark chocolate a taste of malt and caramel.” On biting into the light soft texture of this dark chocolate bar, I could instantly tell the similarities between the two products. Whereas the Chocolate beer tasted of strong beer mixed with dark chocolate, this bar tasted like dark chocolate mixed with strong beer. This might sound fairly obvious to you, but sadly I was left with half a pint of beer and one half eaten chocolate bar… hardly an epic self indulgent session. The beer in the bar is so strongly flavoured that some may say the chocolate bar had a Guinness truffle taste to it. The rich flavours of this double act made me thoroughly regret my choice of meal. If you try this combination, I highly recommend to start with a good roast beef or roast pork meal, with a Yorkshire Pudding, roast potatoes, some greens and carrots, a strong meaty gravy, maybe a glass or two of red wine, followed by several bottles of Meantime Chocolate Beer and several Zotter Beer Chocolate bars, whilst watching an atmospheric black and white movie. I’d recommend “The Day the Earth Stood Still” the 1951 version, of course, not the silly new one!