In today's episode, we talk with Lucia Carrillo—founder and head brewer at Cervecería Itañeñe in Mexico City, a very small brewery that’s big on flavor, often using ingredients from Mexican culinary traditions, or even endemic to the country—and her partner Rodrigo Romo, who also brews at Itañeñe and works at Tout Chocolat making craft chocolate bars and bon bons, pastries, and coffee at its cafes in the Mexico City area. Rodrigo and Lucia have worked together on beers and chocolates that use similar ingredients—including flavors and ingredients endemic to Mexican ecology or used in Mexican culinary traditions—as well as beers using chocolate or its ingredients, or chocolates using beer or its ingredients, to blur the lines between these worlds.

I first tried one of Itañeñe’s beers at the Great Mexican Beer Fiesta at Cervecería Colorado in Denver, several years ago. The one-day fest takes place during the Great American Beer Festival at the same time, and it’s my favorite part of GABF week. Cervecería Colorado and Itañeñe had collaborated on a beer brewed with rosita de cacao, a flower unrelated to theobroma cacao, but sharing some cocoa-like flavors.

This past fall I had the privilege of being a judge at Copa Cerveza Mexico, and finally got to meet Lucia and Rodrigo. Later in the trip, I walked to Tout’s beautiful Hippodrome location and sat at an outdoor cafe table enjoying a flat white and several of their excellent bon bons.

I had the chance to talk with Lucia and Rodrigo recently about their pursuit of unique flavors, their chocolate and beer collaborations, and what makes Mexican beer and chocolate unique and exciting. At the outset, I asked how they got involved in these worlds in the first place.

Guests:

Lucia Carrillo—Food engineer, beer judge, sommelier, sensory panel judge, and Itañeñe brewer with more than 50 beer medals.

Rodrigo Romo—Itañeñe brewer, pastry chef, winner of the Sweet Arts competition, chocolatier, and winner of more than 30 beer medals.

Check out David's book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.

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In this episode, we talk with Jenny Risner-Wade, owner and chocolate maker at Yellow Bird Chocolate, and her husband, Ben Wade, co-founder and brewer at Albion Malleable Brewing Company, both in Albion, Michigan.

When a chocolate maker and a brewer share a home and a life, ideas can flow back and forth and lead to unique collaborations. In this case, collaborations have included Unnecessary Evil, an Imperial Milk Stout brewed with cocoa powder, cacao husks, and cacao nibs, a chocolate bar made with nibs used in the beer, a number of beer-infused truffles, and an ice cream beer float with beer-infused chocolate shavings.

Bean to Barstool host David Nilsen recently sat down with Jenny and Ben to talk about the collaborations between Yellow Bird and Albion Malleable, and the creative opportunities provided by having these businesses run side by side.

You can find out more about Albion Malleable Brewing here.
You can find out more about Yellow Bird Chocolate here.

Other businesses mentioned in the episode include Conexion, Dwaar Chocolate, Norton's Brewing, and Zorzal Cacao.

Check out David's book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.

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I love beer flights. 

One of the things that makes craft beer so much fun is its sheer variety of styles, interpretations of those styles, and ways of using those styles for flavor experimentation. A flight is an opportunity to explore. A flight board might have an Abbey Dubbel, a Munich Dunkel, an ESB, and a Biere de Garde, taking you on a sensory trip to Belgium, Germany, England, and France a few ounces of beer at a time. Flights aren't without their critics—and valid criticisms—but at their best they represent curiosity, excitement, and joy, all qualities craft beer needs right now as it weathers its current market challenges.

Why am I talking about flights? Because today we’re talking with the king of beer flights, Joel Geier. Joel runs the @brewery_travels Instagram and Twitter accounts and is the author of the new book Flights Across America: A Brewery Lover’s Journey, chronicling his beer adventures to over 1,300 breweries across all 50 states. That’s an incredible number, meaning Joel has probably visited one in every six or seven breweries in the entire country. And at as many of those breweries as allow it, he’s ordered a flight. In the book, Joel gives tips on beer travel, provides hundreds of brewery recommendations, and reminds us how much fun beer is supposed to be.

In our conversation, Joel and I discuss our love of flights, how he keeps track of his journeys and the beers and breweries along the way, and some of his favorite stops from his beer voyages.

There's been a lot of bad news in craft beer lately, but this conversation between two beer lovers is a chance to rediscover some of the excitement that got us into craft beer in the first place. Thanks for listening!

Check out David's book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.

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The Chimay line of Belgian ales are brewed at Scourmont Abbey in bucolic Chimay, Belgium, under the supervision of the Trappist monks who call the abbey home. The monastery was founded in 1850 and has been brewing and selling beer to support the upkeep of the property and the lives of the brothers since 1862. 

Many Belgian beer styles pair beautifully with craft or bean to bar chocolate, and the beers of the Chimay line exemplify this. Let’s talk about craft chocolate pairings for Chimay’s Trappist ales!

Check out David's book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.

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Chocolate educator Kathryn Laverack of Cocoa Encounters and The Brown Cow pub proprietor Victoria Hopper have partnered on numerous chocolate and drink pairings, and events highlighting chocolate or cacao cocktails. I recently sat down with Kathryn and Victoria to ask them about the union of cacao and spirits, what they’ve learned from each other, and what they’d like people to understand about making chocolate or cacao drinks. Along the way we discuss specific cocktail and pairing ideas they’ve used in the past, and even workshopped a few ideas for the future.

Imagine, if you will, sitting in a warm, cozy British pub, and join us as we discuss chocolate, cacao, and cocktails.

You can learn more about Cocoa Encounters here.

You can learn more about The Brown Cow here.

Guests:

Kathryn Laverack is a UK-based chocolate educator and international chocolate judge. With over ten years experience tasting fine chocolate, Kathryn teaches the art of sensorial tasting and the evaluation of fine chocolate to consumers and professionals. As founder of Cocoa Encounters, Kathryn curates events that make fine chocolate come alive for people, experiences that relate chocolate to people's passions, interests, and concerns, be that fine food, fine wine and spirits, art, literature, or simply the desire to make the world a better place.  

Victoria Hopper and her husband, Nigel, have been running pubs in rural Lincolnshire for the last 18 years, including their current pub, the Brown Cow in Louth. 

They’ve introduced on-trend craft lagers, seasonal themed menu evenings, and live music events, and they’ve created strong bonds with the community through their support of local charities and sports groups. 
This local landlady always manages to sprinkle a touch of something special that her customers would tell you is just “very Vic…”

Away from the pub, she is a Mum to two teenage boys who are very much part of this family run pub. 

Check out David's book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.

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Welcome to Bean to Barstool Bite Sized, where we spend about 5 minutes with some of our favorite people from craft beer and craft chocolate. Today we hear from Nick Davis, the founder and chocolate maker at One One Cacao in Jamaica. In this clip, Nick talks about some of the challenges facing cacao farmers and laborers in Jamaica, what needs to change give craft chocolate more visibility, and how making chocolate can help Nick’s family and other Jamaican families reclaim their heritage.  Enjoy!

You can learn more about One One Cacao here.

You can listen to my entire interview with Nick here.

Check out David's book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.

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Zadkiela Rios is a chemical engineer by training and a brewing professional by trade. Zadky isfrom Venezuela originally and is currently working in Australia, and she's best known to beer, beverage, and chocolate fans on Instagram as @Zadky_Beer_to_Bar. She and I have followed each other for years, and it’s been fun to not only follow her interest in pairing beer and craft chocolate—a niche interest not too many other people have put an emphasis on—but also her polyglot fluency in a range of indulgences, including spirits, wine, and cigars as well. 

In this episode, Zadky and I discuss pairing beer and chocolate, how tasting and loving other beverages gives her a broad perspective, the role of travel in expanding her flavor vocabulary, and how her science background informs her tasting experiences. Listen in and learn from Zadkiela Rios. 

Check out David's book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.

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The inaugural Midwest Craft Chocolate Festival will take place Friday-Saturday, November 22-23 in the small town of Rushville, Indiana. This is a really unique event in the world of craft chocolate. Most of our festivals are in big cities on the coasts—New York, Seattle, San Francisco—but craft chocolate is all about cacao, the farms where it’s grown, and the farmers and farm workers who grow it, so where better to hold a celebration of chocolate than a farming community in America’s heartland? 

Rushville is a small town about an hour southeast of Indianapolis, and the town leaders are eager to introduce their downtown to the world and vice versa. During their annual Christmas on Main event on the weekend before Thanksgiving, the town will welcome a craft chocolate festival that will bring bean to bar makers, chocolatiers, cacao farmers, and educators together to celebrate all things craft chocolate.

This festival is the brainchild of Dustin Cornett, the chocolate maker who owns Chocolat Cafe. He’s also the creator of the Craft Chocolat Challenge, an internationally-recognized competition for bean to bar chocolate makers. The event is being hosted and supported by the great folks at Heart of Rushville.

In today's episode we talk with Barb Genuario, whom many of us know on Instagram as @chocochaser. Barb is an educator and writer and the co-founder of the D.C. Chocolate Society. For many years, she was an assistant chocolate maker at Harper McCaw before they closed, and she is one of the most enthusiastic cheerleaders for craft chocolate. Barb is one of the organizers of the Midwest Craft Chocolate Festival, and I talked with her recently to get the details for the event and learn the unique vision behind this festival.

We also hear from Leila Carvajal Erker, CEO of Cocoa Supply. Cocoa Supply is the title sponsor of the Midwest Craft Chocolate Festival, and I reached out to Leila to ask what has her excited about the festival. Leila has been on the Bean to Barstool podcast several times in the past, once to talk about the background of her company and their focus on providing excellent cacao nibs for craft breweries, and once to talk specifically about the cacao fruit pulp products they’ve developed for brewers and other beverage makers.

More details can be found on the festival website. Tickets can be purchased here.

Check out David's book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.

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While the bean in Bean to Barstool primarily refers to cacao for chocolate, and the barstool to craft beer, we have also covered craft coffee and spirits on this podcast periodically, and we’re looking at doing that more often going forward. 

Today’s guest brings both of those worlds together, giving new meaning to the name Bean to Barstool. Charlene Cabioch is a barista and mixologist from France who has a deep knowledge of both specialties, and has professional awards to prove it. She was a winner at the Aeropress World Championship in 2019, and the Coffee in Good Spirits Championship for coffee-infused cocktails in 2021 and 2023. 

In our conversation today, Charlene talks about what happens during a coffee or cocktail competition, how her love for coffee developed, and how curiosity drives her passion to learn more about her favorite foods, beverages, and the processes and ingredients behind both. Charlene also works with cacao in her cocktails, and we talk about that as well.

Charlene is an enthusiastic and energetic personality, and I loved getting to learn from her during our conversation, so listen in as we talk coffee, cacao, cocktails, and curiosity with Charlene Cabioch. 

Check out David's book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.

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Few names in craft chocolate carry as much esteem as Goodnow Farms. Tom and Monica Rogan founded the company in Sudbury, Massachusetts, in 2015, and they cover pretty much the full spectrum of what bean to bar chocolate is all about in their portfolio of chocolate bars, including elegant single origin bars, classic inclusion bars with coffee, nuts, or fruit, unusual inclusions like caramelized onions or green Sichuan peppers, and bars made in collaboration with craft alcohol producers.

In this episode, Monica and host David Nilsen talk about those collaborations with distilleries and cideries, the compatibility of coffee and cacao, developing unique flavor concepts, and how Tom and Monica find the right profile to let single origin beans sing.

Specific bars discussed in this episode using alcohol include Lawley's Rum, Putnam Rye Whiskey, and Demon Seed made in collaboration with Boston Harbor Distillery, and Unfiltered Hard Cider made in collaboration with Downeast Cider.

Other bars discussed include Caramelized Onion, Herbaceous Green Sichuan Pepper, Las Palomas Coffee, Café con Leche, El Carmen with Coffee Crunch, and a variety of single origin bars.

You can learn more about Goodnow Farms and order their bars at goodnowfarms.com.

Guest: Monica Rogan is the CEO, co-founder, and chocolate maker at Goodnow Farms Chocolate. Her passion for creating exceptional bean-to-bar, single origin chocolate has made her a leader in the craft chocolate industry.

Monica has spent years developing strong, direct relationships with cacao farmers and producers throughout Latin America, ensuring mutually beneficial relationships and access to consistently high-quality beans. Transparency, traceability, and an emphasis on fine flavor define her approach to chocolate.

Her chocolate has received seven consecutive Good Food Awards, hundreds of international fine flavor awards and a spot on Food & Wine’s list of “The Best Chocolate in America.”

Monica has a background in construction and real estate development, a BS from James Madison University and an MBA from Pepperdine University. While not making chocolate, Monica enjoys traveling and exploring, edible landscaping, refinishing old furniture and doing science experiments with her children and husband.

Check out David's book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.

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