Beer + Chocolate = Love

Ah, some romantics like it a little edgier. And, for Valentine's Day, they're exploring malty, craft-brewed beers with fine chocolates.

"Jolly Pumpkin Brewery's brown ale with its cocoa and spices is fantastic with a raspberry truffle," said Stacey Faba, called the beer goddess by many. "I'll say it's one of my happiest pairings of all. The chocolate just melded into the beer. It tasted like it belonged with the beer."

Faba, also co-owner of Pauly's specialty bottle shop, in Lowell, long has recognized the deliciousness of beer and chocolate pairings.

"Chocolate and beer is just a fantastic combination and the easiest pairing is dark beers, like stouts and porters, with chocolate," Faba said. "So when I do beer and chocolate pairings, I like to find things that wouldn't naturally come to mind."

Pair Jolly Pumpkin Artisan Ales Maracaibo Especial Special Brown Ale ($9.99 750-ml, Dexter) with chocolates from Mary Ann's Chocolates to find your favorite match.

With beer and chocolate pairings, you're getting that one plus one equals three because you're creating a new flavor sensation, said chocolatier Charles "Smitty" Golczynski, also the executive chef at The Catering Co., who hand-crafts a chocolate truffle line at The Catering Co. Chocolates. Available at Martha's Vineyard, 200 Union Ave. NE.

"It's actually easier to pair beer with chocolate than wine with chocolate," Golczynski said. "Sometimes, the intensity of chocolate takes over wine and the acidity in wine, doesn't balance right."

Rex Halfpenny, of the Michigan Beer Guide, conducted a beer and chocolate seminar during the Traverse City Epicurean Classic and broadened everyone's perceptions.

"What makes a chocolate and beer tasting great is the fact that it is unusual, and it works. Even folks who say they don't like beer like chocolate," Halfpenny explained. "Anyone with an untrained palate can find bready, toasty, caramel, toffee, roasty, chocolate, coffee and, yes, fruity notes in beer. They just have to get it out of the bottle and stop long enough to think about it."

Beer and chocolate pairings on Valentine's Day are the perfect couple, said Rex Halfpenny, certified beer judge and publisher of the Michigan Beer Guide, a magazine promoting local beer. But not all beer and chocolates mix.

"I do, however, feel that pairing industrial light lager with M&Ms is not a very attractive or entertaining pairing, but it would work," said Halfpenny, of Oakland Township. "Far better to use higher grades of chocolate, not candy, and pair them with craft-brewed beers such as those we have here in Michigan."