So, it's late Halloween night, and the kids have gone to bed. As you're going through their Halloween candy "just to see what they got", your say to yourself "Gee, Self, what beer would go best with this Kit-Kat bar that somehow just opened up in my hand?"
Well, fret not, dear friends...we have done the work for you. We had a group of 8 friends get together, and tasted 7 different candies against 9 different beers. I would have liked to get all Atlanta beers, but didn't want to run around filling growlers, so instead decided to just pick good examples of the styles that I wanted that were available in cans and bottles.
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| Hmmm...anyone want a beer and some candy? |
The Candy
Candy Corn
M&Ms
Kit-Kat
Snickers
Reece's Peanut Butter Cups
Butterfinger
Skittles
The Beers
Genesee Cream Ale
Rogue Hazelnut Brown
Left Hand Black Jack Porter
Young's Double Chocolate Stout
Terrapin Liquid Bliss Peanut Butter Porter
Dogfish Head Punkin' Ale
Founders Dirty Bastard Scotch Ale
Sweetwater IPA
Spaten Optimator Doppelbock
We had never tried a pairing like this, so I first checked a bunch of other sites (listed at the end of this post) to see what was suggested. All the sites agreed on the perfect pairings. Yeah, right...of course they didn't. But, they gave me some references to start a shopping list.
After grilling up some sausages so everyone would have a little non-candy-sustenance, we sat down around a couple of tables on the porch. Each setting had taster glasses of each of the beers, along with the candies. Everyone also had a tasting sheet that listed the recommended pairings for each candy. (Yes, we actually have enough tasting glasses to support 9 beers for eight people, thanks to finding some glasses on clearance at Ikea a few years ago, but you could also just use plastic. I've been told that's what normal people would do.)
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The results:
Candy Corn - Dogfish Head Punkin'
The sweetness of the candy corn brings out the spiciness of the pumpkin beer. Also good with the Genny Cream Ale, as the sweetness cancels some of the "Genny"-ness.
M&Ms - Dirty Bastard Scotch Ale
The sweetness of the M&Ms take away a lot of the alcohol flavor from the scotch ale, and smooths it out a bit. The Liquid Bliss, the chocolate stout and the porter were also solid beers with the M&Ms. The candy shell of the M&Ms seem to mask some of the "fake" peanut butter flavor in the Terrapin, while the chocolate brings out just a little bitterness in the chocolate stout. However, some felt the candy coating doesn't complement some of the beers as well as some of the other chocolates.
Kit-Kat - Rogue Hazelnut Brown
The hazelnut works really nicely with the KitKat wafer. But, really...the KitKat pretty much works with any beer. Steal these out of your kid's bag now. (The stout and porter also were very good with the Kit-Kat.)
Snickers - Liquid Bliss Peanut Butter Porter
The caramel balances the peanut butter flavor in the porter. But, c'mon...what isn't going to go well with Snickers?
Butterfinger - Ok, no one really agreed on this one.
This was good with a lot of the beers...the hazelnut in the brown worked nicely with the peanut butter/candy center. The Liquid Bliss and Hazelnut Brown also complemented the peanut butter center nicely. I expected the scotch ale to do the same, but the combination ended up tasting a bit "off", making the beer a bit hard to drink with this candy.
Reece's - Genesee Cream Ale (Surprise!)
The Genny gives just a little bittnerness to the peanut butter cup, resulting in a really nice balance. It also worked much better with the Liquid Bliss than I would have expected as the Reece's has a much more "real" peanut butter flavor than the beer.
Skittles - Sweetwater IPA
Ok, this IPA just worked great with the Skittles. Maybe not so much with the grape Skittles, but really well with the citrus flavors in the others. (Our friend is rushing out to get bags of Skittles to go with the keg of SWIPA that he bought for his Halloween party.)
Raisins
Seriously? Raisins? Oh, that's just wrong. Who would do that? I don't even like kids and I wouldn't do that to them. Just don't give out raisins, unless you feel that the outside of your house doesn't have the egg-and-toilet paper look you're going for.
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| The Aftermath |
This was a fun way to spend a couple of hours on a dreary October afternoon. We went for a little more "formal" approach, but you could also just put out a bunch of bowls of candy and a few beers, and let people discuss/vote on their own. You definitely should plan on having some "real" food before or after; I'd recommend putting out some pretzels or peanuts as well. This isn't so much to soak up the alcohol (although that's a good idea), but is because the sugar in the candy gets to be a bit much after a while.
We may have gone a little overboard on the number of beers and candies. But, that's just the way we are. If you're going to have this many beers, I'd definitely suggest listing recommended beers. If we had tried every beer with every candy, we never would have made it through the entire tasting.
Thanks to a Publix Buy One-Get One sale on some of the candy, we spent around $15 on the candy. We probably spent around $75 on the beer. We mostly bought six packs, but if there was something that I didn't expect we'd want to drink later, then I'd just buy a single large bottle of a couple of 12-ounce bottles. We ended up with a quite a bit of the beer and a lot of the candy left over. (Of course, we did this on a Sunday afternoon. If we had done so on a Saturday night, then the leftover beer list would have been a bit smaller.)
Here are a few of the websites I visited while trying to figure out the pairings. Some of these give a little more in-depth discussion about the reasons for the pairings.
Beer & Brewing Craft Beer Pairings
96.7 The Eagle - Craft Beer and Halloween Candy Pairing
JP Sloan Halloween Candy to Craft Beer Pairings to Help You Survive the Night
VinePair - The Booze You Need to Get Through Trick-or-Treating
Happy Halloween!
