Bean to Barstool David Nilsen

Today we're looking at a fascinating collaboration between a craft chocolate maker and a craft brewery. Eric Parkes at Somerville Chocolate is a tenant in Aeronaut's building, so he makes chocolate just a short distance from where brewmaster Mark Bowers and Director of Brewing Operations Filipe Garcia are brewing beer. This has allowed for an ongoing creative exchange between these worlds, yielding unique beers made with cacao and unique chocolate bars made with beer, brewing ingredients, and cacao and other ingredients that have been first used to make beer. The relationship has allowed for creative experimentation and mutual education. In this interview, Eric, Mark, Filipe, and I discuss the benefits of this arrangement and look in detail at the beers and chocolate bars that have come from it.

You can learn more about Aeronaut Brewing here.

You can learn more about Somerville Chocolate and order bars here.

Aeronaut beers discussed in this episode include Coco Sutra and a barrel-aged Baltic Porter with cacao.

Somerville bars discussed include Hops Dark Milk, Beer Fermented Dark, and two variations of a Beer Soaked bar made with the cacao from the above-mentioned Baltic Porter.
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Hops are the primary seasoning in beer, but what actually Are hops, and how are these used? In this quick bonus episode, we look at what hops are, how they're used, when they're added during the brewing process, and how they impact beer flavor. Enjoy this quick primer on hops!
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Nick Davis makes bean to bar chocolate at One One Cacao on the northeast coast of Jamaica. The cacao trade on the island has been tainted by a colonial past of slavery and oppression, but is now being reclaimed as farmers and makers take back agency. Nick shares his thoughts on the good and bad of inclusions, the challenges and opportunities in Jamaican cacao and chocolate, the historical and modern impacts of colonialism on both, and how making chocolate has allowed him to reclaim some of his family’s story and power that had been taken by that colonial harm. I’m so grateful to Nick for his time and his insights, and I think you’re going to enjoy this conversation as well.

Mentioned in the episode are Grenada Chocolate, Dandelion Chocolate, Baiani Chocolate, and Bean to Bar Brasil, among others.

Nick also mentions Sarah Bharath of Meridien Cacao, who has appeared on the show several times. You can listen to those conversations here, here, and here. 
Guest bio: Nick Davis started One One Cacao as a bean to bar then tree to bar chocolate company in 2016. Based in Jamaica, he moved from the U.K. (where his parents settled in the ‘60s) to the island as a journalist. He did a story on Mott Green and the legendary Grenada Chocolate Company and the rest is his-story. 
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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. In today's Bite Sized we hear from Arcelia Gallardo from Mission Chocolate in Sao Paulo, Brazil. When Arcelia first moved to Brazil and began making bean to bar chocolate, the quality of the Brazilian cacao that was available at the time was not great, but she was committed to working with it. After her friend at Chocolate Maya in Santa Barbara tasted one of Arcelia’s two ingredient bars and suggested the cacao wasn’t quite ready for that challenge, Arcelia decided to set her chocolate apart by using the natural bounty of Brazil, employing fruits and nuts that were unique to the new culture she found herself in. Here’s Arcelia to talk about the steps that led to working with ingredients like cupuacu and baru nut.
You can find out more about Mission Chocolate here order their bars through Bar & Cocoa here.

You can listen to my full episode with Arcelia here.
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Today we’re talking with Brad Kintzer, the chocolate maker for TCHO Chocolate in Berkeley, California. In our conversation, we discuss TCHO's corporate ownership and how they source their cacao. We also talk about the flavor labs TCHO has established in many cacao growing regions to work with growers on a mutually-informed flavor lexicon for chocolate, and to improve quality.

We spend about the last third of the interview talking about TCHO’s relationship to craft beer, both through the cacao nibs they provide to hundreds of brewers through their relationship with BSG (Brewers Supply Group), a major ingredient provider, and through direct collaborations with breweries like Fieldwork and Faction. These collabs have resulted in some really unique chocolate beers, and most recently, a beer chocolate bar called Hoppy Hour made with Cascade, Centennial, and Chinook hops.

Listen in as we talk with Brad Kintzer at TCHO.

You can learn more about TCHO and purchase their bars here, and you can purchase the Hoppy Hour bar specifically here.



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Hops get a lot of buzz from beer lovers because of their expressive, fruity aromas and flavors, but malt is really the foundational ingredient of beer. You can technically brew beer without hops (though all commercial examples contain them), but you can’t brew it without malted grain, and the different malt varieties offer a dazzling rainbow of potential colors, aromas, flavors, and textures for building a new beer. 

So what is malt, how is it made, how is it used in brewing, and what flavors and characteristics does it provide for beer? In this bonus episode, we talk all about the basics of malt.



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