Happy National Chocolates Candy Day! Yes, it’s a thing. From conversations with friends, family, and customers around the Peaks & Pints cooler, it seems like giving your significant other a box of chocolates on Valentine’s Day has become horribly tacky and passé. What about today? Does a non-Valentine’s Day box of chocolates represent custom, convention and, therefore, cliché? Will you be accused of not putting any thought into the matter? Peaks & Pints wishes buying someone a box of chocolates didn’t automatically peg you as an uncreative loser with no taste. The chocolate in some of those boxes ain’t half bad, and not everyone can afford (or even wants) an avant-garde container of chocolat from the likes of Richart. That said (cliché right there!), Peaks & Pints suggests forgoing an assortment of buttercreams, caramels, and nut clusters today, and instead give your loved one a flight of chocolate craft beer. Peaks and Pints Beer Flight: Chocolate Candy Day is all one needs to feel loved. Even if you’re buying it for yourself.
Peaks and Pints Beer Flight: Chocolate Candy Day
Bottle Logic Mind Over Batter
12% ABV
Bottle Logic Brewing baked up a brilliant bourbon barrel-aged walnut brownie-inspired imperial pastry stout with the buoyant boatmen of Georgia’s Pontoon Brewing. Expect aromas of sweet, dark cacao, bourbon-soaked oak, and an increasing walnut richness as the liquid comes to ambient temperature. On the palate, there’s a bitter Baker’s chocolate backbone, reminiscent of that perfect crispy corner piece of brownie with a silky finish of walnut richness.
Siren Craft Death By Caribbean Chocolate Cake
12.2% ABV
Siren Craft Brew’s 2024 version of their Caribbean Chocolate Cake is their richest, thickest, most indulgent stout so far. Hand-roasted cacao nibs give hints of tamarind and soft lemon, along with a beautiful chocolate baseline. The malts provide coffee and roast notes in abundance, while the hop profile adds orange and coconut flavors. Spinning on Cypress wood is the icing on the cake — offering lightly toasted vanilla wafers and delicate tannins, balancing the inherent sweetness of the beer.
E9 Brewing Choco Bliss
12.5% ABV
Matt Rhodes brewed delicious stouts before Fort George Brewery grabbed him away from Narrows Brewing in Tacoma. Fort George knows stouts well — and talent. Rhodes left his brewery in Astoria and traveled back to Tacoma to brew a dark, rich and decadent stout at E9 Brewing in Tacoma’s Historic Brewery District. The result is Choco Bliss, an imperial stout aged in Russell’s Reserve 10 Year Bourbon barrels and then lightly kissed with cacao nibs and vanilla for the icing on top.
Prairie Holiday Weekend
13.9% ABV
This is one of Prairie Artisan Ales’ highest rated beers of all time. It’s the world’s only perfect beer to crack open after you’ve eaten a turkey, the dishes are scrubbed and put away, and you’re settling into your recliner to watch the Detroit Lions snap a seven-year Thanksgiving losing streak beating the Chicago Bears. Holiday weekend is a bourbon barrel-aged stout with coconut, cacao nibs, cinnamon and marshmallow.
Block 15 Imagine 2024
14% ABV
A blend of Belgian-inspired imperial stouts matured for one and two years in freshly emptied Willett bourbon barrels, Block 15 Brewing’s deep, dark, and decadent Imagine 2024 is their strongest offering blended once a year. Imagine notes of burnt cocoa, baker’s chocolate, toffee, a hint of vanilla, and not boozy at all despite being 14 percent.
LINK: Peaks & Pints beer and cider cooler inventory
