Bean to Barstool

In this episode, we talk with Christopher Nobles of Piety & Desire Chocolate in New Orleans.

I visited New Orleans a very long time ago on a college road trip, and a lot of my images from that trip are still so sharp and clear. My impression of the city was that it didn’t feel like it could exist in the United States, like it existed in a parallel version of the US or in a foreign country. The buildings and the foliage and the c...

In this episode, we talk with Greg & T from Front Porch Chocolate in Montana. They've crafted many of their excellent inclusion bars—Including Chai Rose, Fig & Cherry, and Strawberry Lemon—with beer pairing in mind, and here we talk with them about the concepts behind their bars and the beer pairings they've designed for each. 

The bars we discuss include:
Orange Thyme
Strawberry Lemon
Tiramisu
Fig ...

For our 100th full length episode of Bean to Barstool, we're talking with an old friend and supporter of the pod, Estelle Tracy. Estelle leads chocolate tastings and pairings through her business, 37 Chocolates, and in this episode we're tasting and pairing the adventurous bars from her new curated collection. Which wines and beers do we pair with a bar inspired by Beijing lamb skewers? How about the always challenging 10...

In this episode, we talk with Dorothy Neary of NearyNogs Chocolate in Northern Ireland. We discuss the importance of music in Irish culture and how it's influenced several of their chocolate bars, the use of distinctly Irish ingredients like gorse flower and seaweed, and the beautiful natural landscape around their factory that influences them creatively. We also discuss their use of Irish whiskey in several bars, and pairing ...

In this episode we talk with Michael Beans of Namesake Coffee in Dayton, Ohio. Michael and his wife and business partner, Jessica Beans, run Namesake with thought and intention, infusing their personalities into every aspect of their business. They want to remove the intimidation factor from good coffee, eliminating the snobbery and gatekeeping that can keep people from seeking out good coffee, but that doesn't mean they want ...

Diego Hernandez started Diego's Chocolate at Lake Atitlan in Guatemala in 1990. Diego and his family are of Tz’utujil Mayan heritage, and he adapted his abuela's sipping chocolate recipe into a unique format—rolls of untempered chocolate, often made with unique inclusions. All of the cacao and inclusions are grown in Guatemala.

In this episode, we talk with Nico Silverman, Diego's U.S. representative. We talk about Di...

I recently talked with Serge Savchuk, owner and chocolate maker at Vaka Chocolate in London, Ontario. We talked about the inspiration behind his spirits-infused or -inspired bars, including bars made with whisky, absinthe, gin, and rum, using spirits from North of 7 Distillery and Junction 56 Distillery. We also talked about what motivates him in developing unique inclusion, like his unexpected dill pickle and peanut butter bar. 

Wh...

Much of Tandy Peterson's life and career has been shaped by fire, from childhood memories of camping to working as a chef in a fine dining restaurant that cooked exclusively over fire. When she started making craft chocolate, she chose the name Embers as a nod to point when a cooking fire is perfectly cooked down, a moment of perfection. 

In this episode we talk with Tandy Peterson of Embers Chocolate in Phoenix, Arizona. We di...

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. Rodr...

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 c...

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...

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 ex...

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. Alo...

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 fa...

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 h...

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 celebrati...

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 sp...

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 b...

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 Raven Hanna, a molecular biochemist and biophysicist and the author of the book One Cacao Tree: Backyard Cocoa, Tiny Fermentations, and Chocolate Making in the Tropics. In this clip, Raven talks about tasting everything we can to expand our flavor vocabularies, and about how...