Hippity Hop Flop

Easter is just around the corner and with that in mind I felt compelled to take a run at pairing traditional Easter candies with beer. The Halloween pairing had gone well so I rounded up enough sugar to fill a few Easter baskets, some friends and off we went.

Our bunny trail was lined with the over-the-top-sweet Cadbury eggs, pastel speckled robin eggs (malted milk balls), an assortment of traditional jelly beans including the love-'em-or-hate-'em black ones and the quintessential Peeps.

Instead of selecting which candy to work on pairing first we decided to select a beer and see where it took us. First up was Breakside Pilsner, a German-style lager, which we found not to pair very well, save for three "flavors" of jelly beans - red, pink and yellow. Deciding to try another pilsner, we cracked open a Heater Allen Pils, a Bohemian-style pale lager, which turned out to be more agreeable to the sweet selection. It went nicely with both the Peeps and the malted milk balls.

Seeking to find something that would stand up to the toothachingly sweet Cadbury eggs, we tried both Samuel Smith's Organic Chocolate Stout and Lindemans Framboise. The stout turned out to have a flavor profile that was too close to the candy but not surprisingly, the framboise was very nice with it.

Since I was the only lover of black jelly beans in the group it was up to me to test them out. As it turned out I found them to be delicious with the framboise, the flavors combining to create a cassis-like (blackcurrant) flavor.

While this pairing wasn't quite a train wreck, it was certainly far less successful than the Halloween version had been. I remain undaunted and will be on the lookout for the next candy themed beer pairing I can convince some folks to join in with me. Are you in?