Bean to Barstool Podcast | Leila Carvajal of Cocoa Supply

Leila Carvajal’s family has worked with cacao for generations, stretching back to the 19th century, but every generation has reinterpreted their relationship with this fruit tree that gives us chocolate. Growing up in Ecuador, Leila remembers visiting the cacao farms that provided beans for Cocoa Supply, her family’s company. Leila eventually became a chemical engineer and now lives in the U.S., and has guided Cocoa Supply into its current position as a leading provider of cacao for bean to bar makers and, notably, craft breweries.

Listen in as Leila introduces us to Cocoa Supply. We talk about their business and sourcing practices, the farms they work with, and the products they offer. First though, she tells us the story of her family’s company, a story that begins on a small cacao farm in the 1800s.

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Bean to Barstool Podcast | Beer Basics

A lot of Bean to Barstool listeners come to this podcast from the craft chocolate world, and given how complicated and overwhelming beer can be, we want to make sure you all get to enjoy the beer-related parts of this podcast to the fullest. Today we’re going to look at beer basics—the ingredients and processes of brewing and some frequently asked questions about beer, which will hopefully make the beer conversations we have on this show make more sense and be even more enjoyable. Grab a beer and listen in!

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Book Review & Interview | Josh Bernstein’s The Complete Beer Course

The revised and expanded edition of Josh Bernstein’s The Complete Beer Course: From Novice to Expert in 12 Tastings Classes comes out June 6 from Union Square & Co., and is less an updated edition than an entirely new vision of the original concept. The title was first published in 2013, and a lot has changed in craft beer in the last decade. From the explosion of brewery openings between 2012 to 2014, to the emergence and subsequent dominance of Hazy IPAs, to long-needed (and ongoing…slowly) internal culture changes, craft beer in 2023 is hardly recognizable from the industry Bernstein covered ten years ago.

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Bean to Barstool Podcast | Arron Liu of Chocobien

In this episode of Bean to Barstool, David Nilsen talks with Arron Liu of Chocobien in Hong Kong. Chocobien is a bean-to-bar chocolate company that produces many truly unique bars that employ flavors and ingredients from other artisan food and beverage segments, including beer, whiskey, coffee, sake, tea and more. Chocobien’s Beer Fermented bar uses malt, hops, and beer yeast in innovative ways to subtly evoke the flavors of beer from Hong Kong’s Black Kite Brewing. Arron talks about the ideas behind these bars, the partnerships and processes that went into their development, and the satisfaction this curious and creative maker finds in achieving the flavors he could only hold in his imagination at the start of each experiment.

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Ohio Breweries Continue Their Awards Success at WBC

Ohio craft breweries earned 10 medals at this week’s World Beer Cup (WBC) in Nashville, Tennessee. Continuing the Buckeye state’s run of success at the Brewers Association’s largest events — WBC and the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) — seven Ohio breweries earned medals, including six golds for beers deemed the best in their style against breweries around the world. 10,213 beers from 2,375 breweries in 51 countries competed for medals in 103 categories.

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Bean to Barstool Podcast | Sarah Bharath on Cacao Fermentation (Ep. 59)

Many people don’t realize chocolate is a fermented food. Before we can make chocolate from cacao, that cacao has to undergo a fermentation process. This process is usually spontaneous, meaning the microbiotic cultures that carry out cacao fermentation are not manually added to the fermentation substrate but instead occur naturally. That doesn’t mean it’s a hands off process. A great deal of knowledge and expertise both traditional and technical is required to yield the best results. The entire process has much in common with spontaneous fermentation used in brewing Lambics and many Wild Ales.

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Bean to Barstool Podcast | Estelle Tracy on Pairing Wine and Chocolate

Pairing beer and chocolate is one of the major topics of Bean to Barstool. Chocolate can pair beautifully with a wide variety of grown-up beverages, however, and most people probably think of wine for this role first. Estelle Tracy leads wine and chocolate pairing events professionally. She comes to this not as a stuffy expert but as a curious observer who has learned along the way, following her senses to new areas of knowledge and expertise without losing the joy of discovery.

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Bean to Barstool Podcast | Honey Beer & Honey Chocolate

Honey beer styles are more popular than ever, but they aren’t new. There were several beverages in antiquity that were fermented from honey, many of which have survived today. Mead is fermented entirely from honey, while Braggot is basically a hybrid of beer and mead. In recent history, Belgian brewers have proven adept at brewing Biere de Miel, less a style than a group of beers that incorporate honey. And from there, modern craft brewers have started putting honey into more and more styles.

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Bean to Barstool Podcast | Hi-Wire Brewing’s 10W-40 Chocolate Imperial Stouts

In this episode, host David Nilsen talk with brewers at Hi-Wire Brewing in Asheville, North Carolina, about 10W-40, a family of Imperial Stouts brewed with French Broad Chocolates cacao, Dynamite coffee, and Ugandan vanilla. He talks with Peter Batinski, head brewer at Hi-Wire’s South Slope location in Asheville, where he trials many of Hi-Wire’s beers and leads innovation; and Hank Marshall, head brewer at the Big Top, Hi-Wire’s production brewery near Biltmore Village in Asheville. Peter and Hank talk about developing new variants of 10W-40, the process of brewing the base beer, the dozens of 10W-40 variants, and the related beers that have sprung off from the 10-dub family.

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Bean to Barstool Podcast | Wolves, Sons & Ethereal Confections

In this episode we talk with Chris Davison of Wolf’s Ridge Brewing and Colin Vent of Seventh Son Brewing, both in Columbus, Ohio, who use quality cacao in a variety of their beers. Both brewers source their cacao from Ethereal Confections with Ethereal Confections in a suburb of Chicago, Illinois, and we’ll also talk with Marisa Allen and Michael Ervin of Ethereal, who also provide cacao to a variety of other breweries.

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Bean to Barstool Podcast | Arcelia Gallardo of Mission Chocolate on Brazilian Chocolate & Beer

In this episode we talk with Arcelia Gallardo, the founder and chocolate maker at Mission Chocolate in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Arcelia has taken a long and winding road to making world class chocolate in Brazil, and as she’ll explain, her own journey is interwoven with the growth of the cacao industry and bean to bar chocolate scene in Brazil over the last decade. Arcelia also talks about the exciting craft beer scene in Brazil right now, and its relationship to cacao.

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Bean to Barstool Podcast | Beer and Chocolate Language

In this episode of Bean to Barstool, we explore the differences in the descriptive language used for beer and chocolate, and look at ways these worlds could be bridged. Host David Nilsen talks with beer writer Randy Mosher, Burial Beer co-founder and CEO Jess Reiser, chocolate writer Megan Giller, French Broad Chocolates co-founder Jael Skeffington (Jael Rattigan at the time), and chocolate retailer and educator London Coe about beer and chocolate language and why it matters.

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Bean to Barstool Podcast | Trinidad & Tobago Cacao in Beer & Chocolate

In this episode of Bean to Barstool, host David Nilsen talks with Sarah Bharath, a former academic who now works with cacao farmers in Trinidad & Tobago on behalf of Meridian Cacao, assisting them in improving their farming and post-harvest processes in hopes of increasing the amount of fine flavor cacao Meridian is then able to purchase and pass along to craft chocolate makers. We also talk with Chris Heier, head brewer at Half Hitch Brewing in Cochrane, Alberta, Canada. Chris has family in Trinidad & Tobago, and has brewed a beer and made his own chocolate with Meridian’s Trinidadian cacao from Jagassar Estate.

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Bean to Barstool Podcast | Smoke in Beer & Chocolate

In this episode of Bean to Barstool, host David Nilsen talks with Caleb Michalke of Sugar Creek Malt in Indiana, an artisan malthouse providing a range of unusual smoked malts for smoked beer. We also talk with Natalie Suwanprakorn of Xoconat in Bangkok, Thailand, and Eric Parks of Somerville Chocolate in Somerville, Massachusetts, who are both introducing smoke flavors to their bean to bar chocolates.

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Yellow Springs & Urban Artifact Partner to Benefit Women’s Brewing Scholarship

Two southwest Ohio breweries are partnering for International Women’s Day to brew beers that will benefit a women’s scholarship to Cincinnati State’s Brewing Science program. Yellow Springs Brewery in Yellow Springs and Urban Artifact in Cincinnati will brew two beers to be released on March 4, with proceeds providing scholarship funds for a woman to attend the Brewing Science certificate or degree program and ideally enter the brewing industry. The collaboration is being organized by women at each brewery who credit the support and camaraderie of other women in helping them advance their careers.

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Bean to Barstool Podcast | Nicole Hewat of World Tree Chocolate

In this episode of Bean to Barstool, David Nilsen talks with Nicole Hewat, founder of World Tree Chocolate. World Tree offers curated chocolate boxes based on flavor preferences, but Nicole is also an artist, and she has used cacao in various forms for watercolor paintings as well as illustrations for a book about the cacao-growing and chocolate-making process. During our conversation we talked about flavor and the tasting experience, her process for creating her paintings, and the way flavor can interact with our emotions and the art we take in during the tasting process.

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Bean to Barstool Podcast | Ratza Chocolate

Sara Ratza loves plants. She’s a certified Holistic Health Practitioner, and she got into chocolate making through herbal medicine. She brings that plant wisdom and love for green, growing things to the art of chocolate making at Ratza Chocolate. Sara incorporates a variety of botanicals into her bars, including hops, an interest carried over from her love for craft beer.

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Bean to Barstool Podcast | Lust & Chocolate with Author Michele Hauf

With Valentine’s Day around the corner, David Nilsen decided to sit down with author Michele Hauf, who has written a romance novel themed around craft and bean to bar chocolate called Lust and Chocolate. During their conversation, they talked about her process for writing the book, her own journey into craft chocolate, and whether or not chocolate is really an aphrodisiac.

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Bean to Barstool Podcast | Maple Beer & Chocolate

Maple is a part of life in eastern North America. In this episode, you’ll hear from Canadian and American bean to bar chocolate makers and American craft brewers who use maple sap, sugar and syrup local to their areas in thoughtful, nuanced maple chocolate and maple beer. All of them had memories that tied the flavor of maple into the stories of their lives, and today you’ll hear how evocative the smells and flavors of maple can be. Read More

Bean to Barstool Podcast | Wood, Beer & Chocolate

What do trees taste like, and can you make beer and chocolate with them? In this episode of Bean to Barstool, David Nilsen talks with multiple experts to unlock how the flavor of wood impact beer and chocolate. Listen as Marika Josephson of Scratch Brewing, chocolate writer Shay Pal, Marika Josephson of Map Chocolate, and The Flavor of Wood: In Search of the Wild Taste of Trees from Smoke and Sap to Root and Bark author Artur Cesar-Erlach discuss how trees influence some of our favorite indulgences.
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