You may have tried chocolate in your beer, but you’ve probably never tried beer in your chocolate. Now you can, thanks to Kad Kokoa and Mahanakhon.
 
The two pioneering Thai craft brands have teamed up to produce The Beer Bar, a single origin chocolate bar enriched with roasted barley and hops. In other words, a breakfast stout in bar form.
 
“Originally, we wanted to develop a chocolate stout beer with Kad Kokoa, something really indulgent and complex, using local ingredients,” explains Avi Yashaya, partner in Thai craft beer brands Mahanakhon and Sivilai. “When the pandemic started closing down venues and making producing that beer impossible in the short term, we decided to try something entirely new.”
 
To do that, they opted for Kad Kokoa’s 70-percent Prachuap, which is made from cocoa beans sourced from farmers in Thailand’s narrowest province, Prachuap Khiri Khan. Yashaya says the delicate earthy and fruity qualities in this chocolate play off the variety of hops they used—Yellow Sub, a relatively new blend that promises apricot, orange and blackberry notes on the nose.
 
“Hops also provide a slight lingering bitterness to give the impression of beer once the creaminess and crunchy texture from the roasted barley fade,” he adds.
 
Yashaya says the flavor profile pairs perfectly with a cup of coffee, which means you can finally justify having both chocolate and beer with your breakfast.
 
The Beer Bar is priced at B150/bar. You can get one free with any order of B2,000 or more at mahanakhonbeer.com. You can also find it on Craft Cartel, a new platform spearheaded by the Mahanakhon crew that aims to promote Thai craft producers. Currently, they’re selling kombucha from Three Goats, chocolate from Kad Kokoa, their own beer and homebrew kits, and they intend to add more products to the platform soon. Stay tuned for more information about that project.