Beer and chocolate, it doesn’t get more Belgian than that. Add in some fries and waffles and you’ve got a true Belgian cocktail. We wouldn’t recommend combining all four during one sitting but apparently, beer and chocolate do pair well together, proven by the new Belgian beer, Kbosse. However, don’t expect a chocolaty taste because you’d be disappointed.
For Kbosse, seven Walloon chocolatiers decided to join their forces: Pierre Plas, Jean-Philippe Darcy , Euphrasie Mbamba, Didier Smeets, Ariqua Denis, Tarquin Fontaine and Mélanie Lemmens. When seeing how the cocoa pods, encapsulating the very loved cocoa beans, were discarded after the harvest, they sought a way to use that rest product and found a solution in beer brewing.
“When the beans are harvested, their initial white and sticky appearance changes into a very flagrant violet colour. After a process of fermentation, these beans undergo a stunning transformation before they become chocolate. It’s interesting to notice that after this phase, only the white membrane, which is usually not appreciated and therefore thrown away by the farmers, remains the original pod”, explained Tarquin Fontaine for Belgian newspaper Le Soir.
The pods are directly transformed into a juice by the farmers with whom the chocolatiers work because they are very fragile and oxidise quickly. Therefore, the pulp is reduced into a concentrated juice which is then sent Antwerp before ending up at the Grain d’orgs brewery in Hombourg, charged with the production of the beer. Kbosse thus allows the use of a product that would otherwise become waste. An eco-conscious beer, if you want. Moreover, the pods harbour a lot of taste, fibres and vitamins, which translate into the beer.
“The idea wasn’t to make a chocolate beer”, Tarquin Fontaine says to the Belgian Trends Magazine. “Not only because that’s already been done before but also because chocolate is a greasy, sugary substance which doesn’t blend well with alcohol.
After processing the pods, what you’re left with is a fresh tasting beer with notes of litchi, citrus and passion fruit, with an alcohol content of just 3.5%. The beers can be bought online or through the shops and some partners of the associated chocolate makers since November 14th.