The 10 Best Chocolate Beers in Bottles or Cans

Similar to malted barley, chocolate is derived from a seed that is roasted and processed to make some of the world’s favorite treats. Like coffee, each cacao bean is perhaps best enjoyed infused into a liquid like chocolate milk, hot cocoa, mochas and especially dark and rich beers. Chocolate really does grow on trees, but integrating it into a craft beer is more challenging than you might think without relying on artificial extracts.

Every year ahead of Valentine’s Day and during the Stout month of February we highlight some of the best and most interesting chocolate beers you can try in bottles or cans. Some of these are easy to find depending on where you live, others are extremely limited and you have to seek out, but because each are available in packaged form they make for great gifts or to be enjoyed year-round.

Chocolate Strawberry Yeti

Great Divide Brewing

One of the longest running craft breweries in America in Denver, Colorado’s Great Divide Brewing found the secret to their success in the iconic Yeti Imperial Stout. Produced since 2004, the robust but not over-the-top (compared to modern day standards) is roasty and rich with malt flavors and a heap of American hop bitterness. Since 2010 Great Divide has twisted, mixed, pureed, and pumped up Yeti in dozens of alternate iterations over the years. Which brings us to Great Divide’s new winter/spring seasonal variant of Yeti with Chocolate and Strawberry. Released ahead of Valentine’s Day, this romantic and much more decadent version is sweetened with coconut sugar, strawberry puree, milky smooth lactose sugar, and a hefty measure of chocolate that edges off any of the beer's bitterness. Perfect for the season and those who are fans of the pastry stout emerging beer category. 9.5% abv and available February - April in biggie 19.2oz cans.

Parabolita

Firestone Walker Brewing

Firestone Walker is no stranger to intense, cellar beers that age like wine and with even more complexity. Their barrel-aged Parabola Imperial Stout is a classic that already taps into those chocolate flavors without actually having cacao in it. For the first time ever in 2022 the brewery decided to can one of their vintage beer, made by blending their deep cavernous well of oak-aged spirit and wine barreled beers to make a slightly lighter but even more desserty filling version of the iconic original.

Parabolita starts with a base of the Parabola already aged a year in premium bourbon barrels, but then to smooth it out and liven up the aged beer they blend in young Velvet Merlin milk stout for that silky mouthfeel. The final masterstroke for pastry lovers is an infusion of Madagascar vanilla beans, cocoa nibs, and sea salt to achieve a full Salted Caramel-style drinking experience. Somehow the final beer in the can manages to be both massive and mellow at 9.2% ABV with a boozy caramel and chocolate character like a spirit infused fudge truffle.

The Brewed Abides

Pelican Brewing

If Jeff Bridges knew beers were this good he might have opted for a pint rather than the classic milk, coffee, chocolate cocktail he famously downed in Coen brothers film The Big Lebowski. Crafted in a way to mimic the vodka based drink that Bridges’ character “The Dude” sipped constantly throughout the movie, Pelican Brewing first released The Brewed Abides as a one-off creation for Portland, OR’s Holiday Ale Festival in 2018 and it was so popular they brought it back as a winter seasonal in 2019.

The original cocktail is simply made with vodka, kahlua coffee liquor, and milk cream poured over the rocks. To recreate the flavors Pelican Brewing ditched the mostly flavorless fusel vodka alcohol for malt sugar based fermentation from Pale ale malt, C-75 carmel malt, and a dark roasted hulless barley that imparts color and richness without husky burnt bitterness. Milk sugar derived lactose imparts the creamy flavor and mouthfeel, fresh roasted coffee and vanilla beans add depth and soft sweetness, and a swirl of melted cacao nibs complete the depth of richness desired in a 7% ABV beer made to take the edge off without you even knowing it.

Coconut Cacao Barrel-Aged Dark Star

Fremont Brewing

Seattle’s Fremont Brewing has become one of Washington’s largest and most successful craft breweries off the backs of a mastery of West Coast IPA and lagers (stretching back before they were cool again) but is perhaps best known worldwide for their barrel-aged beers.

Fremont’s long-running mainstay Dark Star is an easy drinking oatmeal stout, but it has a much more intimidating great grandfather that lords over it like the ruler of a great house. Unlike it’s smaller, approachable offspring, Bourbon Barrel-Aged Dark Star (previously known as Kentucky Dark Star) is a black hole sucking all light into its recesses. This very special version of that behemoth adds coconut and cacao to round the edges off of the beast as it gently swallows your soul with each sip and leaves you loving every minute of it. The base starts with a blend of various bourbon barrel-aged Dark Star vintages each brewed with a complex blend of 2-Row Pale, Roast Barley, Crystal-60, Chocolate, and Carafa-2 malts with Flaked Oats for creaminess and helping to create an already luxurious chocolatey flavor and mouthfeel even before they add the cacao nibs to this special edition released just once a year.

Chocolate Rain

The Bruery

If the late-great artist once known as ‘Prince’ ever copulated with Placentia, California’s The Bruery, their lovechiled would probably be ‘Chocolate Rain.’ 

Based on The Bruery’s highly sought after hit bourbon barrel-aged Imperial Stout ‘Black Tuesday’ and quite possibly Prince’s seminal classic ‘Purple Rain’ this cacao and ‘nilla version really bangs when you can find it. This even more decadent version of the already over-the-top RIS is dripped in cacao nibs from the acclaimed TCHO out of Berkeley and peppered with milky and fresh vanilla beans. The result is an oily, boozy, insanely robust and insanely high 20.2% ABV sipper that will pull you into a hot and heavy affair that you won’t at all feel regretful about.

Noa Pecan Mud Cake

Omnipollo Brewing

Stockholm, Sweden’s Omnipollo Brewing are often credited with creating, or atleast kickstarting, the pastry beers category. So it’s no surprise that they make one of the highest rated and most sought after chocolate beers in the world. Brewer Noah Henok dreamed of becoming a pastry chef when he was 12, and considers this beer a tribute to his earlier ambitious as a confectioner and his ongoing weakness for desserts.

Noa Pecan Mud Cake is also known as “Noah Pecan Mad Cake” and strives to be reminiscent of a chocolate cake topped with chocolate glaze. The base stout recipe has plenty of secret additives, but the finished product is very dessert-like with notes of caramelized toffee, pecan, vanilla and chocolate with a light bitterness in the finish. Finding this beer can be a little difficult, but it does occasionally hit stores and shipping via suppliers like Drizly.

Hershey’s Chocolate Porter

Yuengling Brewery

It only took 120+ years for two of Pennsylvania’s most iconic brands to form an all-star chocolate and beer team-up. Based on Yuengling’s nearly 200 year old classic American Porter beer, the Hershey’s Chocolate Porter was a one-off collaboration that was brewed again and put into 12oz bottles for the first time this winter. Brewed using a combination of Hershey’s iconic chocolate syrup, Hershey’s cocoa powder, and cocoa nibs, the beer was an instant hit and can be difficult to find. If you get your hands on a bottle, you will notice the unmistakable taste of Hershey’s chocolate injected into the just slightly roasty Porter to give it a chocolatey finish and make for a great pairing with barbecue, cheese, and tamales. Available in 12oz bottles, 6-packs, and draft in Fall and Winter in 22 states.

Double Chocolate Stout

Rogue Ales

As one of the pioneers in the fermented chocolate maltshake suds game, Rogue Ales are no strangers to creating world-class cacao infused concoctions. Year after year we come back to the Chocolate Stout which has been brewed for well over a decade, but now we have a new way to enjoy it with a soft and creamy injection of nitro. While the more readily available Nitro Chocolate Stout is great, the bright blood red cans of Double Chocolate Stout are the chocolate kiss on top, the uber-cacao lovers dream come true.

Double Chocolate Stout multiplies everything about the original, nearly twice the malts and hops and as much syrupy viscous cocoa as you can fit into a 9% abv Imperial Stout. Rolled oats, honey, and specialty caramel, munich, and chocolate malts build the base around everyones favorite sweet. Available during late winter every year, get it while you can before it disappears as temperatures warm and rain dissipates.

Sexual Chocolate

Foothills Brewing

As the great lyricist John Wozniak once said, “I like sex and candy.” Foothills Brewing arguably made one of the first great chocolate beers of the modern era after an erotic evening with a chocolate fountain, or so the legend goes. Foothills Sexual Chocolate is a Russian Imperial Stout with bucketfuls of caramel, pulled espresso shots, buttery blackstrap molasses and responsibly wrapped Peruvian cocoa nibs penetrating all those rich and decadent flavors. Pour all that on top of a stimulating 75 IBU’s of hop bitterness and an arousing 9.6% ABV and you get Sexual Chocolate in a glass.

Cocoa Cow

Sunriver Brewing

As a child, you might have imagined a magical chocolate cow whose udders spurted chocolate milk, and dreamt of obtaining such a majestic beast some day. If that kid grew up to become a chocolate milk loving brewer, then Cocoa Cow would be the beer they made. Packed with cocoa nibs from Africa and milk derived sugar for sweet creamy Neskwik flavors, Cocoa Cow resembles a milkshake with just enough roasted chocolate malt and piney hops to remind you it’s a beer.