Halloween for grownups: candy-flavored brews

With Halloween fast approaching, I’ve been thinking back to the sacks overflowing with chocolates and candies that were filled by hours of house-to-house extortion. While I’m too old to properly trick-or-treat these days, I still enjoy the occasional Reese’s or Almond Joy, and I especially enjoy a craft beer that invokes memories of a pillowcase bursting with sugary treats.

Here are four craft brews that are perfect to pair with an evening manning the front door and handing out candy to all the wandering ghosts, ghouls and princesses. They’ll even remind you of those coveted candies from Halloweens past.

Stone Brewing Co - Smoked Porter with Chocolate and Orange Peel

This new variant of Stone’s classic smoked porter balances the signature smoky aroma with chocolate and aromatic orange peel. There’s a vibrant orange quality that reminds me of ripping into a fresh mandarin orange when the oils erupt from the rind as you peel it. The chocolate is present, but subdued, and the smoke character is pronounced and maybe a little distracting. This version of the porter isn’t as cohesive as the vanilla bean variant, but it’s an interesting use of citrus flavors in a dark beer that isn’t often seen.

Karl Strauss - Peanut Butter Cup Porter

Chocolate beers are not uncommon these days, but this brew from the veteran San Diego craft brewery is one of the most chocolate-forward brews in recent memory. It’s also chock full of rich peanut butter flavor (how do they do that?) and a sip is about as close as you can get to drinking a peanut butter cup without using a blender. It’s a remarkable beer made all the more remarkable by the light body and dry finish. A candy-flavored brew that doesn’t overwhelm the palate or leave a cloying impression? It’s a real treat perfect for a Halloween session.

Alaskan Brewing - Imperial Red

Red ales, and the more potent imperial versions, are a relative of the hop-forward IPAs that use a higher proportion of crystal malts. These grains, also known as caramel malts, are strewed to liquify and cook the sugars inside the kernel. Depending on how long the maltster stews the grain, the resulting flavors can range from honey to rich toffee to burnt caramel, and the red ales made with the malt marry these candy flavors to pungent American hops. Alaskan Brewing’s example is lemony, and little tropical, and sweet without over doing it.

Deschutes Brewery - Fresh Squeezed

Here’s an IPA that’s a little sweeter than the average West Coast-style brew, and is full of flavorful new hops with intense citrus and tropical fruit flavors. It’s got plenty of bitterness, but the malt body, again bolstered with caramel malts, makes the hoppy flavors pop. Fresh Squeezed is one of those beers that’s almost as enjoyable to smell as it is to drink, and while your nose might be convinced that there’s actual citrus in the brew, all that Gummi candy flavor is from the Citra and Mosaic hops.