The Best Ale Beers To Pair With Dessert

When you've come to the end of a nice meal, it's only natural to top it off with a decadent dessert — and perhaps a final drink, as well. Typically, restaurants will offer a list of aperitifs, digestifs, and dessert wines to pair with your final course (crème brûlée and a sweet white, anyone?). But if you're more of a beer drinker, you may feel at a loss when it comes to finding the right pairing for sweet treats.

That's why Chowhound turned to beer expert Stephen Alexander for guidance. Alexander is the Sales & Marketing Director for Tall City Brewing Company in Midland, TX, and a member of the Public Relations & Marketing Committee for the Texas Craft Brewers Guild. He had plenty of recommendations for ales to complement all types of dessert flavor profiles. Ales and lagers are the two main categories of beer, and though plenty of foods pair deliciously with a crisp, clean lager, the wide variety of flavorful ales on the market means that you're bound to find one to suit your dessert of choice.

"Ales pair beautifully with desserts when you find complementary or contrasting flavors," Alexander says. To start, he advises, "Look for ales with sweetness, rich malt character, or subtle fruitiness, like stouts, porters, or fruit ales. For a successful pairing, match the intensity of the ale with the dessert's richness to avoid one overpowering the other."

Beer and chocolate can be a powerful pairing, especially if you take care to match harmonious flavors. A good rule of thumb for pairing the two is to drink lighter, gentler beers with similarly light and sweet confections like white or milk chocolate, and to match the bittersweet complexity of dark chocolate with a more intense dark beer. For rich, decadent desserts like chocolate cake, Stephen Alexander recommends a stout or porter.

"Stouts and porters are excellent choices for chocolatey desserts," he says. "These ales often have roasted malt flavors with notes of chocolate, coffee, and caramel that complement the richness of chocolate desserts. Their slightly creamy texture and sweetness enhance the overall experience."

Stout beers are ales characterized by their dark color and bold, nearly charred taste. You may be most familiar with Guinness brand stout, but there are many other stouts on the market. Porters are a similar yet distinct type of ale that is typically made with malts (while stouts are made from unmalted, roasted barley). That tends to give porters a particularly chocolatey flavor, while stouts may taste more akin to coffee, though this distinction can be subtle and variable. For a go-to ale to pair with chocolate desserts, Alexander says, "I would suggest Left Hand's Milk Stout Nitro for sure."

If you prefer a dessert that balances sweetness with a touch of tartness, you'll likely pick a lemon bar or a slice of cherry pie over chocolate cake any day. That also means you should probably cast aside stouts or even pale ales in favor of a type of beer that's practically tailor-made to pair with fruity and juicy desserts: sour ales.

"Sour ales, like gose or Berliner Weisse, pair well with tart desserts," Stephen Alexander says. "Their tangy, acidic flavors mirror the tartness in the dessert, while cutting through its sweetness. The light body of these ales also prevents them from overwhelming the dessert's flavors."

Sour ales, such as gose, are brewed with live bacteria and wild yeast, which gives them a distinctive acidic character and fermented fruit taste that one might compare to natural wine or even kombucha. A favorite beer of cider enthusiasts, sour ales often have a juicy, fruit-forward flavor profile that is a natural fit to complement a tart treat.

The rich intensity of chocolate cake may be delicious, and the sweet-tart combination of a fruity dessert can be delightful, but sometimes what you really crave is something lighter, more subtly sweet and delicate, like a velvety crème brûlée or a slice of pound cake. If warm, floral vanilla is the flavor you're leaning into, what is your best course of ale action?

Stephen Alexander says he would "pair mellow desserts with golden ales or wheat ales." Golden ales, also known as blondes, are characterized by their brilliant yellow hue, mild and balanced flavors, and pale malt attributes. Wheat ales are made with a large proportion of malted wheat in addition to malted barley, and share a similarly smooth, drinkable flavor profile. Alexander says, "These lighter ales have subtle fruity or floral notes that won't overpower the delicate flavors of vanilla or cream."

He adds that a cream ale (named as such even though it contains no cream or dairy) or a light Belgian ale "could also complement the dessert's richness without being too bold." Unlike the name implies, cream ales aren't particularly creamy; they're actually a pale, crisp, dry drink. A lightly sweet, clean ale with mild bitterness and a dry finish is a great counterpoint to a mellow and sugary dessert.