Chocolate Beer

Valentine's day came and went last month. As I've mentioned many times, in Japan women give chocolates to men on Valentine's, and the men reciprocate on "White Day" a month later. There was no way for Ritsuko to top last years amazing success, so she kept it simple this year, with a duo of chocolate-flavoured beers from a local brewery in Okayama. They are both very good as beers, and do not come across as a ploy or a stunt at all.

White-chocolate beer, and dark chocolate beer. Both from a small brewery in Okayama.

The dark beer is great. It has a clear, strong cacao flavour with a pleasing bitterness that meshes well with the burnt-sugar tones of the beer itself. It's not sweet or cloying at all, but just brings a very filling, mature taste. People sometimes describe stouts as having a chocolate tone, and this beer plays up that flavour with a well-balanced dose of the real thing. This beer I would be happy to drink on a regular basis if I could.

The light beer is a nice full-bodied beer with a bit of cacao butter for flavouring. The effect is rather like that of a weissbier but with less acidity and a more even, milky tone. It's a good beer but the chocolate flavour is muted enough that it would be easy to miss unless you knew to look for it. It's a pleasant and flavourful beer but not as distinctive as the dark one, perhaps.

Jurassic Chocolat

Valentine's day in Japan is when women give chocolates to men; they reciprocate a month later on White Day. It's the season for fancy and unique sweets, in other words, and while a lot of luxury valentine's chocolate is actually bought by women for themselves, there is a lot of gift chocolate made specifically to appeal to men.

A couple of years ago Ritsuko got me these wonderful Chocolate Tools, and last year I received this set from the same Kobe chocolate maker. I didn't think there'd be any way for her ever to top that, but oh, was I wrong.

Jurassic Chocolat - cool, a dinosaur perhaps?

Uh? A manual and a set of tools? Not just a dinosaur methinks.

Ahhh! A hammer to break the hard chocolate crust; a spoon to dig up soft stuff and a brush to carefully remove small bits. Let's go digging for bones!

Carefully break the hard crust. It takes a fair few whacks to make it crack. The hammer is surprisingly heavy and solid.

We're through. The crust of dark chocolate is pretty thick and quite hard, but the layer beneath seems to be much softer and crumblier.

make a good-sized opening, and spoon away bits of crust so we get a nice surface to work on.

Carefully remove the chocolate gravel with the brush - we don't know how deep it is and we don't want to harm anything below it.

Ah, there's something there! A bit of bone-white chocolate is poking through.

Carefully brush away the gravel; we don't want to break anything.

It's a fossil - a tasty white-chocolate fossil embedded in a slab of dark chocolate.

Jurassic Chocolat.

This is incredibly geeky, and amazingly wonderful. Ritsuko knows me only too well, I think. I spent a glorious sunday planning the shoot, setting up lighting and camera (I realize now I should have raked a side-light across the slab on the last image), then slowly digging up and uncovering the chocolate fossil, taking pictures all the while. It's not just a bit of candy, it's a whole day of geeky entertainment.

It's good chocolate too. We've eaten all the crust already, and we'll use the gravel for hot cocoa. We haven't started on the fossil itself yet so I can't say how the white chocolate tastes, but it should be as good as the rest. Thank you, Ritsuko, for a wonderful gift!

Valentine's Day (With Pictures!)

Valentine's day, again, and in the Japanese tradition women give chocolates to men (we reciprocate on "White Day" next month). It fell on a Sunday this year, which meant a lot less "giri-choco" - chocolates you're obliged to give to coworkers and classmates rather than lovers. So shops were pushing chocolates to buy for yourself, rather than as gifts. This is another aspect of the holiday: Lots of high-quality chocolate is sold only in the weeks before valentine, so chocolate lovers stock up on the good stuff to keep them over the year. Shops explicitly marketing to that groups is new, I believe.

Anyway, last year Ritsuko gave me some absolutely wonderful Chocolate Tools from Frantz in Kobe. Really fun idea, and excellent chocolate. So this year she got me their other speciality set:

Nut and bolt, lamp and lamp socket. In solid chocolate. The threads are real - the nut and the the bolt fit together, and the lamp screws nicely into the socket.

Here's the chocolate lightbulb and a medium size real one for comparison. It's a pretty serious chunk of chocolate.

The nut and bolt unscrewed. The only problem with them really is that the chocolate starts melting when you handle it. Should really wear gloves I guess.

Not directly related to valentine, but Ritsuko recently found this "chocolate beer" drink in a shop and brought back a can. Sapporo Beer is a large brewery of course, and Royce is a major confectionery maker from Hokkaido. It's beer brewed with chocolate beans. I expected a normal beer with perhaps a bitter hint, but to my surprise the chocolate dominates, and the beer looks like guinness - black, heavy and foamy. There's no sweetness; a clear, bitter chocolate flavour overlaying a dark beer. It was really good.

But good or not, I don't think it has much of a chance over the long run, unfortunately. It's too different be a stand-in for normal beer, and selling it as a beer will put off a lot of people that might otherwise enjoy it. It's a tough marketplace out there.

By the way, I probably had even more fun taking pictures of these chocolate parts than I will actually eating them. It's a simple setup: a white sheet in the background lit up by a strobe about 1.5-2 f-stops "too bright" so it washes out and becomes completely white. The items are on a sheet of white, shiny plastic I got at the hardware store. The plastic reflects the white sheet except in the shadow of the items, giving them a faint reflection. A second strobe from up right and a reflector (a white cloth) on the left brightens the parts so they don't just become silhouettes. It's a bit tricky; you need enough light that the fairly dark items become clearly visible, but too much light removes the reflections.

The can is even easier, with no strobe at all. There's daylight coming in from the left, and a reflector (a white shirt on a hangar) on the right reflects it back on to the can. I hung a black cloth in the shadows to give the picture a near-black background. Since it's available light you need a fairly long shutter speed and a tripod to make it work. A second reflector in the front might had been a good idea.

I spent a great afternoon shooting this while Ritsuko watched the Olympics. She knows how to make me happy.

Sweet Tools

Valentine's day was two weeks ago. As you already undoubtedly know, this is celebrated a little different from the US (and Sweden, of course, where it's hardly observed at all): it's the women who give chocolates, flowers or similar to men. Next month, on "White Day", any guy who got something on Valentine's will reciprocate with gifts of chocolates or flowers of their own.

Often, women are expected to give chocolates not only to their love interest but to coworkers and bosses as well, so-called "giri choko" - obligation chocolates. New to me this year is the idea of "tomo choko" - friend chocolates - where women give chocolate to close female friends (no, chocolate sauce is not involved. Get your mind out of the gutter). Also, a lot of chocolates and candies are for sale only during this time so most of it is actually bought by people for their own consumption, not for giving away. One member of our household has a habit of buying sweets to last the rest of the year during this time; she is far from alone in doing so.

Of course, most chocolate gift recipients are male. Which is why the chocolate Ritsuko got for me this year is bordering on pure genius:

Chocolate toolset: socket wrench, spanner and pliers, packaged in a metal case. Here shot together with the real thing for comparison.

These chocolate tools actually come as a set in a gray metal case. According to Ritsuko, the shop selling these toolsets was mobbed with people, and I'm not surprised. Seriously, I have no idea how to top this come White Day next month.

Here's another picture. Yes, I had fun planning and taking them. It's the reason this post is kind of late, by the way; I had to find the time to prepare and set up this shot.

The chocolate is also really, really good - dark and bitter but cut with fresh cream to give it a wonderful balance of flavor and smoothness without being heavy.the socket wrench and half the pliers are gone already.