Stealing candy from your baby: beer pairings for Halloween loot

VANCOUVER (NEWS 1130) – It’s a trick and a treat — stealing candy from your child’s Halloween bag and then enjoying it with a frosty, cold beer.

“I’m not encouraging parents to steal their kids’ candy!” says Tim McLaughlin with Steam Whistle Brewing. But he says however you get your candy, pairing it with a nice pilsner is a good bet.

“I think it would be great with M&Ms or Smarties, it really cuts the sweetness of that candy shell with the chocolate, giving your mouth a little bit of relief from the sweetness,” McLaughlin says.

He suggests a hoppy pale ale with cinnamon-flavoured or spicy candies, and any combination of chocolate and caramel goes great with an amber ale.

What about peanut butter cups?

“More of a dark lager. With those styles, you will get a little bit more sweetness off the front. Typically, those peanut butter cups aren’t quite as sweet as some of the other candies you’ll see, so it actually balances very nicely with sort of the more malt-forward flavours that you get in a dark lager or an amber-style beer. [They] would be a great compliment to a Reese’s peanut butter cup.”

And for a molasses kiss? Break out the stout and try not to break your teeth.

“Maybe not so much a Guinness type of stout, but some of the ones that you can find that are imported from Asia, like Lion for example, actually have a lot notes of molasses in them, even some porters would as well, so if you were thinking about a molasses kiss — not my favourite candy — that was probably the direction I’d point you in.”