Arizona Beer Class: Sonoran White Chocolate Ale

(Every Thursday, MXSW reveals the story behind one of Arizona’s craft beers.)

White Chocolate Ale at a glance

White Chocolate Ale is a wheat beer (4.7% ABV) created in late 2007 at Sonoran Brewing Company, which was then located at Pinnacle Peak Patio steakhouse in north Scottsdale. (In 2013, Sonoran moved to Phoenix, where it now shares a brewing facility with Phoenix Ale Brewery.)

White Chocolate Ale is Sonoran’s No. 1 seller, outselling its second-place Victorian IPA by a margin of 5-to-1.

How White Chocolate Ale got its start

“It wasn’t going to be a (full) batch of beer,” says Sonoran brewer Zach Schroeder. “We were just doing a cask, and we were trying to come up with something interesting to put in there. We were going for ‘out of the box.’ We were going for something people were going to go, ‘Whoa!’

“The idea of chocolate came up, and Scott Yarosh – he was the owner then and I was just coming on as a part owner – we both didn’t really dig the way chocolate tasted in chocolate beers, with the exception of Young’s Double Chocolate Stout.

“When people drank chocolate beers back in the day, there wasn’t truly an intense chocolate flavor. So we played around forever with small samples in a pint glass – cocoa nibs and cocoa butters and ground-up gingerbread.”

What was the public’s initial reaction?

“I heard from the beer crowd — the purists, if you will. This is far from the German Purity Act, you know what I’m saying? I started hearing a lot of, ‘Why put flavorings in beer?’ Well, it’s not just flavorings. There’s quite a bit of quality ingredients in this white chocolate beer.

“You can sit there and try to create a demand for something you want to make, or you can try to find a niche and supply a demand that already exists. I wanted a beer that fit a niche. I knew it was going to branch out to other people besides that craft beer crowd.

“At the time, (the craft beer crowd) was who we were catering to – the ones that blog, the ones you see at beer festivals. We all focus on what we think those people want, but the people who buy most of the craft beer are a much wider demographic. They don’t know or care what an IBU is. They just know what they like.”

It originally was named Cordillera Blanca?

“Even Scott, the guy who came up that name, couldn’t pronounce it the same way two times in a row,” Schroeder says. “It was too much to chew on. It was some Indian language’s translation of ‘White Mountains,’ but we’re talking about the White Mountains down in Argentina.

“The other thing is: Does Cordillera Blanca say white chocolate ale? This beer is White Chocolate Ale, that’s what everybody knew it as. So changing the name was one of the first things we did after the buyout.” (Schroeder and Layrd Mahler bought out Yarosh in 2009.)

Has the beer changed in any other ways?

“If you compare the White Chocolate now to when it first came out, it’s a completely different beer,” Schroeder says. “It used to have that gingerbread thing going on – a spicy gingerbread – but being a wheat beer everyone thought it was some kind om.imdb.com/name/nm0010736/f phenolic. It muddied up the white chocolate effect we were going for so we dropped that out.”

Does it get unfairly labeled a ‘dessert’ beer?

“You got it,” Schroeder says. “Every time I would do a beer dinner of my own, I would never do this beer for dessert. I’d pair it with a cheese course or with a cigar at the end. Now other chefs I’ve worked with? They’d all do it with dessert.”

So what do you pair it with?

“I love it with a cigar,” Schroeder says. “This beer pairs so well with a cigar. It just makes both of them smoother. And it goes really well with super-spicy food. It goes great with Thai food, not just because it’s spicy but also because Thai food has a lot of mint and other flavors that jive well with chocolate.”

Final thoughts on White Chocolate Ale?

“I get a lot of ‘Holy (expletive)! That tastes like white chocolate!’” Schroeder says. “Well, you know, it’s right there on the label but people are shocked. I think that’s because, as I mentioned, so many of these chocolate beers might have a nuance of chocolate, but nobody has really punched you in the face with a big wad of chocolate before. That’s what this beer does. It’s not subtle. It’s not over the top, but there’s no question this beer is white chocolate.”

Where to find White Chocolate Ale

You’ll find White Chocolate Ale throughout Arizona and in Las Vegas – and soon in the Los Angeles and San Francisco Bay areas – on draft and in 12- and 22-ounce bottles. Beginning in September, it also will be available in cans.