My friends Scott Fielder & Chris Crowe have spent the past few years publicly documenting their quest to pass the Master Cicerone exam. In late 2025, Scott Fielder became just the 29th Master Cicerone in the world. Chris, his best friend and partner in this process, came close to doing the same, and is more determined than ever to pass the exam in 2026.

I sat down with Scott and Chris recently to talk about how their pursuit of knowledge through these certifications has impacted their experience and enjoyment of beer. We also talk about the vulnerability of sharing their exam preparation as publicly as they have, and how we can provide consumers with useful information without gatekeeping and using exclusionary descriptive language.

You can follow Scott & Chris here:

Scott's Instagram

At Your Service's Instagram

Chris's Instagram

The Beer Enthusiasts Instagram

The Beer Enthusiasts Youtube channel

Here you can find the past episodes mentioned in today's conversation:

Episode 1: Personal Flavor Vocabularies

Episode 16: Cultural Beer Language with Dr. J

Episode 39: Everybody Is Welcome—Celebrating Beer with Em Sauter

Guests:

Scott Fielder hails from Long Beach, CA. He is the Quality and Education Lead at The Bruery in Placentia, CA, a beer educator with The Beer Scholar, Certified BJCP Judge, GABF judge, and a Master Cicerone. He is also a partner in the Beer pop up concept At Your Service with Advanced Cicerones Chris Crowe and Charlie Perez, as well as the co-host of The Beer Enthusiasts YouTube channel.

Chris Crowe is an Advanced Cicerone®, Director of Sales at the award-winning Radiant Beer Co., and resident beer nerd at the world-renowned Windsor Homebrew Supply. Chris co-hosts The Beer Enthusiasts with Master Cicerone® Scott Fielder, where they have published over 75 episodes of educational beer content between Instagram Live and YouTube. Chris founded At Your Service, a series of service-forward pop-ups focused on historical, cultural, and reimagined methods of serving beer with Scott and Advanced Cicerone® Charlie Perez. Chris wants to encourage you to #drinkmoredoppelbock and assures you that there is little to no resistance to doing so.

Check out David's book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.

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Elmer Pineda and his family grow cacao and make tree to bar chocolate in the mountains of Honduras. Taking their company name from the Volcanic crater lake where their chocolate factory is located, Yojoa Chocolate makes classic two-ingredient bars, as well as a range of inclusion bars that celebrate the agricultural bounty of their corner of the world. When I connected with Elmer over Zoom recently, a tropical rain storm was drenching his property, and you might even be able to hear it in our conversation.

In this interview we talk about the background of Yojoa Chocolate and their cacao farm, the natural landscape that provides so much flavor and inspiration to Yojoa’s bars, the importance of not only fermentation but carefully controlled drying in flavor formation, and some of Yojoa’s unique inclusion bars, like Espresso and Anis Avocado.

You can learn more about Yojoa on their website or their Instagram.

Episode timeline (approximate):

2:00 - Introduction
3:30 - Yojoa summary and background
10:10 - Local microclimate
13:50 - The power of tree to bar
18:05 - Fermentation and drying
25:40 - Espresso bar
29:05 - Anis Avocado bar
33:30 - Whisky Barrel bar
39:25 - Packaging and artwork
40:40 - The story Yojoa is telling

Check out David's book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.

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This is the second in a four-part bonus series called Collaborations for Chocolate Makers. In the series, we'll walk through different types of possible collaborations and how craft chocolate makers should go about them.

You can check out the first episode in the series here, or read it in blog form here.

In this second episode, we're talking all about craft chocolate collaborations with breweries, distilleries, wineries, and other beverages alcohol producers. We discuss the benefits of the collaborations, potential product ideas, how to approach potential collab partners in this space, and things to consider beforehand.

If you have any thoughts, questions, or suggestions from this episode, please feel free to reach out!

Check out David's book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.

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Sign up for host David Nilsen's beer newsletter for regular beer musings, and the Bean to Barstool newsletter for pairings, collaborations, and maker profiles.

Mike King at Encore Coffee and Chocolate in Kansas City is currently making some of the best coffee-infused craft chocolate bars on the market. I’ve had the chance to talk with Mike at the Midwest Craft Chocolate Festival the past couple years, and we were finally able to connect for a conversation for Bean to Barstool a couple weeks ago.

We talk all about the overlap between these worlds, what he’s learned about each from the other, how sourcing and roasting and flavor formulation differs between them, and how he creates the delicious coffee infused bars like Cafe Mocha, Vanilla Latte, and Caramel Macchiato in his Coffee House Series.

You can learn more about Encore at their website and Instagram.

You can find previous coffee-themed episodes here:

Osito Coffee, Violet Sky Chocolate, and Cloud Walking Coffee

Onyx Coffee

Namesake Coffee

Check out David's book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.

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Sign up for host David Nilsen's beer newsletter for regular beer musings, and the Bean to Barstool newsletter for pairings, collaborations, and maker profiles.

Back in the first episode of 2026, I shares some things I think craft chocolate can learn from craft beer. One of those lessons (and, upon reflection, one of the only positive ones) was to collaborate expansively. While craft chocolate makers periodically partner with breweries and coffee roasters, the avenues for collaboration in the industry remain pretty limited. That's a shame, because collaboration offers amazing opportunity to growing your chocolate business.

This is the first in a four part bonus series called Collaborations for Chocolate Makers. In the series, we'll walk through different types of possible collaborations and how craft chocolate makers should go about them.

In this first episode, we're stepping back and looking at collaboration more generally: What are the benefits, why should you do it, and what are considerations you should think about before beginning a partnership?

If you have any thoughts, questions, or suggestions from this episode, please feel free to reach out!

Check out David's book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.

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Sign up for host David Nilsen's beer newsletter for regular beer musings, and the Bean to Barstool newsletter for pairings, collaborations, and maker profiles.

Today we're talking with Jason Brewer and Zac Boehnke of Wandering Monsters Brewing in Cincinnati, Ohio. While they brew a wide variety of beers well, they're best known for excellent adjunct stouts like Viator Obscura: Triple Chocolate, which has medaled at both Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup.

In this episode, Jason and Zac talk about how they approach brewing with cacao nibs, vanilla, and other ingredients, how their high concept adjunct stouts come together, where they source their cacao, and why beers of this type are worth taking seriously and approaching thoughtfully.

You can check out the Wandering Monsters site here, or follow them on Instagram.

You can listen to previous episodes mentioned in this episode here: Ethereal Confections, Somerville Chocolate, Front Porch Chocolate, Third Eye Brewing.

You can check out the events mentioned in the episode here: Full Circle Brewgarden, Belgian-Style Ales.

Interview timeline:

2:25 - How beer recipes are developed with adjuncts and barrels in mind
4:50 - Viator Obscura: Triple Chocolate
6:35 - Cacao husks
7:25 - Cacao origin selection
10:15 - Banana Caboose
14:25 - Storytelling with adjunct stouts
15:50 - Brownie Stout, other beers
17:15 - Vanilla
18:45 - Wandering Monsters branding
22:30 - Marketing adjunct stouts
24:15 - Their favorite of their own adjunct stouts
27:15 - Advice for other brewers on working with cacao and other adjuncts
29:00 - Brewing pastry stouts thoughtfully
33:20 - End of interview

Check out David's book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.

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Sign up for host David Nilsen's beer newsletter for regular beer musings, and the Bean to Barstool newsletter for pairings, collaborations, and maker profiles.

Bean to Barstool Redux: Vintage but still relevant conversations from the archives without all the extra narration. Just classic interviews from really cool people in craft chocolate, craft beer, and other food and beverage fields.

In this edition, we hear from Emily Stone, founder of Uncommon Cacao, who supplies cacao for hundreds of bean to bar chocolate makers and, indirectly through their bean to bar partners, quite a few craft breweries as well.

We talk with Emily about those origins, what led her to start Uncommon, and the importance of full, two-way transparency in the cacao supply chain.

Check out David's book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.

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Sign up for host David Nilsen's beer newsletter for regular beer musings, and the Bean to Barstool newsletter for pairings, collaborations, and maker profiles.

Welcome to Bean to Barstool Bite Sized, where we spend about 5 minutes on a specific topic in craft beer, craft chocolate, or artisan drinks. Today we're looking back at one of the first deep dives I ever did on pairing beer and chocolate for Bean to Barstool. Enjoy!

You can listen to the entire episode this clip is from here.

Check out David's book Pairing Beer & Chocolate: A Guide to Bringing the Flavors of Craft Beer and Craft Chocolate Together.

Follow Bean to Barstool on social media!
Instagram
Facebook
Pinterest

Sign up for host David Nilsen's beer newsletter for regular beer musings, and the Bean to Barstool newsletter for pairings, collaborations, and maker profiles.