Should you pair your mint chocolate beer with Pocky or kimchi?
In the world of Japanese sweets, one of the most divisive flavors is mint chocolate/chocolate mint. See? There are even multiple opinions on what the name of it should be, to go along with the argument over whether it tastes great or is a discordant, unpalatable clash of sweet and chilling sensations.
Against this background, Sapporo Beer has decided to add yet another element into the mix by releasing a mint chocolate beer.
Offered under Sapporo’s Hoppin’ Garage sub-brand of unique brews, it’s called the Otona no Choco Mint, or “Adult Chocolate Mint.” Of course, beer in general is a for-adults drink, so Sapporo seems to be borrowing the Japanese confectionery sector’s recent practice of using “adult” to mean something that’s sweet but not too sweet, like with McDonald’s Japan’s inadvertently suggestive “adult cream pies.”
But we digress, and as we do so, we’re getting thirstier and thirstier, so let’s crack open an Adult Chocolate Mint beer and see how it tastes.
Due to its niche flavor and limited-time availability, Adult Chocolate Mint is only available through the Hoppin’ Garage online store and pop-up shops. For online purchases, the minimum order size is two cans, which after shipping cost us 1,540 yen (US$9.80). 770 yen each is on the pricy side for canned beer in Japan, but if you make the maximum-size order of 24 cans for 6,600 yen, that drops down to just 275 yen each.
Adult Chocolate Mint made its debut a few years ago and has been available periodically, but for 2025 Sapporo has refined its taste, promising an even more enjoyable mint chocolate flavor with the new recipe.
Pouring the can’s contents into a glass for a visual inspection, we observed a deep coffee-like brown color. But while Adult Chocolate Mint might look like any number of other dark stouts or porters, it sure doesn’t smell like other beers. Taking a whiff before we took a sip, the unmistakable sharply sweet aroma of mint chocolate jumped up from the rim of the glass and tickled our nose.
For taste-testing duties, we obviously made sure to select one of our team members who’s a mint chocolate sweets fan, and who also likes beer. Our Japanese-language reporter Asami Oshima embodies both those trains, and we tapped her to raise a glass of Adult Chocolate Mint and give us her impressions.
We fully expected both sweetness and bitterness in the beer’s flavor profile, and it’s the sweetness that comes flying out of the gates as you take a sip. The sweet chocolate notes come on immediately and linger in the mouth. It’s not until you swallow that the bitter beer flavor makes itself felt, and that’s also when the strongly sharp, chilling feeling of the beer’s peppermint content commences.
It is a very complex flavor, but Sapporo has done an admirable job making the transition between its parts pretty harmonious. All the same, much like mint chocolate itself, it’s safe to say that Adult Chocolate Mint is going to be very much love-it-or-hate-it for most people. What’s more, whether you love it or hate it might not necessarily match up with how you feel about mint chocolate sweets, since even though Asami is a fan of mint chocolate desserts, she wasn’t entirely thrilled by her sip of Adult Chocolate Mint.
But our taste test wasn’t over yet…
In Japan, beer, much like wine and sake, is often paired with snacks or other side dishes, and so Asami set out to see how having a little something on the side to munch on would affect the experience. She started with a plate of sausages, sliced ham, and cheese, a common companion to beer at bars and pubs in Japan. However, this turned out to be a mistake. While adding a pinch of salt to desserts can help enhance their perceived sweetness, the meaty and creamy aspects of these particular sides instead had them battling for position on Asami’s already crowded taste buds with the beer’s sweet, bitter, and minty elements, and the messy melee wasn’t enjoyable.
Next Asami opened up a bag of potato chips, hoping that this would give her some extra saltiness without the unwanted business of the meats and cheese. This didn’t really work either, though, as the oiliness of the potato chips again clashed with the multiple flavors from the beer itself.
Clearly Asami needed to shift her angle of attack here. Since she was now 0 for 2 introducing new flavors into the mix, she decided to try pairing sweet with sweet.
Her first candidate for this new plan was Pocky, since you’re never far from a box of the stuff in Japan. This turned out to be an excellent choice, as the sweetness of the biscuit sticks’ chocolate-covered portions complemented the chocolate flavor of the beer extremely well.
Emboldened by this success, Asami next grabbed an eclair, and once again the synergy was excellent, if not quite so much as with the Pocky. While there was a chance that the eclair’s filling would produce the same muddled unpleasantness that the cheese and chips had, the cream’s sweetness actually did the opposite, and even mellowed out a faint mediciney taste that’s present in Adult Chocolate Mint on its own.
Especially emboldened, perhaps too much so, for her final pairing Asami decided to try Adult Chocolate Mint together with kimchi hotpot…
…and yes, she instantly realized that she had gone too far. This was by far the worst combination, a confusing chaos that was so shockingly distressing that despite being alone in the room, Asami gasped “This is terrible…,” and felt for a second like a witch who’d screwed up her potion-mixing and accidentally cursed herself.
So in conclusion, if you’re going to pair Sapporo’s mint chocolate beer with some snacks, it’s best to stick to sweets, and stay far, far away from the savory stuff.
If you’re ready to try Adult Chocolate Mint for yourself, it’s available through the Hoppin’ Garage online store here, and can also be purchased at a pop-up store inside the Lumine Shinjuku department store in downtown Tokyo between February 1 and 14.
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