Looking for a Great Chocolate Beer? Hershey’s Has You Covered

Beer purists' may hate everything about the craft brew craze that's taken over the country for the past decade or so, but for me, I love all of the new possibilities when I'm exploring the beer aisle.

I've had it all over the past few years - banana bread beer, Twin Bing beer, cookie dough beer, coconut beer, coffee beer, and even peanut butter beer - but the one thing I've been searching high and low for since the beginning of the craft brew revolution has been the perfect combination of two of my favorite things - beer and chocolate.

There have been several candidates that have come and gone out of my fridge, some good, some not so good, but none that captured that perfect beer/chocolate balance.

But my search may finally be over.

Who better to turn to for anything chocolate than the granddaddy of American sweet makers at Hershey's.

The legendary chocolate maker has finally made its foray into the craft beer world with a new chocolate porter made in collaboration with a Pottsville, Pennsylvania brewer that actually has been around longer.

Yuengling got its start in 1829, nearly 45 years before Milton Hershey opened his first candy shop in Philadelphia in 1873.

The partnership was announced last year, with just a few locations serving a draft version of the beer, but now the Yuengling Hershey's Chocolate Porter has been bottled and is available in six-packs throughout the United States.

Sadly, at this point, the closest state to carry the beer in bottle form is in Arkansas, 790 miles away.

But that may be changing.

Yuengling now says it will partner with Molson Coors to bring the beer to parts of the country that it doesn't currently distribute.

That's the good news. The bad news? That expanded distribution won't happen until the second half of 2021.

In the meantime, I really need a good reason to plan a road trip to Little Rock...