Belgium takes chocolate seriously enough to have built an export industry around it, and it takes beer seriously enough to have one of the deepest brewing traditions in the world. The Floris Chocolate Beer is where those two things meet — a wheat beer from Brouwerij Huyghe in Melle that puts rich chocolate at the centre of what it is, without apology and without pretending to be something more restrained. If you are Belgian and living in Tokyo, this is the beer that lands differently here than it does at home: Japan’s own deep relationship with chocolate as a flavour means it finds an audience that understands exactly what it is offering. That is not a small thing.
Melle’s chocolate wheat, brewed since 1906
Brouwerij Huyghe was founded in 1906 in Melle, East Flanders — the same brewery that produces Delirium Tremens at the opposite end of the strength and style spectrum. The Floris range represents Huyghe’s fruit-and-flavour wheat beer tradition, a category with roots in the Belgian practice of adding fruit, spice, and flavour to wheat beer bases that stretches back through the country’s brewing history. The Chocolate Beer is the most distinctive expression in the Floris lineup.
The beer pours dark brown — considerably darker than a standard Belgian wheat — and the chocolate aroma is present immediately, rich and direct without being cloying. The wheat base provides a soft, slightly hazy foundation that keeps the body light relative to the colour, and the finish is smooth and sweet rather than bitter. At 4.2% ABV, it is an accessible beer: low enough in alcohol to work as a dessert accompaniment or a standalone drink in the early part of an evening, and approachable enough for people who do not usually drink beer but do eat Belgian chocolate. That crossover is part of what the Floris range was built for.
How Floris Chocolate Beer is drunk at home
Santé! / Op uw gezondheid! (sahn-TAY / op-uw geh-ZONT-hayt) — French and Flemish respectively, both meaning “to your health.” Belgium’s two linguistic communities share the toast more easily than they share much else, and a chocolate beer tends to generate goodwill at any table it appears on.
In Belgium, the Floris Chocolate Beer occupies a specific moment in the meal — the dessert course, or the informal gathering after the main eating has finished. Belgium’s Sunday family lunch tradition moves through multiple beers across courses, and the Floris arrives at the end: after Stoofvlees has been served and cleared, after the heavier Trappist beers have done their work, when something sweet and lighter in alcohol suits the pace of the afternoon. Belgian fries with mayonnaise, ever-present at Belgian tables, are not the natural companion here — this is the beer that comes out when the fries have been finished. Moules-frites belongs to earlier in the meal, but a glass of Floris alongside a plate of Belgian pralines or a square of dark chocolate is the pairing that makes the most sense of what the beer is.
Beer festivals in Belgium, where the Floris range has a place in the flavoured wheat category, give the Chocolate Beer visibility alongside the more serious Trappist offerings — a reminder that Belgian beer culture accommodates both without treating either as lesser.
How to drink it in Japan
The Floris Chocolate Beer suits Japan’s winters and festive season most naturally — November through February, when chocolate as a flavour is in active circulation and the calendar provides occasions that call for something sweet and low in alcohol alongside a richer dessert or after-dinner moment.
At Lawson, try it alongside a chocolate cornet — the cocoa-filled pastry available at the bakery counter. The rich chocolate aroma of the beer and the mild cocoa of the filling occupy the same register, amplifying each other without competing, the wheat base of the beer providing enough lightness to keep the pairing from becoming too dense. For a more composed occasion at home, serve it with matcha tiramisu: the slight bitterness of the matcha and the creaminess of the mascarpone find an unexpected but effective counterpart in the chocolate sweetness and the soft wheat body of the Floris. It is the kind of pairing that rewards experimentation rather than precedent.
Belgium’s reputation in Japan for chocolate is well established — Belgian chocolate is a standard gift item and a regular feature in department store food halls. A Belgian chocolate beer, by the case from Omori Mart, extends that relationship into a different format at a per-bottle cost considerably lower than specialty import shops charge.
Get Floris Chocolate Beer delivered in Japan
Floris Chocolate Beer is available from Omori Mart in a 330ml × 24 bottle case, delivered nationwide across Japan.
- Free shipping on orders over ¥15,000
- Pay at FamilyMart, 7-Eleven, or Lawson — or by bank transfer or card
- Nationwide delivery to any address in Japan
Rakuten and Amazon Japan do not carry this label. Omori Mart is where Belgians in Japan find the full range of Belgian beer, from Trappist ales to the flavoured wheats that the country’s other great export inspired.
[Shop Floris Chocolate Beer →]
https://omorimart.com/product/floris-chocolate-beer-330ml-x-24-bottles/
Santé in Melle, where a brewery founded in 1906 eventually decided that Belgium’s two most famous exports belonged in the same bottle, and kanpai at a Tokyo table in December — chocolate in a glass, and no explanation required.
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