Do Better, Jelly Belly

Beer-flavored jelly beans would seem to a match made in heaven, or at least in a pretty cool place. Beer is great. Jelly beans are awesome. Together, magic.

The confectionery wizards at Jelly Belly thought so, too, with some prompting from their customers. Ambrose Lee, the company's head flavor scientist (Don't think too hard about that title. Too late? My bad.) told Fast Company, ""We go to over 500 events a year; at literally every one, someone asks us for a beer jelly bean. With the craft beer scene exploding, the timing finally seemed right."

And so Jelly Belly set out to create a beer-flavored bean, experimenting with beer styles, flavor compounds, and ingredients to develop a perfect match.

Their perfect match, as it turns out, is perfectly disappointing.

Presented with hundreds, if not thousands of styles of beer from which to choose (chocolatey stouts, grapefruity California IPAs, caramel-redolent porters, smoky, bacon-tinged rauchbiers, etc.), Jelly Belly completely whiffed.

Hefeweizen. They developed a hefeweizen-flavored jelly bean. A flavor so disgusting it needs an orange or a lemon to make it barely tolerable.

I think I'd rather eat one of Bertie Bott's earthworm-flavored beans.

They look beautiful, though.