What would you pair with...

Regardless of what you end up pairing, the actual dessert looks awesome.

 

If you want to go the sweet route, choose a beer that is sweet but with a little extra complexity, such as smoke and/or peat flavors. I like JW Lees Harvest Ale (the Lagavulin Whisky Cask version) with desserts. Or even something like Allagash Curieux (though not as sweet, the complexity stands up to desserts in my experience).

If you want to go the sour route, beware. Raspberry and chocolate components in the dessert can play foul tasting tricks in your mouth and change the character of a very acidic beer. I'd choose a sour that has a lot of sweetness to balance the acid. I'd even go so far as to choose one of the lindeman's fruit lambics.

 

But EVERY sommelier will tell you that you want your wine to be sweeter than the dessert you are serving. Is there some different convention when it comes to beer?

 

I do not use wine conventions when pairing beers with food - it is a habit that was not working for me at all. Most suggestions I make for beer pairings are those I have tried myself, which are completely subjective, of course. I have wine judge and sommelier friends that agree beer should be paired on its own merits, and not ride the coat-tails of wine anymore due to the diversity of styles available now. A recent beer vs. wine dinner solidified this for me - the dessert was a white chocolate frozen souffle, and the wine offering was a '03 JJ Prum Wehlener Sonnenuhr Rielsing Auslese picked by the NE Culinary Institute's head sommelier. The beer offering was Hill Farmstead Damon, a bourbon barrel-aged Imperial Stout. Of the 55 attendees, only a quarter of the room preferred the wine for this course - most said it was just too much sweetness with an already sweet dessert. The roasted coffee & bourbon notes in the beer had the counterpoint I was looking for, and it won out for me. In a few other courses, the wine won out, though.

 

Man... They didn't do cool stuff like that when I was there.
Was this a David Garaventa orchestration, or do they have someone else?

 

I think the XX would pair wonderfully, but the XXIII not really!

 

Personally though, Eclipse EC 18

 

I'm not saying that the beer pairing that you stated can't work. I however wouldn't suggest that one stay away from sweet beverages with dessert altogether.
Preference dictates a lot. If one doesn't like sweet beverages it is unlikely that any pairing which includes sweet beverages will work for them. For me DFH Fort, Lindeman's Framboise, and other simillar beers have married beautifully with rich chocolate desserts and fruit pies. I've had success pairing dessert with some Imperial Stouts as well.
Do you enjoy dessert beers like DFH Fort, Framboise, etc at all?

 

Indeed I do, just not the syrupy-sweet ones such as Lindeman's. Exception are sweet RIS's that have enough roasty-coffee flavor to offset the sweet, or old ales that have oxidized sherry notes, such as JW Lees Harvest Ales. I do not mean to suggest that some beers are not a good match for desserts in general - I was commenting on a pairing for the dessert described in the orignal post. Interestingly, I do not classify any beer as a "dessert" beer - I relate to them more by style, ingredients, and flavor profile. I have served fruit beers with savory meat dishes, and sour/wild beers with sweet fruit desserts in a yin-yang approach. I rely on tasting the actual pairings and looking for either symaptico, dynamic, or contrasting flavors that taste interesting and/or complex. Lately I have been using the "Super Sommelier" Francois Chartrier's book "Taste Buds and Molecules" to investigate flavors in foods, wine, tea and beer that have flavor components in common to guide my pairing investigations. This leads me to pairs that are deeper than those that highlight the most overt flavors of sweet, sour, salty and umami.

 

I think that when it comes to pairing (right now anyway) that craft beer drinkers wanna pair beers that they would enjoy generally (e.g. IPA, saison, pils, IPA, RIS, barleywine, and IPA). That's what steers so many away from pairing unapologitically sweet beers with dessert; they don't appreciate very sweet beers that much in the first place.
Pairing dessert wine with savory dishes isn't uncommon (e.g. Sauternes with foie gras, port with blue cheese). I enjoy sweet beers such as Lindeman's Pomme with chicken salad on whole grain as well.

 

Boulevard BBQ. Great vanilla and cherry notes with enough alcohol bite to cut through the rich chocolate within the dessert.

 

No, it was Jeff Roberts picking wine and Scott Kerner the beer. Don't know how Garaventa is doing and why he wasn't involved.
I'd try Pretty Things Baby Tree with the dessert...it may work. Or New Belgium's Clutch.