That's right! This December, Beer made with chocolate will be available from the Japanese company Kirin. What can be better than the mixture of these two alluring and bewitching foods? This sounds like an idea for Valentine's Day...
Apparently, this beer chocolate will be better than previous beer and chocolate concoctions. I've never tasted them before. So, I wonder if it'll taste obnoxiously sweet or if it'll meet that perfect balance.
Beer chocolate is just one out of the many flavored beers you can find. For example, just last month, we had a post about a blueberry ale from Maine. This makes me wonder whether or not this is a recent trend or something that has been done for ages. Either way, I look forward to tasting this Japanese beer chocolate this winter.
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 1)
9-03-2008 @ 5:52PM
B said...
Beer made with chocolate is nothing new. What about Brooklyn Black Chocolate stout or Sam Adams Chocolate Bock? They are both pretty mainstream and widely available chocolate brews. The beer news here at slashfood is starting to seem like an open Budweiser; lame, tasteless, and flat.
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9-03-2008 @ 5:53PM
Hillary said...
This sounds like something my boyfriend would LOVE! I'll definitely have to get a hold of that on Valentine's Day. Beer and chocolate = his two favorite things!
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9-03-2008 @ 6:54PM
Tim Smith said...
Add Young's double chocolate stout, http://beeradvocate.com/beer/profile/152/73/ , to the list of chocolate flavored brews that have been around for some time now.
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9-03-2008 @ 6:56PM
Alex said...
Choklat is a brew from Southern Tier Brewing in NY. It is a chocolate alcohol bomb, very tasty but starts to feel like you are drinking Hersey's syrup halfway thru the bottle. Nice chocolaty buzz though!
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9-03-2008 @ 8:39PM
Dan said...
And, there are plenty of beer categories that do not contain any actual chocolate, but accomplish a chocolate flavor with "chocolate malt". Not chocolate, but rather a malt choice and roasting technique. The most common category choice would be a Scottish Ale. Good American examples? Old Chub (Oskar Blues, Colorado), Kilt Lifter (Pike Brewing, Seattle). For a chocolaty brew without a category? British... Fuller's "1845".
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9-04-2008 @ 4:59AM
SaraFist said...
Don't forget Rogue's Chocolate Stout and Mocha Porter.
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9-04-2008 @ 8:46AM
Justin said...
Flavored beers are nothing new. Berliner Weiße beers are often flavored with syrups, and lambics have been mixed with fruit for some time.
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9-04-2008 @ 3:46PM
JMForester said...
The term 'Chocolate' in beers is quite old, but, usually when a beer said "Chocolate Stout" Chocolate Porter" etc. It wasn't referring to whether there is chocolate (cacao) in it, BUT that 'Chocolate Malt' is used. This is regular malted barley, roasted to a chocolate brown or almost black color, and which tends to have some of the bittersweet tones found in cacao.
Now quite a few of the brews with chocolate in the name do in fact have some cacao in the recipe. But you would be surprised to find out how little there is in proportion to the rest of the recipe. Most of those chocolate flavors are actually coming from the malt. These brews with real cacao started to become popular with the micro-brewery boom in the 1980's. Some were horrible, some were great and are now classics.
Japan has been a big market for both types of chocolate beer over the last decade or more. The ones with only chocolate malts, and the ones that also contain cocoa. If I remember correctly, Rogue Chocolate Stout was originally developed for the Japanese market in the late 90's and I think was released in the US market on Valentine's day 2001. The Kirin product was developed because the response to the Rogue brew was so strong that they wanted in on the market.
Young's, Rogue, and Sam Adam's, do include some cocoa in their recipe in addition to the chocolate malt.
Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout doesn't contain any chocolate, just dark roasted two row malt.
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9-04-2008 @ 6:06PM
brockgraphix said...
beer made with chocolate is often bitter. the unsweetend chocoloate usually replaces some of the hopps they use to make the beer bitter. in my experience the best Chocolate beer is the Stone Brewery's Chocolate Oatmeal stout. it is very strong (9.2%abv) and is quite bitter but very good if you like dark beer.
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