The list of ingredients, probably the same one you saw, is:
Pale ale and crystal malt, chocolate malt, special blend of sugars, Fuggle and Goldings hops, real dark chocolate and chocolate essence.

Seems to me they would list lactose if it was in there. Now, some chocolates contain lactose, but those are usually milk chocolate. Dark chocolate is not supposed to contain lactose, but may have traces of it. That said, most of the clone recipes (from homebrewers) I’ve seen for Young’s Double Chocolate do contain lactose.

I did find one statement from a source at Young’s Brewery that doesn’t mention lactose. This was off a homebrewer’s site – you can tell it’s legit by the way he spells color, flavor and favorite. ;-)

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As it’s name suggests, there is more to this brew than just adding chocolate to the fermenting vessel and I regret that reproducing it at home could be tricky. I am also a keen home brewer (admittedly I prefer brewing wine to beer) and I would not attempt to brew Double Chocolate Stour in my cellar!

For your information however, the grist is made up with about 3% Roasted Barely, 3% chocolate malt, 8% oats, 9% dark fermenting syrup (of high molasses content) and 77% Pale Ale malt. (figures by extract). We then add a small amount of chocolate to the boil (we tend to use plain-high cocoa solids varieties). After fermentation and filtration we add a small amount of chocolate essence to give aroma.

As I said this is a complex beer. It’s colour is derived from the dark sugars, roasted barley and chocolate barley, it’s body is helped by the oats in the grist. It’s flavour comes mostly from the chocolate malt which is quite bitter and the overall effect is boosted by the extra chocolate aroma which gives the drinker a heightened sensation of chocolate.

As I mentioned earlier, re-producing this beer on a domestic scale would be very difficult but luckily you can always rely on Young’s Brewery to keep on supplying your favourite tipple!

Kind regards

From
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Young & Co.’s Brewery, P.L.C.
The Ram Brewery, Wandsworth, London SW18 4JD
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So – I really can’t be sure, but most signs point to no lactose. Even if I was lactose intolerant, I’d probably risk it for a Young’s Double Chocolate. Maybe you could start with a lactase supplement and see how it treats you?

If you’re comparing sweet chocolate stouts, the Sam Adams Chocolate Bock doesn’t fit the category, since it’s technically a lager. But if you’re just comparing chocolate tasting beers, then the Sam Adams holds up well and was a great beer, but for affordability/sessionability/availability it was lacking (okay it sucked in those departments). But the fact that they were able to come as close in taste profile as they did to Young’s Double Chocolate with a lager is super impressive. That’s just hard to do, which may explain the price.

I just got a 4 pack of Young’s Double Chocolate for $10.29 USD, and while I wish it was closer to $2/can I’m not opposed to around $2.50/can. It’s a tremendous session beer when you want a little bit of the chocolate sweet, but not enough to get pissed off at it. I’ve definitely had better chocolate beers (Sam Adams Chocolate Bock is close, Foothills Sexual Chocolate is tops), but they’ve all been “occasion” beers. I say for a sessionable chocolate beer, it’s tough to beat Young’s and haven’t yet found one that beats it. Most of the other ones we’ve tried have us hating chocolate by the time we’re done with them. Young’s doesn’t do that so it gets our nod. Cheers!