Fort Collins Brewery Chocolate Stout
By John & Dad on March 27, 2008 @ 7 PM (No Comments)
The Fort Collins Chocolate Stout is another in a series of Thursday night phone reviews between Father and Son Beer Love. Fort Collins Brewery, out of Colorado, makes a good number of beers. The Chocolate Stout has a great graphic design to it with a lipstick kiss mark next to the beer name on the label.
We served this 5.3% ABV stout up in an American pint glass and registered an initial beer temperature of 49.8 F. The initial pour gave us an average 1″ frothy medium brown head that yielded a fair amount of lacing as it dissipated slowly. There is very little carbonation to the beer, perhaps masked by its absolutely opaque black color.
Initial aromas were of chocolate, mild coffee (possibly espresso), roasted malts and black licorice. It’s a great smell, very strong. The taste echoed the aromas, but wasn’t nearly as strong as we thought it would be – it’s not too sweet at all. The initial flavor was only lightly sweet and actually slightly bitter. The aftertaste was unchanged in terms of flavor and had a short to average duration. It’s a subtle aftertaste with some very mild hops that dulled as we drank it. The mouthfeel was terrific – a rich creamy mouthfeel – one of the better ones.
We were really surprised by this one – it’s not a sweet stout, but it has a sweetness to it. It’s obviously malt heavy but there are some hops to balance it out. It’s not overly complex. It might work well with various cheeses if you wanted to pair it up with some food. Though it’s drinkable, it’s not repeatable and isn’t really memorable. You’re kind of put off on it by the time you finish it.
Overall it just doesn’t really make a statement. You don’t make a statement with undertones in a stout, you need overtones. Go all in. I see on their site that Fort Collins also makes a Double Chocolate Stout as a seasonal beer. That may be worth trying to see if they get it a bit more “right”. As an alternative I’d recommend trying the Young’s Double Chocolate Stout or even better (if you can find it) the Foothills Sexual Chocolate Imperial Stout.
