OMG Chocolate! Southern Tier Imperial Choklat Stout
Do you follow the twitter stream? If you do, you may have heard about this bottle of chocolate-y wonder. I’m not one to wax poetic about beers that claim to be brewed with chocolate, since often the flavor is so burnt beyond belief that only my sink could tell you how it really tastes.
But one evening, a dear friend of mine brought over this giant bottle, claiming in terribly misspelled letters that it was brewed with chocolate. I poured. I cringed. I braced myself. I sipped. And I said… ‘OMG Chocolate!’.
This stuff is just straight amazing. Its almost like drinking a chocolate liqueur (11% alchohol – woot!). Its still a stout mind you, with all the subtle stout thickness you would expect, but man can you taste the cocoa goodness. And it’s fantastic.
The only downside to this stuff is because it is so sweet and rich, you really can’t drink a whole one yourself. Call this a “party” drink. Fun for everyone to have a taste, but too wickedly alcoholic to drink solo. Although the potential that they attempted such a feat when trying to spell the title would certainly explain things.
Naming a stout after a train can really go wrong: either by implying a certain coal-tar flavor (mmmm…burnt), or with a foreshadow to the effect the stout will have on your head after drinking. Lucky for me, neither apply to North Coast Brewing’s Old #38 Stout. Its more like a smooth ride down a track of air than the smoky clackety rumble its name implies. This stuff is good. Real good. Smooth, and “just right” flavorful, it puts to shame all the stouts that feel the need to brew themselves with some other flavor to mask the funk (Abyss excepted of course).
“Irish style”? You’re just inviting disaster by naming a beverage with alcohol in it “Irish style.” While of course they mean to refer to the excellent tradition of fine brews to come from Ireland, they’re risking providing fodder for the equally rich tradition of drunk Irish jokes. What’s the recommended serving method for “Irish Style”, cracking the bottle over some doof’s head in the pub? They should save the trouble of bottling it — just pour it straight from the bottles onto walls of buildings, about waist-high, during the St. Patrick’s day parade in New York. (I’m allowed to make these jokes, by the way, as I’m one of the 83% of Americans who claim Irish descent. Here’s my proof-of-Irish card.)
Brian is discussing. 
I wasn’t super excited about The Abyss last year. It was good, but not great. But then Doug tells me, “no you need to put it in the fridge for a year, and drink it when the new batch comes out”. I was skeptical, but now I just feel dumb that I didn’t store more than one. 
If you find yourself sitting there, and you just absolutely have to have a stout…fly to San Diego and have a Black Seal from Rock Bottom. Barring that, you could also hop in the lear jet and get a fresh poured Guinness from the top floor of their Dublin brewery.
I both love stouts, and hate stouts. That is, 50% of all the stouts I’ve had taste like someone spilled ash in the fermenter. The other half however, can be be truly awesome. And as luck (or unluck) would have it, I have just had the second best stout I’ve ever had, courtesy of our favorite homebrew champ Jonathan Edwards. I say unluck, because its likely the only one I’ll ever have. Mr. Edwards brews are in high demand these days. Sigh. I suppose the memory of a super smooth, dark and malty brew will have to suffice until I can make it back to SD for the champ 
Jon are discussing. 
So, this is what I get for daring to exercise. A while back, I got the running bug (as I do every decade or so), ran a road race, overdid it, aggravaged a long-dormant case of asthma (not seen since high school), wound up on medication, and had to give up nasty petrochemical-brew malt liquors for a few weeks. As my return to form, I decided to try a beer as close to Easter candy as possible.
This has to be the fiercest beer found in “regular-folks” circulation at grocery stores — you of course can get much odder, harsher beers at specialty stores and Trader Joe’s, but this is as far as you can go into dark cheek-biting beers that are stocked next to the baloney at Ralph’s. So I suspect that this beer is to potent stout beers as Avril Lavigne is to punk rock. This beer is also the next in my Macarthur-Genius-Award winning series on Beers Whose Artwork Can Kick Your Ass. And in this case, steal your soul and possibly lead to a communist revolution in your very home. For those keeping track, this is Part 6 in the series, which includes four malt liquors, a viking, and now an indestructible quasi-priest with a serious beard.
Ivana Goodbeer 8:44 am on February 5, 2010 Permalink
Mmmm…. it was very yummy.