Beer – #1006 – Garage Project – Chocolate Beer

What’s like a beer that’s like a desert or treat? Garage Project Chocolate Beer probably.

Unbelievably rich, dark and creamy

It comes with some very specific opening instructions, since it is a Nitro can, and you know these new fangled things can be tricky.

Nitro 355 ml can of a beer that is 4.7% ABV and that’s around the 141 calories a serve. That makes it some 1.2 standard drinks in NZ

Garage Project Chocolate Beer is of course Brewed by Garage Project and it is in the style that is a Stout – Sweet and they do that in Wellington, NZ

Chocolate or Beer or both

One whole block of chocolate worth of Whittaker’s cacao nibs infused into every can.

Unbelievably rich, dark and creamy, brewed with chocolate malts, lactose and infused with vanilla and freshly batch roasted cocoa beans.

Tiny bubbles of nitrogen make it smoother and even more delicious.

If it was any more chocolatey we’d have to put it in a wrapper.

So, What could possibly go wrong?

Aroma is of dark chocolate, well cacao nibs, and that thin white head appears magically as it settles in the glass, I was expecting more drama but there’s nothing to see really.

Dark Chocolate is the predominant taste, but there’s not a lot of fullness about this, there’s not a big malt cushion to fill this out, it’s not quite like drinking ice chocolate, but if I added ice, perhaps.

Thankfully it’s rather nicer than that, and I did that fullness a disservice, this is persistent with that cacao, as you might expect, relentless even, and although this is only 335 ml it becomes wearing and not really something you look forward to.

Odd that because I would have thought it’d have been a bit of me this heavy chocolate beer thing, perhaps like most things moderation might have helped.

The pdubyah-o-meter rates this as 8 of its things from the thing. It is what it says it is, chocolate beer. More chocolate than beer, and harder going than you might like.

The double dip review

Where did I get it? Liquorland, it started on short supply and then there’s a lot of them
Am I enjoying it? Not as much as I wanted to
Would I have another? I’d like to have it colder, and or with some ice perhaps.
Would I share with a friend on a porch and set the world to rights? Because it is outrageous I might well be brave enough to slip this in as a taste, I don’t think that it’d be as big a hit as you think.

Music for this: Lightsleeper by Neil & Liam Finn, Neil Finn, Liam Finn on the Spotify

Lightsleeper‘ is more Split Enz than Crowded House, more experimental and hallucinatory than pop

SWEET STOUT

Dark brown to black in colour. Sweet stouts come in three main varieties – milk stout, oatmeal stout, and foreign stout. Milk stouts are made with the addition of lactose, and are sweet, low-alcohol brews. Oatmeal lends a smooth fullness of body to stouts, while foreign stouts are stronger (6.5-8% abv) and have a sweet malt profile and high esters. All of the sweet stouts are noted for their restrained roastiness in comparison with other stouts, and low hop levels.