Today I'm taking a little step out of my normal role and doing a little semi-review of a product that is only slightly chocolate in nature. The product in question is Samuel Adams Chocolate Bock beer. Samuel Adams comes out with a lot of seasonal varieties in addition to their normal beers but this is an even rarer breed - it is from their special "Extreme Beer" line, which is really all about pushing the boundaries of beer. Special stuff and usually quite limited edition in nature.
Normally I might skip an item like this. I almost did. But, out of curiosity, I took a look at the little tag that hung around the bottle's neck. I don't remember any other words from the label but "Scharffen Berger" and, really, seeing one of the best chocolate makers in the world teamed up with an excellent brewer I had to take a bottle home with me, no matter how expensive it was (and it was really expensive - $12.99 and that was on sale). The beer is brewed in the normal Sam Adams fashion and then aged over a bed of nibs from Ghana that were specially selected for the beer by Scharffen Berger. From the description on the Samuel Adams site:
The chocolatiers at Scharffen Berger crafted an exclusive blend of chocolate for Samuel Adams® made with cocoa beans from Ghana called forastero. Samuel Adams® Chocolate Bock was aged on a bed of this chocolate to create its unique layers of flavor. As the beer matured, the fruity, tart, earthy and chocolate aromas were infused into the liquid to give the brew a complex, full-bodied taste with a velvety finish. A hint of vanilla was added to meld the symphony of flavors together.
First thing to note: the bottle looks really cool. The beer itself is very dark in appearance with very little head. The taste is dark but not super-strong or overly bitter. Very smooth with a light and not unpleasant aftertaste. Don't expect a massive explosion of chocolate flavor from it, though. This is a beer and the chocolate is there in the flavor but it's a lot like how you can taste different flavors in a chocolate based on where it was grown. There is a definite chocolate note there and it's nice, but the chocolate is just along for the ride. This is a beer. I have to say right now that I don't like beer very much. I am extremely picky about beer and drink it rarely. If I am drinking it then it's usually Guinness and the first glass goes down with a bit of a grimace. I need at least one beer to warm up to the taste. This was different. I warmed up to the taste on the first sip. Don't know why but that's just the way it is. I really like this beer.
Of course it would be a sin if I weren't to try this with some chocolate. If I'm drinking a chocolate beer then why not see how a little chocolate goes down with it? Since they use a special bean blend that isn't the Scharffen Berger norm I didn't worry too much about what brand of chocolate I was going to use. Since it was lurking in my pantry (saving it for a special occasion - this rates I think) and was a nice mid-point in terms of cocoa mass I went with a little of the Chocolove Chocolatour Grenada: a 60% cocoa single origin dark chocolate. I wanted something dark but somewhat sweet and this fits the bill nicely (I'll get a review up eventually). The beer is still very nice with the chocolate and the chocolate is very nice with the beer. If I'm going to sit around drinking expensive beer and good chocolate then these two are a good combo. I won't say that the two of them together are greater than the sum of their parts, but the sum of their parts is pretty high.
So, I'm not really in the business of reviewing beer. It isn't my thing and I don't know much about it. So, speaking out of ignorance and a very limited taste range (I like the darker coffee like beers) I'll give this a good 8.75 out of 10. It's darn good for a beer. If you consider the price then it's really more of a 6 or so. It is far from cheap.
Earlier this year Baileys launched a pair of limited edition versions of their lovely Irish Cream liqueur: Caramel and Mint Chocolate. Since then I’ve seen the bottles in the store again and again and have sort of been waiting for them to go on clearance before giving them a try. Well, yesterday I was really in the mood for a little Baileys and I haven’t had any around the apartment for a few months so I wandered back to the boozahol section of the store and grabbed a bottle. Actually, I grabbed the wrong bottle. I had picked up a bottle of Mint Chocolate Baileys instead of the normal variety. I came really close to putting it back, but for some reason it just sounded really good right about then (possibly because I had just left the ice cream aisle where the mint chocolate chip had been trying to seduce me).
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