Jan 10, 2009 09:44
I have an extreme pallete. Sometimes I think its why I hate so many foods. I can taste everything. Everything. I can pick out all sorts of ingredients and flavors. I know exactly what parts of my pallete taste what flavors. It's more of a curse than anything in my opinion. Seeing as how I don't like a lot of food and the addition of a single ingredient can ruin a dish for me.
Anyhow, brian loves craft beers. He loves trying to pick out all the flavors and all the spices, different types of hops and grains... he really enjoys the complexity involved in the small batch craft beers.
Well, I hate beer and that makes him sad because he knows id be able to pick out all the little things on my pallete.
Last night he bought a bottle of Southren Tier Chokolat Stout. Everytime we're at Belmont someone is buying some of it. At $9 a bottle, it certainly is a more expensive craft beer. But everyone there swears by it, so he wanted to try it.
I agreed to taste it and it was one of the weirdest, most complex drinks I've ever tried.
Mouth feel was heavy, as it is a stout, poured extremely dark with a thin, creamy head. Smells of milk chocolate and slight hint of vanilla.
Holding it in my mouth I taste the beer flavor on the tip of my tongue. The sides of my tongue get a bitter chocolate taste and the back of my tongue a decadent dark chocolate flavor. Let me break it down a little further. The taste of the sides of my tongue remind me of a bizzare drink I once tried. Its called xocoatl and it was a drink the ancient mayans/azteks used to drink. I remember sampling it once in school when we were studying the mayans. Its a very bitter drink made from cocoa beans. Its not sweet at all. Its a very bitter drink.
The chocolate taste on the back of my tongue was an extreme dark chocolate flavor. Im taking 75-80% dark chocolate. Very dark.
The finish consists mainly of that flavor, as that's the last flavor to hit your pallete.
I described all of this to brian and he looked at me like im crazy.
Who the hell references an ancient mayan chocolate drink?
Upon reading up on the beer, we found I was spot on. The flavor of xocoatl was crafted into the brew in fact.
This is a beer for lovers of dark chocolate. If you love dark craft chocolate, REAL chocolate, not American crap chocolate full of milk and sugar, you will love this beer.
If I liked beer, I have no doubt this would be my favorite... though I could only deal with a few sips, I can certainly appriciate the complexity involved in creating these flavors in a way that hit your pallete just right and set your senses searching for the perfect comparison.
At 11% alcohol, this is a dangerously drinkable beer, though at $9 a bottle, not so dangerous because who can afford to drink more than one or two at a time? Haha.
beer,
stout,
chocolate