REVIEW: Young's Double Chocolate Stout

Folks, I'll be honest. This is not the beer that I had originally in mind for today's post. The other night I had a can of Tetley's Smoothflow all set to go. I poured the beer, took the photo and everything. But when I tasted it it gave me pause. Not that it was a bad beer, not at all. I enjoyed it. It just tasted a whole lot like Old Speckled Hen. The aromas and flavors were eerily similar. And I was worried that my post today would look a whole lot like the one that you saw on Monday. That I wouldn't have anything new to say. So for today's post I decided to go in another direction. In a direction that will surely give me some new tasting notes. Today I look at Young's Double Chocolate Stout. To the beer!

Double Chocolate Stout pours a deep, inky, completely opaque black. Not even the brightest light can shine through this beer. The cascading nitro head cascades down and eventually builds to a sturdy, creamy finely bubbled head of resilient tan head.

In news that shouldn't shock anybody, robust notes of rich milk chocolate lead the way on the aromas here. Milky, sweet, bready, a bit roasty, with some subtle coffee hints as well. The chocolate aromas seem to intensify as the beer warms and opens up.

This beer is fairly light in body and, as expected, is extremely smooth and creamy. A lovely mix of chocolately flavors persists throughout that sip. It begins sweet, with creamy flavors of milk chocolate. The sweetness gives way to drier, more bitter, roasty dark chocolate. Subtle hints of vanilla and caramel lend some complexity. I'm detecting a very small hint of an herbal balance which balances things out and keeps things from getting cloyingly sweet. The chocolate is ever present, it even lingers on through the finish, but it never overpowers.

Stouts like this from American brewers are often big, brash, intense affairs. Young's Double Chocolate stout has a lot of those big chocolatey flavors, but wrapped in a much more drinkable, sessionable, approachable package. One feeling that I'm left with after looking at these English nitro cans is that I would love to see more American craft brewers to experiment with this stuff. The only craft nitro I know of is Left Hand's Milk Stout Nitro. Can you imagine Sixpoint's 3Beans on nitro, or a canned nitro big IPA?? Mmmmm.

HD