Today is National S'mores Day, and while I don't have an actual s'mores beer to review like I did last year, I do have a beer that definitely qualifies as dessert. Choklat, from New York's Southern Tier Brewing Company, is a beer that I've been trying to track down for a while. I've tried and really enjoyed Southern Tier's Creme Brulee and Mokah so far, so I was really glad to find a bottle of Choklat in a bottleshop in Maryland a few weeks ago. At #180, Choklat.
Choklat pours a bit thin-looking, but once it hits the glass it becomes a viscous black color. A one finger mocha colored head wells up immediately, but quickly settles to a light ring around the surface of the beer. Southern Tier's stout have a reputation of being pretty sweet (too sweet, if you ask a lot of people) and this one definitely smelled that way. If you were to fill two glasses, one with Choklat and one with Hershey's Chocolate Syrup, I doubt someone who was blindfolded would be able to differentiate the two. Choklat has a rich, milk chocolate smell with just a hint of bitterness on the back of it. I also picked up some cocoa powder, chocolate cake and some oats.
While the smell of this beer was really sweet, the taste opens on more of a bittersweet chocolate note. The sweetness shows up in the middle of the palate, with some velvety smooth milk chocolate notes, Hershey's syrup and some vanilla. The finish heads back to the bitter end of the spectrum, with some unsweetened baking chocolate, char, roasted malt and some earthy hop resin. The mouthfeel of Choklat is silky smooth and really brings out all of the different chocolate elements in here. There's a lot of sweetness in this beer, but Southern Tier did well to keep this one from becoming too one dimensional. A top notch dessert stout.
Final Grade: A
Top 250 Beers Tasted: 129
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