Southern Tier - Choklat

I've been looking forward to this for a while. When the owner of your favourite speciality beer shop (The Bottle Shop in Canterbury,) a man who really knows his beer, picks out one that you should try then you know you're on to something rather interesting. Choklat is a gloriously obsidian imperial stout that, at times, tastes like a chocolate milkshake (a good one) and at others tastes like a chilled mocha. It looks and feels as thick as double cream and instantly brought a smile to my face. Stouts have always had elements of chocolate about them, they've always had hints of coffee and spice and all things nice but this is something special, it's a thick stout that clocks in at a hefty 10% that can be downed greedily in a matter of seconds or nursed gently over the course of an evening, though at a whopping £12, the latter seems the most advisable, though the former is somewhat more realistic. The sweet chocolate and mildly bitter coffee tastes remind me of all the fun and fantastical chocolates I used to buy when I was young, ones with marshmallows in the middle and ones with turkish delight, which if you take a big mouthful of Choklat is exactly what you will taste. The tingle from the alcohol is evident but if it wasn't then you'd have to have taste buds chiselled from granite and, if that was the case, why would you be on a page reviewing GOOD beer?

I respect what the Americans are doing, along with the Scottish, they are leading the beer revolution. The list of ingredients reads like the shopping list of a 6 year old beer connoisseur with a sweet tooth and includes the use of a bittersweet Belgian chocolate. To pull out a hackneyed quote, "we're not in Kansas anymore," and by Kansas I mean "The Bavarian Purity Laws," and by IN I mean "strictly adhering to." I still see the Germans and the Belgians as the best beer makers in the world but it's this kind of free thinking and flawless execution of a beer that will turn America into one of the great powerhouses of world beer.

This beer is definitely a treat. It's something a bit special to be had when you've been very good or extremely bad, it's just so full of contradiction, it just looks so severe, like a glass of flat coke that someone's mixed corn syrup into but it's just so fun! The child in me is screaming at me to down it, eat a bowl of ice cream, run around, play with some toy cars and then question why I'm feeling so sick. The adult in me is questioning why I'm still writing and not drinking...

Food Suggestion: Not sure it would work at all but I get the urge to have this with a cheese board. It's not a traditionally sweet chocolate taste, it's still a little bitter and has a depth that I think would complete a cutting board full of hard cheese.

Drink this if you like: Drinking a chocolate milkshake that will knock you on your arse.