Ok, folks, today we’re going to talk about chocolate stout.
Should be pretty simple.
(It isn’t.)
This is chocolate.
This is stout.
Combine, chill, and serve.
Goodnight, everybody!
Of course, it’s not really that simple. In fact, I should probably let you in on a
minor, insignificant beer secret:
There’s no chocolate in chocolate stout.
Oops, cat’s out of the bag, now.
In fact, stout is one of the most commonly misinterpreted
beers out there, with all kinds of labels used that fail to accurately reflect
the beer itself, not entirely unlike Taco Bell’s “beef” tacos. (Lawsuit!
Oh Taco Bell, I kid, you know I love you.)
Even the name itself, Stout, was originally an adjective
attached to another style of beer popular among working-class English, namely
porter. Our first president loved
porter, though it is unclear if he liked a relatively light brown porter, or
the stronger, darker, “stout” porter. Eventually,
the “porter” part was dropped and stout became synonymous with the
working-class Irish, whose Guinness stout was, and still is, considered the
stout by which all others are measured.
The term “stout,” I should mention, if a reference to the
strength of the taste, and is completely unrelated to the strength of the
alcohol. Dry Irish stout, like Guinness,
comes in at a very modest 5% (4%, if you’re in Ireland). The strength in the taste comes from the malt
and the roasting method used. Ah,
chemistry, is there anything you can’t teach us?
Over time, variations began to appear, and were given names
that sort of made sense at the time, like Imperial stout. This stout is high in alcohol and bitterness,
which has nothing to do with being Imperial, that’s just the kind of stout that
was exported to Russia for the enjoyment of Catherine the Great. And as for milk stout, it contains no milk,
but is so named because it contains lactose.
The lactose isn’t added to give the beer a milky flavor, it is added to
make the beer sweeter. Sweetening beer
is tricky, since yeast eat sugar, but yeast don’t eat lactose, so lactose
because a natural choice for sweetening brews.
To make matters worse, milk stout can also be referred to as cream
stout, which seems to relate it to cream ale, which contains no lactose. Cream ale is simply a top-fermented beer that
is chilled to lager temperature during fermentation, creating a unique taste. I have no idea why it’s called cream ale.
Chocolate stout is named in reference to the barley malt
used in its production, which is roasted to such a degree that it imparts a
slight bitter-sweet flavor to the beer, reminiscent of chocolate. Hence, chocolate stout. See? Chocolate
roasted malt. Not chocolate.
But I like chocolate.
Especially Belgian chocolate.
I also like milk stout.
(I’m not a hop-head, if you haven’t picked up on that
yet. Sure, I can brew a beer with a
dozen different kinds of hops, like most of the other homebrewers I know, but I
wouldn’t like it very much. Hops are
wonderful little herbs, absolutely essential to balance the taste of the malt,
and a bitter lager can be the perfect refreshment on a hot summer day, but for
the most part, hops don’t thrill me.
Sour beers, now those are interesting.
I like a beer that I can order in a brewpub and the waiter will actually
ask, “Are you sure? That’s a sour
beer…” True story, that really
happened. The guy tried to talk me out
of buying a beer because it was so sour.
Point is, when I comes to stout, I like ‘em a little on the sweet side.)
So, if chocolate malt contains no chocolate, what’s a
homebrewer who likes milk stout to do when a friend of his delivers right to his door fine Belgian
chocolate that he brought back from a business trip to an undisclosed
location? (I hope I didn’t give anything
away there.)
Why, make a chocolate milk stout, of course!
 |
| Contains no chocolate milk. Sorry. But it's still yummy. |
This is why homebrewing is the best hobby ever. Sure chocolate stout needs no chocolate, but
does that physically prevent you from dropping in a few ounces of good Belgian
chocolate at the end of the boil? Hell,
no! Add some lactose, and that dry stout
made with chocolate malt and bittering hops transforms into delicious chocolate
milk stout, sweet, rich, creamy, with just a touch of bitterness to keep the
chocolate from being overpowering.
There are times when I think I must be a genius.
But don’t tell anyone.
I try to be humble.
