Chocolate Stout: a Tutorial

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.