Ok, so I wanted to check out another beer because while I liked the last one, I haven’t yet found that ultimate beer that combines both the deliciousness I found in my first stout, and perhaps a new/different experience. I decided on the simply titled “Chocolate Stout” from Bison Brewing, which was also recommended to me by the guy at BevMo the last time I went..
Bison Brewing's Chocolate Stout. That's about it.
As you can (possibly, unless you’re blind) see, Bison seems to favor a more simplistic, almost “web 2.0″ look to their packaging and presentation. Really gives it kind of a generic feel, visually. I’ve noticed that most craft brews tend to push ridiculous names on their beers and overly dramatic packaging and illustrations. For this reason, I kind of felt like I’m buying a soda rather than a beer. Additionally, Bison Brewing names their beers “Chocolate Stout” and “IPA”, and I’m sure if I were to look for a light beer from them it’d be called “Light Beer.” That said, I tend to prefer this philosophy to packaging; less is more. Only there’s not really much to this beer’s presentation to get me excited about drinking it, so really you just have to crack one open and get to it. The price isn’t much to get excited about either, at $8.99 for a six pack. For price and presentation, I gotta give this one a solid B.
Having a woman around is great; when you want a beer, they are obligated to make it happen simply by having a vagina. So as I watched my woman pour my beer, we both noticed two things: This beer is DARK. It may as well be black. I held my glass up in front of my monitor and could not see through it. Another thing is this beer produces a very large head when poured. So you might want to wait a minute before gulping it down if you decide to enjoy it in a glass.
Another thing I noticed after handed this dark elixir, is that it doesn’t produce much of a scent. It has a very faint smell of cocoa and hops–VERY faint. Upon first sip, I found it didn’t really have a lot of flavor either. I suppose if I didn’t know it was brewed with cocoa, I may not have noticed if not for a (again) VERY faint cocoa aftertaste. I’ve had a porter that didn’t even have cocoa that tasted more chocolatey than this beer. As I’ve continued drinking, I really found this beer to be about as generic as its presentation. On the other hand, it isn’t BAD per se, just nothing to really get excited about. Gotta give it a C+ for flavor.
Though I had this beer by itself without a meal, I’m sure it would go well with a dessert. I’m willing to bet that it and chocolate ice-cream or chocolate cake would compliment each other very well. I’m almost tempted to make a beer float out of it with some vanilla ice cream we have. Otherwise I’d probably advise against imbibing it with anything else.
Overall I’m going to have to give it a C+. As I said, it’s really not bad, but the running theme with this beer for me seems to be that it’s nothing to get excited over.
I kind of like doing this. I think I’m going to try to make a weekly, or at least bi-weekly (when I get paid) column, buying different beers and writing about them. We really need something like that on this site. Because you other faggots don’t do anything. But yeah, beer.
