Review: Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout

An Imperial Stout brewed by
Brooklyn Brewery
Brooklyn, New York

This is an outstanding beer especially when left to sit out for a bit and warm. Creamy and frothy on pour and dark like the night. You can almost lap it up. Has a roasty and toasty flavor and an after taste with hints of a dark Chocolate. Beware the alcohol content it will grab you eventually because all you will want to do is keep drinking it. A beautiful beer and certainly one for the winter months.

My Ratebeer.com rating: 4.3

News: Flying Dog to go with a smoked double schwarz

 

Through their Twitter account, Flying Dog announced their next beer today.

“We decided on the style of our next wild dog release: a smoked double schwarz. It will be ready around GABF time,” the post read.

A Schwarzbier, or “black beer,” is a German dark lager beer with an opaque, black color and a full, chocolaty or coffee flavor.

This one sounds good and I’m looking forward to it.

Column: The 21st century beer library

One of my favorite parts of being a journalist is the research. When people ask why I like my job so much, I say ‘because I get to learn something new everyday.’

Besides enjoying the taste of a great beer, half of the fun in having beer as a hobby is doing the research to find out what is out there, how it is made and how it can be made better.

In this the Internet age there are many resources available to a beer connoisseur.

I keep track of my own tastings on beeradvocate.com and ratebeer.com. If you want to get a general consensus of where any beer in the world stands then these are the sites for you.

These sites also have written tutorials and columns along with event calendars.

Podcasts — most available on iTunes — are the best listening resource available on beer.

One of my favorites is Craft Beer Radio. This tandem, based in Pennsylvania, just finished up a fantastic series from Savor: An American Craft Beer & Food Experience. They were able to hook right into the sound board for talks on pairing beer with cheese and the popular He Said Beer, She Said Wine: A Debate on Food Pairing seminar put on by Sam Calagione of Dogfish Head and Marine Old, an award winning wine writer.

Other podcasts such as Good Beer Show and Beer School are also very good while the rest fall off a bit into crudeness but are non-the-less informative.

For home brewing information Basic Brewing is far an away the best. The show’s host James is one of those guys that know just about everything about everything.

For magazines I break them down into two different categories: the glossy and the trade journal. The better of the first group is All About Beer Magazine and Draft Magazine.

For the second category and for a heavier read I like Brew Your Own and Zymurgy Magazine, which comes with a membership in the American Homebrewer’s Association.

Locally for me, the Yankee Brew News is a great way to keep up on local events and happenings.

There are really so many great books out there that it would be hard to mention them all, quickly however I will name a few: “How to Brew: Everything You Need To Know To Brew Beer Right The First Time”, “Michael Jackson’s Great Beer Guide” and “Beer School: Bottling Success at the Brooklyn Brewery.”