Choklat

After I wrote so glowingly of the forthcoming Boulevard Chocolate Ale, I got several suggestions to try Southern Tier's Choklat. Most of the recommendations focused on it being real chocolate forward and not a complementary flavor. I picked up a couple bottles last week and I've now drank both of them.

I didn't really look forward to drinking them, because I'm just not a fan of Southern Tier beers. I've yet to have one that I really enjoyed, Creme Brulee Stout has probably been my favorite. But, in an effort to appease all the Southern Tier fans around I begrudgingly gave Choklat a shot.

It does have a chocolate flavor. You know immediately that it's a chocolate beer. My very first sip reminded of when I was a kid and I used to make milkshakes with ice milk (we didn't ever have ice CREAM when I was a kid, just ice milk), 2% milk and Hershey's syrup. Hershey's syrup was the one extravagant food item we had around when I was a kid, well that and Alpha Bits and Cocoa Puffs. Choklat tasted just like those milkshakes, to the point that I made a Hershey's milkshake today, with real ice cream, not ice milk. Choklat was good, not great. If you like Hershey's syrup, Choklat is for you.

It's a disservice to compare Boulevard's Chocolate Ale to Southern Tier's Choklat. They're completely different beers, one's an imperial stout (with an 11% ABV that really does some damage to you) and the other's more like a fruit beer with the chocolate being the fruit. But, if one were to compare the two, you could do it with the SAT analogy Choklat is to Hershey's as Boulevard Chocolate is to Christopher Elbow.