Loco For Choco Coco
Ethereal Brewing

 

 

Proving that the beer scene is more than just "hop heads" and "pucker up", a rich taste of chocolate invades the Ethereal brewery and gives the cold weather and chocoholic reason to get out of the house.

Its scent will have you screaming that you're cookoo for coocoa puffs as a rich scent of chocolate, dark nuts, coffee, toffee, toast, caramel and vanilla swoon the senses and promise a lavishly sweet and savory session. Loco For Choco Coco pours and expected dark brown, nearly black and then swirling with an off white skirt across the glass. Malty sweet in its first introductions, the culmination of chocolate, caramel, vanilla and coffee suggest something more of a mocha latte flavor.

As the ale slathers the middle palate, its sweetness lifts and the cocoa, coffee, nutty and toasty remnants of both malt and spice additions bring a more robust taste to the flavor spread as the session wears on. Mildly bitter, any earth or bite is easily attributed to a coffee or cocoa-like bitterness and not the broad and woodsy bitterness of hops.

Full bodied and modestly carbonated, the beer sits on the palate much like cask ale. Creamy, smooth and playfully silky, the chocolate porter risks thinness on the finish with a toasty, roasty trails of char that sides with stout as much as porter.