Baby Bock
River City Brewing Co.

A - Arrived poured a very dark brown to black with an off-white to tan head. Not fair appearence really due to a bad pour and taking some time to arrive at our table.
S - Dark chocolate big time, almost to the point of coffee. Some roasted malt undertones.
T - Very chocolatey, a little sweet, nutty, light on bitterness scale. Good balance.
M - Medium carbonation, medium to slightly heavier body, finished clean.
D - Good session beer as for taste, but I would be limited due to ABV. I had a chocolate baby bock version (don't know if it's the same as this one listed). Dan brews some good beer. Highly recommend.

Sampled at home from a growler. Just as a note, I had three other paragraphs describing how great this beer was, but I was over my review length limit by 1500 characters. Doh!

Appearance: Black. Pure black. I know that isn't a very elegant way to describe a beer, but that one word says it all for this doppelbock. The only time that light penetrated this brew was when I held it up right infront of the light fixture. Even then, I could only detect a murky brown glow right under the head. And speaking of head, a beautiful brown, one-finger layer of thick, dense foam rose up when I poured this ebony liquid. It had great staying power, lingering for a long time before it thinned out to just a ring around the circumference of the glass. As I tipped my goblet, solid sheets of dense brown bubbles completely covered the glass where the beer had been. Overall, a supremely gorgeous beer.

Smell: The smell was very light and I really had trouble getting a feel for the aroma in my wide-mouth gobelt. So I poured a second glass (hehe) into one of my goblets with a much smaller opening. This helped to concentrate the smell and gave me a much better snapshot of this beer's aroma. The backbone was pure, sweet malt. This provided the meat-and-potatos of the aroma, if you will. Overlayed on top of that was heavy cream, chocolate, and a light smokiness. As the beer sat, the aroma became lighter and lighter, while the smokey component became the most dominant component.

Mouthfeel: Right up there in the full-bodied range. This beer had a nice, thick, viscous feel to it that coated the inside of the mouth. It was silky smooth and slipped down the throat effortlessly. The alcohol provided a nice numbing bite on the tongue after the beer was gone, but that was it. Incredibly smooth.

Taste: There was a wonderful assault of flavors from the second that this beer hit my tongue. Dark roasted malt, coffee, and dark chocolate emerged first. These blended well with the sweet malt and sugar flavors that arose in the middle. This was also when the hops made their brief appearance. They were very weak and didn't do much more than balance out the sweetness of the beer, but they did it very well. The finish was a continuation of the aforementioned flavors, with the addition of a smokiness that lingered well into the aftertaste. After awhile, I began to detect the alcohol in the taste, but it was very light and never became a major contributor to the flavor.