Celebrate the 1st Real Weekend of Summer with this Chocolate Beer!

It is always fun to find something chocolaty at the liquor store, and what I found recently was a beer which claimed to have 'double chocolate' in it: Young's Double Chocolate Stout.  Truthfully, I thought it would be disgusting.  But I actually loved it.  It was the perfect drink for a scorching summer day on the patio, and it paired amazingly well with my chocolate-dipped bacon recipe.

The reason why I thought it would be gross was because I thought it would be too chocolaty and that it would perhaps have artificial chocolate flavouring, like many chocolate-flavoured beverages do. And as we know, chocolate and beer do not always mix (they can, but the pairing needs to be dead-on to be enjoyable). But in fact, this beer was very light on chocolate taste (which was real, bye the way), and instead was just a refreshing, great-flavoured stout. 

The BeerAdvocate gave it an "outstanding" score, but listed it as a milk/sweet stout.  I do not know much about beer, but seemed like a semi-dark ale to me! The LCBO's (Liquor Control Board of Ontario) website describes it as "Full & Malty" and the beer maker's website, Well's and Young's Brewing Company, describes it as a "rich, full-flavoured dark beer." But no matter how it is described, it is still great tasting and fantastically refreshing.

So if you are thinking that you want to mix chocolate and beer for this upcoming summer kick-off celebration weekend (Canada Day is on Tuesday - so isn't everyone taking Monday off? Which means this is a long weekend!), check out Well's and Young's website for more information on Young's Double Chocolate Stout.

I bought this at an LCBO in Toronto, Canada a few weeks back for only $3.50 per bottle.  You can learn more about the supply at the LCBO here.