Rogue Brewing, Double Chocolate Stout

I'm sad to say that i don't have a whole lot of experience with Rogue Brewing. I finally decided to take the plunge, and picked up their Double Chocolate Stout. I don't want to give too much away in the first few sentences of this review, but let's just say that this beer was a perfect compliment to celebrating an anxiety ridden Denver Broncos win.

This beer pours a dark brown, almost black color and its pretty opaque. About one finger of tan head accompanies the first pour. The head disappears pretty quickly and leaves a whispy tan head on top of the beer throughout the tasting. There is very little lacing on the sides of the glass.

The aroma of this beer is a mix of chocolate and roastiness from the malt. The chocolate aroma of this beer is profiled very nicely. It didn't just smell like chocolate malt, it smelled like actual chocolate and I really liked that about this beer. The roast from the malt balanced with the chocolate really well, which translated into the taste beautifully.

The first taste of this beer gave me a lot of chocolate, followed by some bitterness and roastiness as the taste continued. What really stood out to me about this beer was the chocolate. This beer uses real chocolate and you can definitely taste it. There is a subtle hint of hops about mid way through the tasting and you can also detect subtle hints of malted barley and oats. The flavors really balanced out nicely in this brew, I didn't feel like any of the flavors were overly dominant.

This beer didn't have much carbonation and had a pretty heavy mouth feel, mixed with a little creaminess. The after taste was roasty and malty. There was a little sweetness at the end of the taste but the lingering taste was the roast mentioned before.

Overall I really enjoyed this beer. The chocolate profile really stood out to me and there wasn't an overwhelming amount of roast like I'm use to with stouts. The chocolate added a really nice sweet quality to this brew. I'm pretty disappointed that I haven't gotten into Rogue sooner. I will definitely be trying a lot more beers from Rogue in the new future and hopefully be posting some more raving reviews.