We're in the home stretch now, only five beers to go. Tonight what do you say we go with a stout? What's that? You say I've already had plenty of stouts this month. I know, I know. It is my favorite I won't deny. If all goes according to plan I intend to brew my first batch of stout tomorrow -- I want to have it ready to toast the birth of my grandson in February.
This one is different -- I mean, yeah, it's a chocolate stout but it's brewed with vanilla beans too. And vanilla is a flavor I recognize. (Which reminds me I bought some coriander the other day because it seems to pop up fairly regularly in beers and I wanted to be able to recognize it next time. Tastes like sand. So if your beer tastes like you're trying to drink it on a windy day at the beach that's coriander.)
Anyway, Aphrodite is an import, it's brewed in Quebec, Canada. The label is kinda sexy, I guess, a topless woman with vanilla in her hair and a cocoa bean necklace, which is kind of worrisome cuz I've learned not to trust sexy labels. It's an 11.5 oz bottle -- chintzy Canadians, where's my other half ounce? -- and it cost $5.99 at the Charleston Beer Exchange.
APPEARANCE: Black (of course) with a one inch brown head with slowly expanding and then bursting sinkholes.
AROMA: All chocolate, dark chocolate.
TASTE: Take that vanilla out of your hair, young lady. The taste is all cocoa. Even the mildly bitter finish feels more a dark chocolate bitterness than hoppiness. A little bit of chocolate history for you: Aztecs believed that wisdom and power came from eating the fruit of the cocoa tree, and also that it had nourishing, fortifying, and even aphrodisiac qualities. The Aztec emperor, Montezuma drank thick chocolate dyed red. The drink was so prestigious that it was served in golden goblets that were thrown away after only one use. He liked it so much that he was purported to drink 50 goblets every day! Montezuma would have loved this beer. I'm not sure how he'd feel about malted barley since the Aztecs did not have any sugar and drank their chocolate thick, cold and unsweetened, but I think he'd get used to it. I can see us now, me and Monty, toasting each other with our golden goblets after a day of building pyramids and cursing those conquistadors.
DRINKABILITY: Very, but as we've already established, I'm prejudiced.
2 comments:
i was introduced to your blog thru linda g's old xword blog several years ago and have been following you periodically ever since. a couple of years ago i commented on your buck owens post and today i signed up to follow your blog. i started my own blog (Bill from NJ Speaks) if you are interested totally in response to what you are doing. i have ms and am down to two finger typing so i thought i should sign up before i lose all ability to type. I find you to be the most eclectic person i have ever encountered and wanted to let you know that i love what you do and wanted to acknowledge that before i couldn't any more. i wrote primarilly about my father and my disease before i had to give it up completely. it is so exhasting for me to type thst this is all i will ever say to you but will continue to folloe what you are doing and wish to say god bless you sir
Bill, you made my day! God bless you too. Thank you so much for going to all this trouble. It really means a lot to me.
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