The holiday season is coming, and with it comes some special editions from craft breweries, far and wide.
I fell in love with Flying Monkeys Craft Brewery in Barrie, Ontario years ago when I lived a couple of blocks away from the brewery. Flying Monkeys is now a well-established Canadian craft brewery, with an excellent reputation for quality product, including many experimental and quirky products.
Over the past decade, the brewery has experienced an excellent growth in reach, and is now widely available across Ontario.
The Chocolate Manifesto is one of the more unusual and delightful Flying Monkeys creations. With three different types of chocolate incorporated in the brewing process, this is definitely a decadent product, despite the hefty 10% ABV.
I had a chuckle reading through the Untappd reviews of this beer before I bought it. With such appraisals as “This is chocolate milk. I swear” and “tastes like chocolate cake”, I knew that I wouldn’t need more than a single bottle (which is beautifully packaged in a very appealing and eclectic red box.
Not surprisingly, the first sip of this dark beer was a punch of chocolate. The flavour is obvious on the nose, and was very appealing to me.
That being said, if you don’t love chocolate, this is not the beer for you.
The mouthfeel is truly velvety, and I completely understand the chocolate cake review. In case I have not been clear enough, the chocolate flavour in this beer is not at all subtle.
I was skeptical about a 10% ABV beer being as sweet and smooth as this was advertised, but it truly is.
The Millennium Hops balance the flavour with a slight bitterness, but the story here is the cacao and chocolate malt.
This is a fantastic dessert beer, but not one that I would seek to start out with at the pub. I could certainly see it being a versatile dessert brew, and could imagine some interesting beer cocktails or floats.
However, this beer alone has enough complexity in its sweet flavour to stand alone without any pairing.
I’m generally not a big fan of overly sweet beers (Belgian trappists excluded), but this is a delight that I would seek out again.
- ABV: 10.0%
- IBU: 60
- Style: Triple chocolate milk stout
- Taste: Sweet and chocolatey
- Rating: 4.5/5
- Untappd reviews
Ryan Heighton
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