Chocolate Stout, Fort Collins Brewery, Fort Collins

Style: Stout

ABV: 5.3 percent

Serving Type: 12-ounce bottle

Malty? Hoppy? Mounds of roasted malt and a dash of hops.

Reviewed: September 2012

When it comes to beer towns in Colorado, Fort Collins is a land of giants; craft brew behemoths New Belgium and Odell both call this college town home. Consequently, it’s easy to overlook Fort Collins’ other breweries, including the operation named after the town itself: Fort Collins Brewery. For the past seven years, Fort Collins Brewery has whipped up a wide range of solid year-round offerings and various seasonal releases. FCB’s Chocolate Stout is one of my favorites.

A quick sniff of this dark brown stout offers a ton of roasted malt. Take a second whiff, though, and you’ll start to pick up on the subtle milk chocolate notes. The beer has an interesting and pleasant mouthfeel: seemingly equal parts silky smooth and dry—crisp, even. The roasted malts are a big part of this stout’s flavor, too. And although the brew smelled faintly of milk chocolate, the chocolate flavor, though understated, is more of the dark variety. The whole thing finishes with a slight hoppiness, which makes it a solid stout in my book.

Would we buy it again? Put me down for a sixer.