Jan

30

Harpoon Chocolate Stout

By Andy Murphy

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Harpoon Chocolate Stout is so awful I’m at a loss for words.

(That won’t last for long.)

Until today, I’ve never had a Harpoon beer that I genuinely disliked. The Winter Warmer isn’t my favorite — but I drink it, and I’ve generally appreciated everything Harpoon produces.

Until today.  Which is why this Judas-of-a-beer completely took me by surprise.

Seriously, this beer is godawful. Look, I’m only drinking one beer a day. So to think this atrocity has taken the place of something more worthy just makes me want to pour the rest of the glass down the drain.

Reader corbinsa asked recently in the Forum if any beer could be so bad that you or I wouldn’t finish it.

I have a definitive answer. For me not to finish a beer, it would have to be Harpoon-Chocolate-Stout-Bad^®.

My high hopes for today’s beer lasted about 20 seconds. The Chocolate Stout had a great pour, with a black body and a thick head filled with large bubbles. But the smell hit me quickly. Its aroma was pungent — the high, sweet smell of artificial chocolate sweetener.

If the smell was bad, the taste was far, far worse. Calling it a chocolate syrup taste would be charitable, because chocolate syrup can actually taste good. This beer is an abomination. Harpoon describes the taste as “dark chocolate”, and says the flavor “is created from the use of darker, more aromatic malt that has been roasted or kilned until it acquires a chocolate color.”

Really? Because it tastes like it was excreted from pores of sun-drenched day laborers.

I’m halfway through the Chocolate Stout, and the aftertaste is burning my nose. If I hadn’t pledged to drink one beer every day, there’s no way I would finish this chocolate turd.

My only thin hope is that while I am writing this, the beer will warm up and magically assume a better taste.

Ugh. I was wrong.

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Categories : Beer a Day