Boundary Road Brewery Chocolate Moose

I was a little bit torn standing there in the supermarket. Actually, I wasn’t torn at all, get your mind out of the gutter. What I mean was that as the season is well and truly changing from the depths of Ragnarok into something altogether better suited to afternoons of cricket and young ladies not wearing very much, I felt an urge to drink something golden or even fizzy and yellow. So of course I have just reviewed Hallertau Porter Noir and now this. Body is crying out, but mind just won’t obey. Besides, I had sampled all the yellow stuff on offer in this supermarket (and I mean beer. Keep that mind out of the gutter, I won’t tell you again). So this one has a tough act to follow and I have very little hope of it living up to a barrel aged monster. It looks very deep brown with a thin skim of mocha head that had to be agitated into life. The aroma is of powdery chocolate pudding, self saucing pudding, cocoa and grated chocolate. There’s almost a notion of rum and raising icecream as well. The flavour is sweet and cocoa-y and that’s the enduring hallmark. Plenty of carbonation and quite pleasant in the mouth. Not the most complicated beer but lets refer back to the gateway drug mentality: if this beer is served to someone who thinks that beer is the stuff that comes out of mainstream beer taps and cans only and it gets them to realise that beer is about choice, flavour and enjoyment then power to it. For me this beer would be a good dessert match in the absence of a muscular chocolate oatmeal stout such as the one brewed by Renaissance. I think this beer has merits and the naysayers who may unthinkingly malign this beer because it is made by a larger producer (by NZ standards) do so at the risk of damaging their own reputation.