Hockley Valley Dark

473 ml can, date stamped 120707. Dark amber brown colour with a fully diminishing fizzy and creamy beige head. Dark chocolate, lightly roasty coffee, and caramel aroma with fruity notes. Nice roasty, bready, nutty, and lightly sweet caramel flavours with a roasty, earthy, and bitter chocolate finish. Light to medium bodied, lightly chewy and firm but quaffable at the same time. This is a brown ale on the same level as Garrison Brown when Shirley Warner was brewing it. I imagine this would be mind blowing on cask, though I could also see a too tight sparkler diminishing the whole thing.

(Can) Pours a dark burgundy body with a small off-white head. Aroma of licorice, roastiness, nuts, and toasted marshmallow. Flavor of roasted malt, fennel, and cocoa.

Hershey’s syrup in a can! Incredibly chocolate-y, would have loved a bit of coffee flavour to mellow it out a bit. Not undrinkable, but not a favourite either. Smells good, coulour good, taste...liquid Count Chocula.

This doesn’t shout out "Ale!" to me. Nice looking, a deep reddish chestnut body with a beige head that barely says "Hello." I swear there was a touch of iodine to it immediately after the pour, but that soon vanished. What I then smelled was lightly roasted malts with a weak splash of chocolate and a hint of smoke. The flavor drops the chocolate, leaving the a grainy roasted malt and a touch of earthy bitterness. A quaffable brew.

<font size=-4>From my esteemed The LoSBD colleague <a href=http://www.ratebeer.com/ViewUser.asp?UserID=18655>frankenkitty.<font size=-1>

dark amber with beige head, it has aroma of roasted barley and chocolate. the flavor is caramelly and toasty, medium bodied.

An interesting brew. Pours with little head, and an aroma of various malts, no hops. Flavour is the same, but it’s enjoyable, almost some complexity to it. Worth a try. EDIT: They must have reformulated or something, because this recent can is a lot better than I remember it used to be. Roasted toffee/caramel/coffee/maple malty deliciousness with a nice bitter touch to the finish. Definitely one of the best local Brown Ales in Ontario.

Pours a deep black-amber with a minimal head. Sweet milk-chocolate aroma - nice! Tastes sweet & starchy, very odd - pleasant but really hard to pin down. Extremely drinkable, decent hopping and good strong malting. Good thick body but low carbonation. This is a very pleasant session beer. Many thanks to Robin for the can!

Pours a fizzy cherry-cola body with a fizz-away head to a skinny film. Aroma starts with some cheeses than produces some peat, roasted grains and dark fruit. Watery and fizzy mouth, yet roasted bitters linger past full fruity malts... yes... roasty... nice. I’d call this a rather nice German Bock.

<font size=-4>Single can from a "The Beer Store", London, ON, CAN</font>