Hockley Valley Dark

Brewed by Hockley Valley Brewing & Malting Company
Style: Brown Ale
Orangeville, Canada

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>

Robe noire aux reflets acajous très claire surmontée d’une mousse beige épaisse en dentelle qui s’estompe. Arômes de caramel. Saveurs de caramel, de café et de fruits.

nice malt aroma, good dark malts good dry coffee toffee flavour, good lacing good beer. One of the few i dont mind in a can.

This is a great beer, much nicer in the bottle than the can I find. The beer pours a nice deep brown, with a very faint beige head. Has a real nice roasty maltiness and favours of raisins and chocolate mixed in. Is a bit too light bodied, but real lovely malty taste.

Clear dark ruby body with almost no head. Basic roastiness backed by raisins and nutty flavours. Light on flavours and uninspired. Very boring thin body (almost watery) with a soda-like carbonation. Hockey is a great Canadian tradition and source of pride. Hockley is pretty much the other way around.

My Bottom Line:
The fruity nuttiness of this Brown Ale is covered in cheap cola blemishes and charred roastiness. Either not in its finest form or severely soporific, its thinness and lack of flavor depth just cannot win me over.

Further Personal Perceptions:
-Fizzy foam dissolves into the brownish garnet.
-The prickly bubbling is too much for the frail body.
-Fruitiness recalls maraschino cherries.
-It remains drinkable, although not pleasant enough for me to consider drinking a whole pint (in this condition, anyway).
-A whiff of DMS escapes the can upon entering.

Can.

Can. Kiwi aroma. Dark brownish red body with some clarity and an off-white ring. Whatever it was that gave the kiwi aroma suggestion is there in the flavor, but doesn’t taste anything like kiwi. A pretty decent beer. Malty but more interesting than your average maltfest brew. Different; enjoyable.

473ml can. Pours a very dark brown with very little head. Malt and chocolate dominate the aroma but there are hints of roasty coffee and caramel as well. The taste is nice and bitter, again with plenty of roasty malt, chocolate and coffee flavour. i expected it to have a little more body, its kind of on the thin side, but all in all its not a bad beer.