Valkyrie Hot Chocolate

Brewed by Valkyrie Brewing Company
Style: Spice/Herb/Vegetable
Dallas, Wisconsin USA

Serve in Lager glass, Shaker, Tumbler

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cloudy black porter aroma that is a tad peppery with a chocolate taint. taste is coffee and the afore mentioned pepper comes out later. this is not to my taste, but the more i drank the more interesting it became. it burns my lips in a nice way unlike the CCCB that came to mind while drinking this.

(Bottle) Pours a dark brown body with a small tan head. Aroma of chocolate and a hint of peppers. Similar flavor as the aroma. Not a bad pepper beer.

went into this beer with some reservation not knowing what a cocoa/cayanne combination would bring to the table, as it turned out I was getting bent out of shape for nothing, I barely even tasted the pepper and as a stout goes it was lackluster at best. pours a thin looking opaque black headless glass. tasted slightly chocolatey, but the mouthfeel was watery/thin at best. not recomended

UPDATED: JUN 10, 2005 This was, quite frankly, the worst beer I have ever had. Definately not my cup of tea(or hot chocolate, if you will). Blechhck! I’m not sure where to begin. When I first heard of this I thought it would be interesting and worth a try. But its all wrong for my palate. Very wrong. The color is a besmirched blackened brown muddy thing that pours very thin and without much head or carbonation. Aroma has weakened cocoa-like nuttyness with a small hint to the cayenne. Oh, but the flavor does not mistake where the cayenne is. Its smack dab in your face and absolutely disgusting. I can’t imagine the look on my face I must of had after the first sip. I must of looked like I was poisined or something. I nearly gagged it was that bad for me. Its suppose to be a chocolate stout with cayenne seasoning, not cayenne bludgeoning. The chocolate is nearly invisible, and what is detetced is very artificial and stale. It doesn’t help that it nearly does nothing but sit like water. The body is super thin and weak and all I get is a bunch of nasty cayenne that never fits. Yuk, yuk, yuk! Viking? What the hell are you doing to me? I so enjoy a couple of their beers, but this, along with countless others, are just soooo out there that its time to do a reality check and get back to the basics of making a finely crafted brew, not some basement science project gone horribly wrong that will rise up to destroy its maker.

Poured blackish brown with no head...smell is yeasty chocolate...taste is yeasty chocolate...pepper is warming and snowballs...not noticable at first but becomes much more apparent...nice and interesting, but not particularly good...

Bottle. I can taste the pepper flavor, but not the heat. The chocolate and pepper makes for a good combination. Very rich coco powder like taste. To really evaluate this one, I would need to try it again. Thanks for sharing Nuffield.

Chocolate and pepper isn’t inherently a bad combination--see Mexican cuisine for example. But why do I try these things? I was SCARED as I approached it, perhaps scared by too many chili beers. If you didn’t know it, however, it wouldn’t be that imposing. The aroma, for example, shows much more cocoa powder than pepper, and even the first sip doesn’t do much damage. Though the second and third sips started building the heat and I started to find my timidity returning. Not my thing, but it could be much much worse and it might even deserve to be among the best of the beers that cross into the chili/pepper category.

Deep, impenetrable black color, tiny, soon disappearing head, dwindles to a ring of cocoa-brown bubbles on the edge of the glass. Aroma: chocolate and pepper, as advertised. Rich, cocoa-powder, with hits of peppery heat. Taste: bleuhhh!!! Weird as it sounds, chocolate and pepper, what are they doing together here? Not tasting very good. A mushy, dark cocoa feel, swiftly invaded by cayenne pepper, messing about the mouth, and then they drift off the palate in a blink. Halfway through, it gets more palateful, but the pepper heat gets stronger as well. Sticks longer in the mouth as well. This is a daredevil’s beer. Get together with your drinking buddies, buy a bunch of these, and see how many you can put away before your stomach starts to rot. Another weird idea from Viking, bafflingly executed.

Black color with a very thin, quickly vanishing, tan head. Dry chocolate and malt aroma. More very dry chocolate and roasts. I’m not sure where the pepper comes in... there’s a little tinge on my tongue, but it could be the glass raking across it. It strikes me as a bit chalky. A decent stab and worth trying, but I’m not picking up what everyone else is. I also would think this is more of a dry stout than spice/herb/veg. <time lapse> Okay, now that I’ve had a few more sips and it’s sat on the palate a while, I’m starting to get the "built-up heat". It’s not spicy to start, but after a while it kicks in. Interesting...

For me, the cayenne came through more in the aroma than in the taste. Thin body - much more thin than I was expecting. Then chocolate was not as evident as I was expecting. The finish was a bit watery - this beer was a good attempt, but could use a bit more body.