Bock-ful of chocolate
Samuel Adams has produced a limited edition Chocolate Bock just in time for Valentine’s Day. Boston Beer Co., brewer of Sam Adams beers, made just 50,000 wine-size bottles of the beer for the entire country. Each carries a retail price of $14-15.
“People come in and look for them. I get customers who come in and tell me what’s coming out and say they want me to get them some,” Rich Valerius, beverage manager at Keller’s IGA in Clifton. told the Cincinnati Post. “They’re like kids in a candy store.”
Unlike several other high-priced high-alcohol beers from Boston Beer (Sam Adams Triple Bock, Millennium, and Utopia) Chocolate Bock is designed to be consumed immediately rather than aged. Like the higher alcohol beers, it comes in a special bottle, in this case with an embossed pewter.
The beer is a traditional bock — dark, full-bodied, with more malt than hops — but with an added chocolate flavor. It’s about 5.6% alcohol by volume, considerably less than Sam Adams Double Bock, its regular seasonal bock beer, at 8.5%.
Chocolate Bock doesn’t use chocolate as ingredient, said Boston Beer spokeswoman Michelle Sullivan. The barley malt used to make the beer is infused with chocolate flavor from cocoa nibs supplied by a California chocolate company.
“We are certainly charging a premium price for these beers, but for us it’s not about the money. We’re doing it to show beer drinkers what’s at the other end of the beer spectrum — to expose people to flavors in beer that they’re never had before,” Sullivan said.
Although making Chocolate Bock was conceived as a one-time effort, the company might do it again, likely at the same time of year, she said.
