<B>Pinkie</b>, that double chocolate malt beer? I've tried a couple of chocolate beers and quite a few made with chocolate malt. Indeed, I just bottled a beer this weekend that I brewed with a healthy portion of chocolate malt in the grist. Chocolate and dark beer is a good fit. I have brewed a brown porter with chocolate, and Sam Adams Chocolate Bock and Brooklyn Brewing's Double Chocolate Stout are both excellent beers incorporating actual chocolate.
Some brewing info: Chocolate malt in the context of beer has little to do with chocolate flavor. It is a particular type of malted barley that is roasted to a chocolate brown. It is called Chocolate malt to distinguish it from Brown malt, which is a lighter toast, Black Patent malt, which is shiny black, and Roasted Barley, which is not malted. It does give a flavor that is not totally unlike unsweetened chocolate, but different enough that an uneducated tongue could tell in a side by side test.
For the record, stouts are generally colored and flavored with unmalted roasted barley, sometimes with a bit of black patented malt, and often with a portion of crystal malt for body and sweetness. Chocolate malt is not usually used in stouts. That said, when you see "Chocolate Stout", chances are about even that they used Chocolate Malt or Chocolate iteslf. "Double Chocolate Stout", like Brooklyn Brewing's, usually uses both Chocolate and Chocolate Malt. I believe Guinness uses a signigficant portion of Black Patent malt, since the head is lighter that one would expect if a very large portion of the grist were Roasted Barley.
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