Stone Xocoveza Mocha Stout

Stone Xocoveza Mocha Stout is a collaboration with American Homebrewers Association-sanctioned homebrewing competition winner Chris Banker, and Insugente. The description of Chris’ winning beer from the bottle: His chocolate, cinnamon, nutmeg, chile pepper and coffee-infused milk stout was built to mimic the flavors of Mexican hot chocolate.

Doesn’t take much of a sniff to get how good this should taste! Smelling a ton of chocolate heavily spiced with chili peppers and cinnamon, this is complimented by some nice coffee and nutmeg notes. The flavor follows along to start with a lot of chocolate and mild chile spice. The coffee comes on much stronger in the taste, big black coffee flavor with a lot of acidic bitterness. This creates a fantastic balance with the sweeter stout flavors.

I am unfortunately a bit spoiled by my experiences with Westbrook Mexican Cake and Cigar City Hunahpu’s, but this is an excellent beer that comes damn close to that level. I’m immediately heading out to find another bottle or two!