30 November 2016 - Best Beer HQ
Good George Rocky Road Black Stout Review
I felt like I was suffering from a particularly delightful bout of déjà vu when I cracked open a can of Good George’s black rocky road stout this weekend. After all, I reviewed the white rocky road stout only a couple of weeks ago (and quite enjoyed it, despite hearing some decidedly mixed reviews from people in the know).
ABV: 5%
Blurb on the can: There’s a reason why rocky road is always the first thing to disappear at birthday parties. Chocolate, vanilla, raspberry – it’s all the world’s greatest flavours in one godly mashup. The only way you could possibly improve it is by adding beer as well. That’s what we’ve done in this outrageous collaboration with Hamilton choc-heroes Donovans.
We’ve brewed two versions, so try the white stout too and you’ll be partying like it’s your birthday.
Tastes like: It’s no wonder that the beer geeks I know favour the black rocky road stout over the white one. They’re racist.
Actually, it’s because the black rocky road stout is less outrageous, better balanced, and just better in general. The aroma of Good George’s black rocky road stout is less like raspberry and vanilla, more like dark chocolate and coffee, and that follows through to the taste. It’s full flavoured, richer, less sweet, with a coffee backbone that makes the beer gruntier, more assertive than the lighter, more chilled-out white stout.
Like the white version of this beer, it’s sweet but hardly saccharine. Indeed, I’ve had sweeter stouts than this one that haven’t been made in collaboration with a chocolate maker.
The verdict: I maintain that Good George’s white rocky road stout is a perfectly enjoyable experimental brew. But the black rocky road stout is undoubtedly the better brew of the two; it’s almost like black and white in comparison.
Beer/movie combination: It’s fair to say that Good George’s pair of white and black rocky road stouts won’t be for everybody – and neither is Bloody Birthday, a delightfully daft slasher movie from 1981 about a trio of evil kids born during a solar eclipse. Like this beer, the movie goes for a bad kid’s birthday party vibe, but unlike this beer, it’s fantastic for all the wrong reasons.
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