Doppo Chocolate is Miyashita Shuzo’s annual gift to craft beer drinkers in Japan – a stout fortified with cocoa powder, ready for that (lonely) Valentine’s night. It’s a bottom fermented beer brewed with seven different hops although the addition of such a large amount of coca means Doppo Chocolate is sold under the classification of a happoshu.
Seven different malts but the chocolate overpowers them all.
Doppo Chocolate Aroma and Taste
With seven different hops in the mash, you have to wonder if there is any point in adding that many to Doppo Chocolate along with cocoa powder. It was pretty lively as it poured out of the bottle with a fair amount of carbonation. The doppo range includes a schwarz and a dunkel, so it could have easily been one of those with added cocoa powder. Once Doppo Chocolate had settled down, the body was a deep brown colour that had a rich chocolate aroma with some roasted malt hiding in the mix too. I don’t mind some chocolate once in a while, but Doppo Chocolate seemed to be overloading on the aroma of it – perhaps hiding something else besides the malt.
Even when you are about to drink it, the aroma of the malt floods your nose and the creaminess of the chocolate was more noticeable as Doppo Chocolate got closer. It seemed that the different varieties of hops involved really didn’t bring anything noticeable to the taste, which is a shame as hops can really help bring out some other flavours, though having seven in one beer was probably more of a case of Miyashita Sake hedging their bets if another hop shortage occurs of one or more varieties.
The chocolate had a rich velvety texture it with a subtle creaminess to the body as well as it slips down. The hops lent a little bitterness to the body too though not as potent as you would expect. Considering Doppo Chocolate is laced with cocoa powder, I got some sweetness off of it but it wasn’t sickly sweet.
Doppo Chocolate One Line Review
Doppo Chocolate is a pleasant enough chocolate beer but the richness of the chocolate may be too much for some.
Where to Buy Doppo Chocolate
Doppo Chocolate can be bought as part of a multipack from the Miyashita Shuzo website here. We bought our bottle of Doppo Chocolate from Craftbeers.jp here though at the time of writing it had sold out.
