Urban Pig

These days I don't get out to pubs very often because I am so busy (woe is me) and so it is something when I get out to try something brewed locally. Basically, when a tweet (yes, I know) crosses your way telling you that there's some chocolate stout brewed exclusively for your favourite ale house now being served you drop the baby duties, which I was involved in, and you get yourself out to sample the brew. Then, as if you needed further encouragement, you accidentally drop into the place again whilst out shopping.

I refer, of course, to the rather nicely named Urban Pig Chocolate Snout from Urban Chicken that was brewed specially for my local boozer. Would you like to know more?



The first thing of note is that I ordered a pint rather than my usual half as I had seen it being poured for someone else upon my arrival and saw the intense darkness and smelled the rather chocolatey aroma wafting from the bar. I did this a second time the following day, which simply confirmed that I had made a good choice. Now, it's worth noting, that I tend not to order pints and so this was a punt, but one that the aroma quickly convinced me was a good idea.

Sitting near the shut-the-box game, which of course I started to play, I took stock. Good strong chocolate on the nose with a thick and welcoming malt that puffed around, no sign of anything bitter or sharp, good and warm for the evening. This was an impression that was matched when I returned for a second pint on the wetter Saturday, with a dryness that was most welcome in the nostrils and a darkness in the aspect that just made me want to kick back and enjoy the dice rather than worry about things. A bit brown in aspect, like a good chocolate pudding illustration (and never the actual pudding) and with a roast feeling to it that meant that there was no syrupy sweetness in the air. For that, I was very grateful.

In the mouth it was good and big, soft and wallowing as it snuffled around the bottom and rooted for truffles or something. A big hog of an ale with barely disguised power buts into the centre of the mouth, drawing with it a hard bunch of roasted dry chocolate that suffuses the bubbles, such as they are, with a good hefty hit of malt that just settles nicely. None of the sweetness of having added chocolate flavour, no over-abundance of sugar. If you're looking for a dessert ale this is not your spot, this is a proper drinking ale, one to have at the end of a day at honest work, one to relax with and sit back with, one to entertain and to discuss, one to join the milds and the porters in a darkened bar. Even in the middle of a shopping trip this was much welcome and just... It was right, it felt right. And it has been a very long time since I drank in a pub so it was very much a proper welcome back.

Once it was done, the aftertaste carried the punch of the full 6% ABV and the softness of the cocoa, more than chocolate, calling to mind the sort of heady brew that was Montezuma's Chocolate Lager (see here) but with more of a malt body that was thicker and more viscous. It's the sort of ale that one could wrap yourself up in on a cold night and then fall gratefully asleep. Not a dessert ale, nor a meal ale, I wouldn't suggest having this with food. It is a standalone, the sort of strength to blow away the stresses of a few months of marking and the sort of taste to remind you just why it is that people drink in pubs as well as buying in bottles.

Enjoy this best in a post-industrial town, surrounded by the brownfield sites being painstakingly redeveloped into something new and different, an undercurrent of the working class still in evidence, a pride in the mechanical amid the dominance of a service economy. Take out the traditional wooden game, put away the smartphone, maybe take some cards and get some patience going on a two-player co-operative version. Sip, but don't tarry between tastes, and just enjoy the slow comfortable chocolate blanket being drawn up along the canal by an old horse like a narrow-boat carrying flax or iron ore from the 1700s. Bliss, just proper ale-bliss.