Brewery: Boggart Hole Clough
Location: Manchester, England
ABV: 4.2%
Version: Bottled (bottle conditioned)
Source: Manchester Farmer’s Market

The Boggart Brewery (or the Boggart Hole Clough Brewery to give it the full moniker on the website) is an independent outfit based in North Manchester – not too far at all from where I live – that’s been in business since 2000. I’ve been meaning to track down some of their beers for a while, so when I found myself passing the Manchester city centre farmer’s market a few weeks ago on the way back from a trip to London, I grabbed a three-pack of assorted stouts and porters (which set me back a tenner, iirc).

Chocolat Noir (no info on the Boggart website) is the first of the three I’ve sampled and I was quite impressed, I have to say. It’s a quaffable 4.2% abv stout, with a faintly sour aroma in the bottle, that pours a classic ebony with hints of ruby red and starts off with a good frothy head. Mouth-feel is very pleasant and the flavour is a shot of pure mocha – an extremely tasty blend of coffee and chocolate that wouldn’t be out of place in your high-street boutique café of choice – and with a lingering bitterness to the after-taste.

It was much smoother and richer than, say, Guinness original (which – in the interests of research and accurate comparison – I sipped out of my missus’ glass when she wasn’t looking), and compares quite favourably to the likes of the Daleside Chocolate Stout that I sampled recently. All in all, I’d be quite happy to come back to this one, although with the still-superior Meantime London Stout available at 3 for £4 in Tesco at the moment, I’d have to have a good reason to shell out the extra.

Supporting local producers and cutting down on road-miles, y’say? Yeah, that might just swing it… :)