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Local Brewery Mixes Up Holiday Brew

Posted on: Monday, 13 February 2006, 15:00 CST

By Michael Zitz, The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, Va.

Feb. 11--If beer and chocolate don't seem to be things that go together all that well, remember that Tuesday is Valentine's Day and that the beer industry badly wants to get more women drinking brews.

That quest primarily involves efforts to develop light beers without bitter aftertastes.

But it also involves experimenting with women-targeted flavored specialty beers like Sam Adams' new Chocolate Bock and the Chocolate Raspberry Stout offered by the local Blue & Gray Brewery at Bowman Center in Spotsylvania County.

"People come here because they want something a little different," said Jim Moeller, head brewmaster at Blue & Gray Brewery.

"Girlie beers" is the way Free Lance--Star bar reviewer Craig Schulin, a regular Stonewall Stout customer at Blue & Gray Brewery, refers to the Sam Adams and Blue & Gray chocolate brews.

Blue & Gray's Chocolate Raspberry Stout even has a pink label. Jeff Fitzpatrick, owner of Blue & Gray, laughed about Schulin's assessment.

"This is the third year we've offered the Chocolate Raspberry Stout, and it gets more popular every year," he said.

"Guys say they're buying it for their wives or their girlfriends," he said. "But I think they go home and drink it themselves. Because they come back and fill up their growlers with it. I think they tell everybody it's regular Stonewall Stout." The Chocolate Raspberry Stout includes a "chocolate malt," and it produces a mild chocolate flavor.

"We don't actually put chocolate into our chocolate malt," Fitzpatrick said. "It's a pale malt that's been roasted longer to give it a chocolate flavor," he said.

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Copyright (c) 2006, The Free Lance-Star, Fredericksburg, Va.

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Source: The Free Lance-Star

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