Highland Brewing Warrior Series Black Watch Double Chocolate Milk Stout – A First Sampling

With winter suddenly rolling into Pennsylvania, our beer-thoughts are turning to richer and warming winter beers…and in a case of the perfect beer-storm, Highland Brewing Black Watch arrived on what is our coldest night of the year so far.  So of course we had to sample it.

Coming to us from Asheville, NC, Highland Brewing gave us an early peek at the second release in their Warrior Series.  We brought you the release details on this beer back in Sept, so it was a lot of fun sampling it for ourselves.  Highland Black Watch is a double chocolate milk stout that follows their first Warrior Series King MacAlpin DIPA nicely.

This beer pays tribute to “Scotland’s historic military regimen know as The Black Watch” and it is a fitting tribute from the early aroma to the late finish.  This beer uses more than 100 pounds of cacao nibs as well as five malts, roasted barley and flaked oats and you cannot miss that chocolate in the aroma (and flavor).  The beer pours deep and dark and the mouthfeel is rich & silky.  The beer tastes slightly sweet and roasty with a really nice dark chocolate flavor at the finish.  The brewers describe it as being reminiscent of “brownie batter & marshmallows” and I’d agree.  We were even more surprised to see how well this beer hides the 8%-AbV.

Black Watch will be available on 11/27 (Black Friday) at Highland’s tasting room, and I should note the bottle I’m sampling was just packaged in 11/12!  It’s also great news to hear that Highland will be releasing FOUR Warrior Series beer in 2016, so stay tuned as we sample our way through all of them.

Cheers and thank you to Highland Brewing for letting us try an early sample of Black Watch Double Chocolate Milk Stout.  As always, be sure to try this beer for yourself and let us know what YOU think.