Drygate Brewing Co Coco Noco Beer Review

Yes that's right folks it's another, and my penultimate review from the LIDL beer festival for the year, yes I've nearly got through them all. Coco Noco is another from Glasgow's Drygate Brewery one of the fairly new boys in town trying to make a name for themselves. Coco Noco is a Coconut Mocha Milk Stout, which means I should probably like it as long as it doens't taste too much like a Bounty, does anyone actually like Bounties? 

Firstly I'm going to apologise for the quality of the photo, this was my 5th beer of the evening and presumably I was getting a little lax with my photography, which isn't great at the best of times. Regardless though you can hopefully make out the uninspiring 440ml can, you'd have thought they could have put a coconut on there somewhere wouldn't you? The beer has a reasonably hefty 6% alcohol content, which feels about normal for a stout these days so it's positioned reasonably well for the dark beer lovers like me.

Coco Noco pours just about as black as any stout you'll find and produces a reasonably thick almost light brown head, it looks quite good once you get it out of the boring can to be fair. The aroma does pretty much what it says on the can with clear, but not overpowering coconut scents with a bit of lactose and chocolate, all of this is reasonably promising. Stouts and porters are very much my true loves when it comes to beer so having one that pours this nicely was always going to get my hopes up.

The initial taste of Coco Noco is really coconuty, I mean really, which initially had me thinking my worst fears had been realised and I was going to have to drink close to a pint of bounty, the worlds worst chocolate. Fortunately though after the first few sips the taste seems to die down, either that or you just get used to it. It doesn't take long for the really traditional smooth milk stout feel to take over and a few chocolate notes to come through to help fend off the initial bite of coconut and more coconut. While this is a step up from the original taste it also diminishes it somewhat as the beer settles into a more bland, not very stout stout.

I always find it slightly difficult to rate dark beers because I expect so much more from them and end up marking them down a little more than I perhaps should. This is an interesting one though because I'm not sure it'll really satisfy anyone completely, but also wont offend. If you love coconut you'll be impressed by the start and disappointed by the finish, while if you like a traditional milk stout the initial taste will leave you nervous about having more before gradually growing to like it. I'm going to give Drygate Brewing Co's Coco Noco a very respectable 6.5 out of 10, it's a decent beer.