Last updated at 10:41, Friday, 30 July 2010

A Cumbrian brewery has combined two of the nation’s best-loved treats to create the ultimate indulgence.

Fiona Deal with a bottle of the beer

• Video: Coco Romano put to the taste test

Chocolate-flavoured beer is the result of weeks of experimenting at the Geltsdale Brewery in Crawhall, Brampton.

Created to commemorate Hadrian’s Wall being granted Fairtrade status, the beer is now on sale and proving quite popular with locals and tourists.

Fiona Deal, manager at Geltsdale, said: “I wanted to make a beer using ethical ingredients and thought I would use chocolate or honey. I picked chocolate because it is more widely available and experimented for a few months.

“The hardest thing was coming up with a name.”

Fiona decided to call her new creation Coco Romano, paying homage to the wall’s Roman roots.

The beer is 5.2 per cent alcohol by volume and is now available in bottles. It is being sold along Hadrian’s Wall from Cumbria to Northumberland and as far afield as Morpeth.

Fiona said that the new creation is steadily gaining fans – some of whom would not normally drink beer – and is a particular favourite among sweet-toothed women.

She added: “It is really nice and has been quite popular with the ladies. It is a unique taste and has subtle chocolate undertones which are quite unusual. You could pour it into a posh glass and drink it as a pudding.”

And real ale lovers will get a chance to sample it in Carlisle later this year.

“We are selling it in bottles at the moment because it is quite strong but we will be providing a cask of the chocolate beer for the Carlisle Beer Festival in October,” Fiona said.

Coco Romano can be bought from Geltsdale Brewery in Brampton and other shops in the city including Corkscrew Wines on Carlisle’s viaduct estate and The Local in English Street.

First published at 08:25, Friday, 30 July 2010
Published by http://www.cumberlandnews.co.uk