Pour a little love into your glass this Friday for Valentine's Day

Beer aficionados will have an opportunity to sip a lot of fine chocolate this Friday in celebration of Valentine’s Day. My favorites for this occasion, or just about any time when chocolate beers are de rigueur, are two from England – Samuel Smith’s Organic Chocolate Stout and Young’s Double Stout, and two from the United States – Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout and Southern Tier Choklat Stout. Though it’s the only one of the four to have a USDA Organic tag on its label, and is suitable for people on a vegan diet, Samuel Smith has been around since 1758, making it the oldest of the four by far. Chocolaty and sweet, it’s a pleasant, rather than powerful, experience. Young’s Double Chocolate Stout kicks it up a notch. Its potent roasted malts produce a multi-layered, bittersweet, dark chocolate richness. For something a little different Friday night, drop a scoop of vanilla ice cream into a pint glass, put the glass into the freezer for about 15 minutes, and then fill it with Young’s. If the evening gets much better than that, I don’t want to know about it. Both Samuel Smith (5% ABV) and Young’s (5.2% ABV) are essentially session beers: The American beers have a great deal more heft, and acquire more attributes as they warm. Brooklyn Black Chocolate Stout weighs in at 10% ABV, and is a muscular Russian Imperial Stout. Created by renowned Brooklyn brewmaster Garrett Oliver, it has strong chocolate and coffee flavors and should be brought out at the end of the meal. Pair it with cheesecake or chocolate. As for the Choklat Stout, it’s a 10% ABV double/imperial stout that grades out at 95 percent at beeradvocate.com. Like the Brooklyn, this is a dessert beer. Try it with chocolate cake, or even with some of those criminally-delicious chocolate chewy cookies from Baker’s Pride on DeRenne Avenue.