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Episode: 4462
Title: HPR4462: HPR Beer Garden - Intro and Dessert Stouts
Source: https://hub.hackerpublicradio.org/ccdn.php?filename=/eps/hpr4462/hpr4462.mp3
Transcribed: 2025-10-26 00:58:42
---
This is Hacker Public Radio Episode 4462 for Tuesday 9 September 2025.
Today's show is entitled, HBR Beer Garden Intro and Desert Stelts.
It is part of the series' beverages.
It is hosted by Kevvie and is about 38 minutes long.
It carries a clean flag.
In the summeries, Kevvie and Dave start a new series of beer-themed shows starting
with Desert Stelts.
Hello and welcome to the very first episode of the HPR Beer Garden.
This is a totally new venture by Kevvie and I'm also joined by Dave aka the Lovebug.
How are you today?
I hope.
Yes, I am very well thank you looking forward to this.
This has been a great idea to come together and share in the enjoyment of a common hobby.
Yes, absolutely.
And to be honest, this is one that we have been thinking about doing for quite a while
and what really spurred us on was actually the recent lack of shows for HPR.
It's be perfectly honest so we thought this actually spurred us on the same
instead of making a totally new podcast.
We're actually going to release this as part of the HPR series and hopefully one or two
you will enjoy this as well.
So the fact that you know now that it's a beer show and you're still listening
probably tells me you're not completely against beer so hopefully you'll keep on going there.
So for those of you who listen to the tux jam uncut feed,
you'll know that we really do enjoy beer.
It's not more than just an enjoyment.
It's probably a passion for both myself and Dave.
I can probably see that quite honestly.
Would you agree?
Yeah, I would totally agree with that.
I think that the appreciation of beer more than just as a way of getting sozzled,
although that is an unfortunate side effect.
It's something to enjoy.
It's something to get into the history of it, understand how beer is made, blah, blah, blah, blah.
Yeah, and it's, I wouldn't say it was necessarily a hobby,
but it's certainly an enjoyment.
Absolutely, yes, yes indeed.
So we'll start with I think with a wee bit of an introduction,
not for ourselves, we normally, when you say introduce yourself in HPR,
it's all about the take side of things.
We're going to introduce it from a beer side of things.
So, right then, I'm going to pass this over to my good friend here and say,
Dave, how did you actually get started in the world of beer?
Well, back in 19, no, I do know what?
I cannot remember the actual time that I first was introduced to beer,
but I do remember that beer was kind of like,
it came in canned with scantoby-clad ladies on the front of them.
Remember those?
I think that was that tenants?
Tenants, the tenants lady.
Tenants, and my old man, he used to have a couple of these out,
and I'd be like, it never really interested me at all.
However, was it badger?
I think it was badger.
He used to come in in small cans, like a shandy.
All right, the badger beer came in like at small shandys.
And yeah, my dad was absolutely fine with me having those,
because they was like next to no alcohol content in them anyway.
And the fact that they were beer and lemonade,
very drinkable, very pleasant, very nice.
But I think in terms of actually appreciating beer
for what it could be rather than what it is.
So you go into any typical pub,
and you'll see the same poles on the bar.
You'll see your stellers and your carlings
and your strong bow and Guinness.
And if you're really lucky,
they'll be madry or something like that.
I think it wasn't until maybe about 10, 12 years ago
that I actually discovered the joy of craft, craft ails,
the stuff that you can't get in pubs.
And that's the most annoying thing of it all,
because you can't get these things in pubs.
Very rarely, I think more and more pubs and bars
are actually getting to understand
that there is something beyond the mass-produced
chemically generated dish water.
There we go.
That is usually served from chilled pubs.
To something that actually has character and life to it.
And where you can actually drink, take a swig of it and think,
not quite along the lines of the whole gilly gould
I'm getting cabbages and stagnant sewage.
They'll proper the flavours and moltiness and bitterness.
All things that you just can't pick up from a...
I mean, what was my first largar I actually drank in quantity?
It was probably Hoffmeister,
which is one of the most inoffensive and bland tasting beers,
if you want to call it that, largar's you could ever have got.
So for me, and this is extended beyond beer actually,
because I'm a bit of a coffee snob.
I do appreciate whiskey and I blame that person there,
for my appreciation of whiskey.
Yes, I'm looking at you, Kirby.
And other things that, under normal circumstances,
the average person on the street would be like,
yeah, whatever.
You go into a coffee shop and somebody will just say,
I want to have a coffee place and not care what it is.
Somebody serves me a coffee made out of a ground substance
that's probably got sawdust and rabbit droppings in it.
And says, here have that.
And I will be like, no, thanks, I'll have water.
That's how things have become.
And I think my journey with beer is probably been pretty much the same as that.
If I go into a pub and all they've got on pump is stellar.
And I mean, I'll go for Madrid.
Madrid is probably just slightly over that boundary.
But if all they've got is stellar and strong bow and the carling or whatever,
then I'll probably take a shot of whiskey or a glass of milk or something.
It's become that bad.
I'd rather go without than have that,
because taste change tastes to be evolved for me.
If I'm going to go into a bar and the magic words that everybody loves to hear
what you're having,
I'm going to have something that I'm going to enjoy,
not because that's all they sell.
I would rather go without.
So, I mean, when it comes to the appreciation of beer,
if we were just saying this before we start a recording,
Kevin will probably, when it comes to reviewing beers,
Kevin will be a lot more elaborate and an authentic with his reviews of
its moltiness and its hoppiness and all the rest of it.
And I'll be like, I'll go into what I can taste and feel rather than the the in-depth side of things.
But I do genuinely believe that having two people with different approaches and different
appreciations for beer means you're going to get more of a wider description,
I suppose, of what the actual, what the beer is that we're looking at.
So, yeah, that's pretty much it.
So, I can actually say that I remember the very first beer I was ever given,
and I was, I think I was still in primary school.
And I think I was with a P6P7.
That kind of, you know, and I remember my great uncle,
he had the green cans on my Curens Pale Ale.
Now, for anyone who knows about a Pale Ale, don't think Pale Ale.
Think of a pint of light in Scotland or a pint of mild England.
Black. Looks like Guinness to look at first, but it's much lighter, slightly sweet.
And I remember I was given kind of half a kind of,
remember those plastic kind of, they were like Tupperware glasses,
they were like Tupperware tumblers.
Do you remember those? Yeah.
Yeah, I was given half a Tupperware tumbler of this McEwan's Pale Ale.
And I remember he says, oh, you won't like it.
And oddly enough, it's actually quite nice.
So, that was my very first ever time.
And then the, probably the next time to be honest, I hadn't tried that much.
The next time I was probably given, I think I was probably about 14, 15.
And it was a Christmas time, knows a New Year time.
And the old man got me a couple of Guinness to have for an
dogman eight New Year Eve night.
So, I had that. I was like, oh, that's lovely.
That's quite nice.
So, I quite enjoyed that.
And I tried, there was a couple others at the time.
Murphy's was available.
And there was also an Scottish one called Gillespie's.
And I had these ones.
Actually, Gillespie's was actually my favorite.
It was really nice, but it vanished kind of by the time 98 came, it was completely gone.
So, they nice, of course, started going out.
And as you say, this was before a really ill craze
or the camera kind of thing had really taken a hold, certainly up here anyway.
So, cask condition beers were just not a thing up here.
I went out and of course, everybody gets the customary.
They should cad, they should pay attendance.
And I was thinking, I really don't like this.
I'm not a fan of this.
And I saw my mate was drinking something that was much more dark brown.
And I says, what's that?
And he says, that's my Q&N's export.
Let me try that one.
Oh, that's actually quite nice.
And back then, it was actually quite a nice beer.
Back then, it's very different now.
And I tried the, and the barman told me, if you want,
and they don't have export, if you want something similar,
just go into a bar and ask for a pint of heavy.
And I was like, okay, and I found the one thing I found a bit,
a pint of heavy was 8 out of 10 times.
It was a Scottish kind of 70 to 80 shilling.
Wasn't always the same brand, because not all the bars had the same brand.
But as I found out, some of them that didn't offer the Scottish beer
would give you something like the John Smith 6th to smooth that kind of way,
which to me was a different beer altogether.
I was like, no, I don't like this at all.
So that was my start.
Now move to Edinburgh.
And this was in 98.
And the real craze hadn't hit.
So your options were in most places, Lager or Sider.
And I actually really didn't enjoy it either.
I think that's my start.
It's actually trying out.
I was drinking, if I was drinking beer,
it would generally be at home at a bottles.
And McHughan still did their 80 then.
And McHughan's 80 was lovely, really nice at a bottle.
So I enjoyed that.
And it was when I moved down to Dumfries and Galloway.
There was more, because it was a wee bit further south,
they had more of an English influence.
So camera had actually taken more of a hold there.
There was an awful lot more bars that had cast condition stuff.
I have to confess, it took me a wee while to get used to,
because although I had been used to the likes of a pint of heavy,
a pint of heavy was still cold, generally speaking.
Not super chilled, but it would be cold.
And then you got these cast conditions,
beers, which when you first took them,
they had a much stronger flavor profile,
but they were also fairly tepid as well in comparison.
So that took me a wee bit to actually get used to.
But then once I did, it's like you say,
you go from drinking this to, wow,
taste all these flavors, taste all these different things.
And that was, I can honestly say, that was where my love of beer started,
because it went from, oh, okay, it's okay, it's nice,
to oh, get the flavors.
I mean, I was getting the kind of the excited way
where you see somebody who you think,
that's really sad, don't tell me.
There's going over the top a bit, the flavors and something,
you know, like something from MasterChef or something like that.
You know, that was me with the beers.
I was like, oh, all these flavors,
they were just alien to me.
It was like, this is brilliant.
So, yeah, so that was how actually I got into
the actually more enjoying beers.
Interesting.
So given your journey and the appreciation you have fails,
what would you say is your top style,
the one that you prefer the most, the one that you tend to go to?
That almost will depend entirely on a few different things.
Depends on one how I'm feeling to what the weather is like.
Now, if I'm up here, chances are it's not that warm.
So, what we're reviewing tonight is ideal,
you know, a dessert or pastry stout,
which I want you want to call it.
Again, the Scotchale type is also another one of my favorites.
But then, you know, even, it doesn't take much.
I can actually get it why more people don't drink it down south
because it doesn't take an awful lot,
like going down to like a Glasgow Edinburgh in the summer.
You're like, yeah, it's actually a bit too warm for those styles.
I mean, I can remember, I think you're on the first time I met you in person
in Portugal asking for something dark and chewy in Glasgow.
And they were like, no, not this time of year, you're not getting any.
But I think those would be my favorites.
Other than that, it would, it's put it this way.
It's maybe more of what I wouldn't really take.
My least favorite things are probably, unless it's very hot, a lager,
unless it's a very good quality lager.
I've had a few good quality ones.
But Jen, certainly the mass-produced stuff,
no, I'm not interested in them.
The IPA, if it's a bland, almost sadly IPA seemed to have gone
a bit mainstream, a lot of them.
And you get this generic weed taste of hops,
and then that's it, no much flavor.
That just doesn't do anything to me.
I put that almost in the same bracket almost as a mass-produced lager,
just because they're so bland, a lot of them.
Now, that doesn't mean I hate every IPA.
I've not seen that at all.
It's just a lot of them have become this kind of, they're made for the masses,
and it means they're losing that character.
So those are ones I generally wouldn't go for.
Yeah, understood.
How about yourself?
Well, I think you're absolutely right.
I should have considered this, that it does really depend a lot on
what the circumstances are, the environment, the weather, etc.
I think if you take weather out of the equation,
I would be very much more drawn to doubles, triples,
imperial stouts, the pastry stouts, like the ones we've got here,
and the one that you showed me briefly earlier on.
Because there's a lot more excitement in them.
There's a lot more character to them.
I was first introduced to an imperial stout,
when we went to the Heistbrough Company in Sheffield.
His friend of ours birthday, I think he was.
And at Heist, I don't know if they still do,
but they used to have something like 30 to 40 taps on the back of the bar,
each of which had either a Heistbroughie brew or a guest ale.
And I remember they had this, I think it was either a 12 or 12 and a half percent imperial stout.
And I don't know, I don't know whether you've seen that scene from Monsters Inc,
where Water News takes a cup and pours coffee into it.
It kind of like globbed out of the,
because it was basically just like a paste, a syrup.
That's what this was like.
And I was looking at it and thinking,
okay, and what cars can I put that in?
And I tried it, and it was like my eyes had been opened.
It was gorgeous, it was syrupy, it was sweet,
it was dangerous for that exact reason.
The Heist was the first bar I went to, where they served thirds.
And for very good reason, because after I had a third of this,
and it was the thing I opened the session with, and I've got to stop doing that,
start low aim high, never start with an imperial stout on a beer session base,
pathetically stupid, free advice, folks.
And there was a third of this, and it took quite a while to get through,
but I absolutely adored it, every single sip of it.
So much so that at the end of the day, I thought,
do you know what, I'm going to have a half of that.
And I really struggled to get through it.
So you really do need to be careful when you're going for your bests,
particularly if they're like stronger ones,
9, 10% and above.
Yeah, you do need to be really careful, but that would be my definite go-to.
There's another one, and I don't know what it starts,
just looking for it now, as we're looking here.
The Cloud Water, there it is.
The Cloud Water Brew Company produced one called the Windows for Golden.
And the description that I gave for it, which is probably well off the screen now,
so I can't read it out to you verbatim.
It was something like the smell of burning oil,
which some people would like, some people would not.
It's like if you burned old railway sleepers, wouldn't railway sleepers,
because they're drenched in oil, that smell of burning,
that was like that in a can.
And it is absolutely gorgeous.
The beer itself is, it says here 4%, but I don't believe that for a moment,
but it's a very, very thick, very chewy, very robust,
and that's a word you may hear me say a lot, actually,
when it comes to beer styles.
Very robust beer.
It had everything, it had the flavour, it had the feel,
it had the aroma, it had the aftertaste,
just absolutely amazing.
I think I'm with you, Kevin, your point about APIs becoming very generic and ubiquitous of late.
It seems to be the thing, let's jump on that bandwagon and produce an IPA.
Well, to be fair, I would still well aware from them from them,
because a lot of them will be fairly generic and have no character.
But you find me a good quality ale that is not just full of character,
but it has, it's full of, I'm trying to think of another word that says character,
but isn't character because I've used that word already.
It has a lot of presence to it, where you take a sip of it,
and then suddenly you just stop and you think and you're like,
you can't explain it, you can't articulate it,
but it was something that made you stop and think,
wow, this is a beer I am really enjoying.
Sadly, they are few and far between, but when they do come along, wow, do they hit?
So, yeah, for me, Imperials and Doubles definitely, no question.
And beers that have character.
And one of my other go-to's is Adam's broadside,
the 6.5% one, which is usually in bottles.
You can get it cast, it's something like 4.0 or 4.9%,
but the one in bottles, again, it's just, it's just full, it's in your face.
That's what I want from a beer.
I want a beer that tells me a story, not just something that you're just going to sit there and drink.
Don't get me wrong.
A good quality IPA, I'm allowed to use the word chuggable, I think so.
A good chuggable IPA.
As long as it's a low EBV, we really want to not encourage chugging any percent thing.
Okay, let's replace the word chuggable with sessionable.
So, session IPAs are usually around the 4% or lower mark,
and the name exists for a reason.
It's the beer that you would stay and you would drink throughout the entire session,
but not to the point where it would send you over whatever your personal limit would be.
But there are some session IPAs that are really amazing,
and a lot of that is down to the hops that they use.
A lot of the character of a beer comes out of the hops.
Mosaic, Sitra, I would say probably the two that I appreciate the most,
but they blend them, and the blending of different hops gives you different flavours
and different fields and different characterizations.
So, anything like that, and I'm very open to trying alternative beers,
beers I've never had before.
I subscribe to beer 52, it is quite disappointing at times, I do not mind saying.
But once in a while, there'll be a can in there.
You'll look at it, it's been boring, because branding is everything.
Tickly purple, I don't know why, I'm really drawn to purple branding.
But you'll look at it and you think, I suppose I better do,
otherwise it's just going to go to waste.
And waff, you're like the heavens open, the angels are singing,
you're like drinking in this beer and you think it to yourself.
This is the most amazing thing I've ever had,
and you try and find it to buy some more.
And they're like, oh, sorry, this isn't available.
So, yeah, I'm hoping that as we go through,
this isn't going to just be a case of me trying beers that I know I like
that I want to share with others.
I'm hoping this is also going to be an educational journey for both of
myself and for you as well, Kebi.
Yes, absolutely.
As we're trying beers that are recommended by ourselves to each other,
but also to the listeners as well.
Hopefully they will be able to participate in this,
what is currently an experiment, to help build up our knowledge,
experience and repertoire of beers and flavors and styles.
Yeah, absolutely.
Right, and now you mentioned something about the
about session of a leel and the style we're going to look at tonight,
certainly is not sessionable at all.
We are going to look at what is often called, no,
the two are actually interchangeable and both are acceptable.
It is our dessert stout or a pastry stout.
Now, before you think what in the world are those, especially if you're not really into stouts,
these are over the top stouts.
It's the best way to describe them.
They are bold, very sweet flavors, usually they're called dessert stouts generally because
they are trying to mimic a dessert.
So very often you will get a blast of chocolate, a blast of fruit, a blast of vanilla.
You'll get all of these things.
Now, they differ, they've mentioned imperial stouts.
They are generally about the same ABV, so they're always really between kind of
eight and I've had one as high as 17 without realizing it actually.
And this is what makes them dangerous.
They're high ABV generally and they're very sweet.
They're very easy to drink, but they're not juggable.
You know, they're certainly not something you could chug down.
And I was having a wee look at the actual history of them.
This is actually a very new style.
I didn't quite arrest how new they were started to get developed around the millennium time.
And it was because milk stouts, which is an older, much older style of beer,
were kind of losing, they were falling out of favour and losing their fashion.
And it was, they were added to milk stout as opposed to a like an Irish dry stout like Guinness
or Murphy's.
And this is what they were added to and experimented with.
And it was about the same time as the kind of cascades seem started to kind of take off
but maybe outside of its traditional areas.
And it was essentially just to kind of introduce a whole new array of people to it.
Now one thing I will say is that these type of beers, they are very much marmite-ish.
Right? That doesn't mean a taste of marmite.
They are, you are either going to absolutely love them or you're absolutely going to hate them.
There's very few in between.
So it was only in the last two years, it was 2023 that the Brewing Association,
who are American-based, they had actually recognised it, the dessert stout or the pastry stout
as a separate category, as a category within itself.
So they've been around for about like I said 25 years roughly.
So a fairly new beer, but they also have only just relatively recently been classed
as a section of their own. So there was my homework for today.
So hopefully I didn't laugh a lot too much and we've covered basically what they are.
So, right, I'll give myself a wee break here, so I'll pass it over Dave.
What are you drinking tonight? What is your dessert stout of choice?
To know, I thought I would laugh a lot for absolute ages in the last one.
I thought you were going to take this. That's fine.
So when Kirby came up with this idea, I thought to myself,
I looked at my beer store, which isn't particularly well stocked right now to be fair.
The only thing of note I actually have here at the moment is a Belgian beer called Quack,
which is very expensive, quite hard to come by, but didn't fall under the heading of pastry stout.
So I had to go out and get some and our local supermarket or one of our local supermarkets,
a little bit stingy on the real ails.
So when I was looking on the shelf to try and find one that was suitable for this review,
the only one I could find is one that I know I've had before, but I've never logged it before.
So I thought, okay, let's rectify this by enjoying it again and logging it, and I have logged it
in the last few minutes. So the beer I've chosen is a brew dog, and it's called Rocky Road.
It's a marshmallow stout, and Kirby, you were saying earlier on that pastry stouts
tend to be somewhere between the eight and anything up, 15 plus range, whereas this one is
actually only 6.8%. However, it doesn't really matter because this has the feel and the robustness,
told you I'd use that word a lot, of something a lot stronger. So as the name suggests,
it is very much inspired by the idea of a Rocky Road, and it's described here as a marshmallow stout.
So one thing you will discover over time, if you don't know this already, is that breweries will
often be quite creative with their use of phraseage. And although this is a dessert stout,
pastry stout, to call this a marshmallow stout, that's not a style. It is purely a description.
This one, I think, Keri, you mentioned the other day, sorry, earlier on, which was a strawberry ice
cream stout. That's not a style either. But once you've had it, you'll be like, ah, okay,
totes get that. So this one, the Rocky Road, I cracked it open before we started recording,
which I said I wasn't going to do, and I really wish I hadn't, because the moment I cracked the
can, it was just like this waft of raspberry came out of the can and smacked me in the face.
If you've ever had a Rocky Road before, you'll know that there are certain specific elements that
always apply. I'm talking about the cake here, not the beer. So you've always got the marshmallow.
There's a chocolatey aspect to it, and there's also the raspberry style to it as well. And
this beer, the Rocky Road, it delivers on all three counts. It is slightly bitter, not hugely so,
but there is a bitterness there, which probably is going to be coming from the chocolate,
because the marshmallow and the raspberry flavours, they are sweet all day long. There's no
question of that at all. But given this is a stout, stouts usually will have quite a bitter
element to them anyway. The sweetness is usually either in incorporated as part of its strength,
or as part of what's been added into it to make the beer what it is. So for this one to actually
work as well as it does is a real achievement. Very often when you're looking at beers and the
classic one I always go to is a coconut ale, coconut chocolate ale, and you think to yourself,
immediately you think to yourself, um, bounty. And for every ten that you try,
nine of them will leave you disappointed. I'm getting a nod from Kevye, I can see him out of a corner
point. I can see for every nine that you tried, that's not the ten you tried, nine will leave
disappointed. I've had one which literally tasted like I was drinking a bottle of coconut shampoo,
it was disgusting. I can see that. That was foal. Excellent. I've not had that one, please don't tell
me about it. But there was one coconut chocolate stout that I had that it felt like I was drinking
bounty. Bounty is one of my favourite chocolate bars anyway, but this isn't a chocolate bar
review. But going back to the point, this rocky road ale from Brudog, it has every element to it.
If you enjoy rocky road, even if you've never had rocky road before, you will know what a rocky road
is like by having this particular round. It's got the, sorry, no twin in men, it's got the,
the raspberryness to it. You can smell the sweetness of what should be marshmallow. There are not
marshmallows bobbing up and down in this A.I. I will say this nail. It just has all the elements
of what you would expect a rocky road to be. It is sweet, it is not sickly sweet. And I think the
bitterness of the underlying stout and the chocolate related to it actually helps to do that,
helps to smooth it out just a little bit. I think if it didn't have its bitterness, it may be
slightly too sweet, but other than that, it's absolutely gorgeous, very highly recommended.
I don't know whether I should point out at this point that I know that recommending a Brudog ale
is slightly contentious in some circles given Brudog's history. That's my thoughts. It's
I really do enjoy it. You've had this one before, haven't you? I have, yes. In fact, I had that one
from our take point of view. We struggled to get food the night of Og Camp, the Saturday Night of Og Camp
and the Brudog bar was the only place we could get anything. And that was the stout I had that night.
So that was the only time I tried it. I, no, no, sorry, I was given a Brudog advencaldor as well.
So I had it there as well. So I, yeah, so I have had it a couple of times.
Yeah, actually, I thoroughly enjoyed it. Looking at purely as a beer, I'm not getting into the politics
or the background of Brudog just now, but as a beer, I actually did thoroughly enjoy it.
And I have to confess, I thought it was more than 6.8 because I don't think I looked at the
can either time. It does taste like it's more. Definitely. So what are you enjoying at the moment,
Kevin? So well, before that, do you have a score or anything to give that? What would you give
that one? How are we scoring? Are we, are we educationally scoring or out of 10?
Yeah, out of 10, just a little bit. I have literally just logged this into untapped.
If we're talking about a score out of 10 given that untapped us their scores out of five,
this would be an eight and a half out of 10. Yep. Oh, that's good. I do think it's worth maybe
actually mentioning just a score just so that people can say, okay, did you love it or did you
just really like it or that kind of thing? Right. So I am, yeah, Dave's going to go on the half
for me here because I am drinking a Northern monk dessert stout which we discovered
called Bertha Chocolate Cake Stout. Would you please excuse me, I'm going to go and cry on the
corner. So this is very much fitting the dessert stout. I'm actually going to double check and see
what it actually sees. Yeah, it's a chocolate cake stout. It actually sees the world famous chocolate
cake stout. Big claim, big claim. Yes. Now, this one is, as I said, it's made by Northern Monk. This
is actually one of the slight problems with desserts out in general is that a lot of the time
they're more than likely special editions. So if you find one you like, bite up in bulk because
it chances are it's going to disappear in the notice in future as what happened with Bertha.
So this one is very much like a standard, sorry, dessert stout in that it is 8.4%.
And yeah, just looking, so this is actually strong. The 440 millis contains 3.7 units. So
given that kind of average beer is 2 units. Yes, you can see it's double.
Well, it's double the strength. So it's going to be double the units.
This one is very much what it says on the tin. It's chocolate. You can smell it. It's chocolate.
It's not even a bitter chocolate. This is milk chocolate. Sweetness straight away.
There's sweet chocolate there. Now, this develops into a kind of creamy, I mean, I don't mean creamy
mouthful. I mean, creamy as in flavor. There's cream in there. There's like double cream in there.
But as this is asked out, it's been made with roasted moths. And that's a lot of the time which
will give you your bitterness. And that pops in at the end to make this really a sweet hit
followed by a bit of bitterness to stop it becoming sickly. This is, to me, it's the perfect example
of a dessert state. I'm sure because it's been done so well. I love dessert
states, but even I've had times where I've had that beer and I have, I've kind of said,
the first half was lovely. The second half was actually just heavy going. It was so sweet.
It was so heavy. And actually, I'm going to call out Northern Monk on this one actually,
because I had a Northern Monk dessert state. I think it was Death Star or Death Star 2.
It was Star Wars themed anyway. And I actually put that down if I was only reviewing half a pint
or half a can. I would have given it, you know, maybe a 4.75 or a five kind of thing. You know,
it was really good. I didn't even enjoy it by the time I finished it. It was so sweet. It was
so sickly. I was going, this was a 440 can. I actually didn't enjoy 220 of this. You know,
they've learned their lesson with birth that there is that bitterness just to balance it. It's not
bitter. It's just a wee bit of bitterness in there just to balance it out. This is, yeah, it is what
it says on the tune. Chocolate cakes out. It's got the chocolate. It's got the cream. And like I said,
those roasted malt, so dark heavy roasted malt just provide enough bitterness there to make this
really, really nice and not too sickly. So if you can somehow get it, if you see what happened
to go on a show up and you see birth that's a red can with a slab of chocolate cake on it,
pick it up. But myself and Dave are crying because we can no longer get this anymore. As far as
the score goes, I would say, I'll, I reviewed this from at 4.75 out of five. Just purely because I
rarely give five out of five on top. So that's, that's in nine and a half, nine and a half out of ten.
So yes, highly recommended. But a wee caveat, I word of warning, this is going to be
lover heat. You are either going to give this nine at a 10 or you're going to go one at a 10.
I don't imagine there's going to be many people in between, as is very standard with dessert
sticks. Yeah. And I think the, the thing that's going to make or break that particular beer is
whether the consumer is actually a fan of the sweetest style. You've hit on something I was
going to mention in any ways that you neither of us give out five is likely at all. So a 4.75
is probably the highest accolade any particular beer is going to get from us. I've had this as,
as Kevin said. And I think I got four of them and I managed to find two more in the same
Tesco I bought the rocky road from. But this particular beer is now officially out of production
or the month and not making it anymore. So as Kevin said, if you can find it, grab it if that is
your style. Absolutely. In fact, don't just grab it, sweep the shelf of it. Yes, it is that good.
Right. And if you are still listening, I have to say thank you so much for still listening,
because this has gone on for a wee bit longer than we expected. Now, our plan is, like I said,
I'm hopefully going to do book reviews that are beer based, possibly place reviews.
But we're going to maybe look at each new episode is going to be a different style of beer
till we go through them all. And my word is a heck of a lot of them to go. So yes. So we're hoping,
like I said, that this is going to become, oh no, this will, this will become a semi-regular thing.
We're not saying we're producing our weekly show, but we will release these on a regular basis.
So if you did enjoy, please leave a comment. If you want us to review a certain style of beer,
please place that also in the comment as well. I do want to actually distance this from Tux Jam,
so I'm not going to give out the Tux Jam emails. So yeah, just leave it as a comment for just now.
So thank you very much for listening. And if you have the chance, please do record a show,
because as we say, HPR is always in need, but at this particular time, this is a time of need.
So Dave, anything you want to say before we sign off?
No, nothing specific. I don't think I totally agree with keeping this separate to Tux Jam.
You know, this is going to be a haka-public radio, a contribution, a regular one, hopefully.
Definitely leave a comment, or more importantly, record a show. We'll happily receive feedback
as in the form of a show. If you've got any suggestions, if you want your recommendations,
anything like that, anything, we're welcoming any form of participation in this particular,
still call it a project for now, is part of this project. If you want to make a recommendation,
if you want to come and join us, if you want to do a show of your own, whatever, you know,
just record something and support the haka-public radio project.
Absolutely. So, join in tomorrow for another exciting episode of Hacker Public Radio!
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