A saison with chocolate and chili. I have every expection that this will be weird yet chocolate and chili are an entirely respectable combination in Mexican cooking. And the brewery says that the chocolate is locally sourced. There is a good third of an inch of yeasty goo at the bottom which other reviews have led me to believe is where all the good stuff lies. So let's try it without and then with a swirl of the bottle.

The pour off the top without a swirl is a lively cloudy amber ale with a slight nod to orange with a white head. In the mouth it is a good saison, husky burlap with a little autumn fruit, cut through with what I can only describe as creamy white pepper. It is not hot like some (all) of the chili pepper beers I have been disappointed by. On the first swirl of the bottle, the beer now pours cloudy like raw apple cider. The white pepper cream is joined by milk chocolate. I am not yet thinking "yum" but it is one note of pear juice away from yum. Perhaps less oddly than you might think, it would go very nicely with a good steak but only during that course of the meal. The white pepper effect is very drying. On the final swirl, the beer is unattractively muddy with only a notch more chocolate.

By the way, you have bought your copy of Martyn Cornell's Beer: The Story of the Pint haven't you? Review here. Prize here. Author's comment here and here.