Cask, JDW, Hoylake Lights. Deep dark brown with a decent tan head. Big sweet bubblegum and creamy vanilla aroma. Flavour was similarly sweet with chocolate predominating alongside roasted coffee and some subdued hop bitterness. An enjoyable and tasty stout.

[Gravity cask at Back of Beyond, Reading] Pours black with a small tan head. Smells of cream and vanilla. Initial taste is of deliciously creamy coffee, but your dreamy contemplation of what (based on first impressions) you expect to be a smooth and relaxing stout is rudely interrupted by sickly sweet pear drops, which swell aggressively to dominate your palatte. Once your taste buds have recovered from this shock, you start to pick up other flavours - banana and a hint of liquorice. The liquorice grows into a roastiness which eventually reveals a black coffee and bitter chocolate finish. But in the afterness, you’re reminded that Titanic appear to have poured a sweet shop into this beer - more of the intrusive pear drops, and hints of those old rhubarb-and-custard-pillow-shaped sweets. Overall then, the beer certainly has complex layers of intensive flavours, which are strange enough to satisfy a lover of weird Belgian brews. Unfortunately, these layers simply do not sit well together at all - the beer is grotesquely unbalanced. It’s certainly interesting to sip and seek out all the different flavours - but as an actual drink it is pretty unappealing, and I’d only recommend it to the most ardent lover of pear drops. c10