Country: Italy
Beer: Brewfist Fear milk chocolate stout

Expectation can be an irritating thing. Take this beer from Italy’s Brewfist. I’d previously tried their Space Man IPA and was very impressed. I’d go so far as to say it’s one of the best IPAs I’ve ever had (and that’s not a suck-up in case someone at Brewfist happens to read this and decides to reward me for my nice remarks by sending me a case of Space Man. But if they did, I would be happy to receive it).
So this Fear milk chocolate stout had that high Brewfist reputation to live up to. On top of that, there was the words on the label ‘‘milk chocolate stout’’. Ever since I bought this beer from Justin Lill Wines down at Berry a month or so ago, my taste buds have been going into overdrive imagining what this would taste like.
And they concluded it was going to taste like a Cadbury’s Dairy Milk chocolate bar. But with added beer. The sort of thing Julius Sumner Miller would knock back at the end of a hard day of putting eggs into bottles (kids, ask your parents what the hell that means). Now I know that sort of beer exists (it’s the Butcher porter from the Rocks Brewing Company) but I’d decided that this would taste like that as well.
But it didn’t and so I was initially disappointed. Which is not the beer’s fault at all. After all I was the idiot who’d well and truly made up my mind how the beer would taste before actually tasting it.
But once I made a mental adjustment to those expectations, I found that Fear isn’t too bad (except for the name, which is frigging stupid. “Fear beer”? Please).
It’s a mild and friendly mix of chocolate and coffee, with the sweetness outpointing the roasty coffee notes. It doesn’t resemble anything from the Cadbury’s factory but it’s an okay drop nonetheless.
Would I drink it again?: Probably not. But I’d definitely drink more of that Space Man IPA if someone happened to send some to me. Hint, hint.