Yeah, I know it’s very nearly summer and here I am giving a beer of the week guersney to a porter. Yeah, it’d be better to wait til winter to do this. But I’ve already been waiting months to try this beer.

This vanilla porter was the Quiet Deeds GABS beer and one I had pencilled in to try. See, I like the slight sweetness that comes with a vanilla porter much more than the roast coffee notes of other variants.

And yet I managed not to try it at GABS. For this I blame Phil Cook (yes, that Phil Cook – the beer podcasting behemoth). I met him at GABS and, rather than go through the endless paddles of little plastic cupfuls of beer, he was getting his GABS glass filled up and sitting back and relaxing.

I though ‘‘ye gods, that’s bloody brilliant’’ and so I did the same. Which of course meant my list of carefully calculated tasting paddles (and it was actually a list. Written down on paper and everything) went out the window and I drunk whatever took my fancy.

Which, for some reason, ended up not being the Quiet Deeds vanilla porter.

In the months afterwards I kept an eye out for it but never saw it anywhere. Yes, I could have just ordered a bottle online and be done with it, but sometimes I like the thrill of the chase. And the surprise when you walk into a bottle shop and there’s that beer you’ve been searching, for, just sitting in the fridge.

Maybe even with some holy light shining around it.

That’s what happened to me while in Sydney for their recent craft beer week. I stepped into a bottlo near my hotel and there was this vanilla porter. So I bought a bottle (derrr!) and waited til I got home to try it.

I wasn’t disappointed. It boasts a lovely milk chocolate aroma. Or maybe just chocolate with a bit of vanilla (yeah, dodgy olfactory abilities can make writing reviews difficult). The flavour is of chocolate and vanilla. There is also some coffee there, but it’s in the background.

It’s a beer unlikely to get the uber beer geeks all excited. But I’m not an uber beer geek – so I liked this.