1) I’m pretty sure I wasn’t lying when I said it. In fact I know I wasn’t, because I later went out and ordered a few bottles. So it must have been because I was a bit drunk and my ability to make a reasoned, sensible judgement was gone. Yeah, that makes a lot more sense.

2) I’m talking about the Mad Brewers release Karni Kolsch, which is a fairy floss-flavoured beer. But not the flavour of actual fairy floss; rather, it’s inspired by the fairy floss-flavoured Zooper Dooper, of which the brewer was so fond. It was launched at GABS this year and they were giving away samples to the beer media at their stall.

3) So I went up and claimed mine. As well as samples of all the other beers they had on tap, which included the Interceptor Black IPA and the rather impressive Cabin Fever IPA. Now when I’m tasting beers while chatting to a guy from the brewery, it can be hard to be totally honest. It’s not easy to tell them the beer is crap after getting a free sample. When I tried the Karni Kolsch I do remember saying I liked it and that it would be refreshing in summer.

4) Now I couldn’t have been lying about liking it because, a week or two after GABS, I put my money where my mouth was and ordered two bottles from the Mocu website (yep, that name STILL sucks). So I must have had enough beer by the time I sampled the kolsch at GABS to skew my palate.

5) For when I cracked open one of those bottles at home I was quite excited about it. But that excitement quickly went away. The beer in my glass just didn’t seem at all like I remembered it. The beer poured a pale pink and tasted sweet and weak. I’ll assume there’s flavouring added to this rather than actual fairy floss because surely the sugar would just ferment out and leave no flavour behind. Luke at Ale of a Time described it as flat creaming soda and I reckon he’s not far off the mark. Mine wasn’t flat but it was weak in terms of flavour. So I’ll say it’s like watered-down creaming soda. I’m not planning to drink the second bottle any time soon.

Free or paid for?: Unlike apparently every other beer writer and blogger in the country, I didn’t get a freebie, having placed my order for two bottles via the online site just before the promo stuff got sent out.