6° North Beer (Waitrose) By @SpectreUK

This Belgian IPA is brewed in the East of Scotland, 6 ° North of Brussels, in Belgium, to be precise, hence the name. It’s brewed with pure soft water, fresh barley and carbonated through secondary fermentation through bottle conditioning. All this sounded very nice indeed, and being a fan of Belgian and Scottish beer (well, just about any beer from anywhere to be honest), I couldn’t crack open the 330ml bottle soon enough. On first smell this IPA seems to be brimming with hops. There is bitterness literally flowing out of the top of the overexcited bottle. The floral hops dance around the aroma as the malted barley struggles to push in to the after-smell. This 6.6% volume beer pours with a gloriously wicked head, probably because I’d left the beer to the last month to drink it. An initial taste explosion hit me like a freight train of bitter floral hops to start with moving into sweet crispy malted barley to finish. The aftertaste of 6 ° North was something that you just want to roll around the tastebuds all night. One of these beers is not enough. I remember it was the last bottle on the shelf, and I shall have to look out for more.
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EasiYo Yoghurt Maker - Greek Style With Coconut - By @Cinabar

We were very keep kindly sent an EasiYo Yoghurt Maker to try out. This is a device that enables you to make your own yoghurt at home. I have to admit I’ve never made yoghurt, or even thought about how I'd go about it, but I feared it would be a complex process. The product has most of the word "easy" in its title, so here is hoping it lives up to expectations!

Inside the box is a fab pink device (if pink isn't your thing other colours are available), which looks like a thermos with a container for the yoghurt. You have to purchase sachets to use with the EasiYo separately, but Holland and Barrett seemed to have a good selection.

We decided to start by giving Greek Style Coconut a try.
In order to use the kit you start by half filling the inner container with lukewarm water, and then adding the contents of the sachet and giving the whole thing a shake. Once done you top up the container with more lukewarm water and shake again. Then you fill the main thermos with boiling water up to the top of the red divider which sits inside it.

I had found this part a bit confusing as I wasn't quite sure where to fill too, but looking at the pictures I think I got it right. Then you put the yoghurt container inside, some of the boiling water then covers the base of this and slightly up the sides. All you have to do is seal it up and leave it for 8 to 12 hours until its ready to go in the fridge.
After the allotted time, but before putting it in the fridge, I gave it another shake as advised on the pack as the coconut had settled on the surface. I could tell the yoghurt looked quite thick.
The yoghurt itself was remarkably tasty, it was thick and creamy and the coconut really emphasised this. There was a big tubs worth so it lasted the week (which is the recommended time that it keeps) and we enjoyed it on its own and with breakfast cereals and fruit. I enjoyed making it, and it was as promised rather easy. I liked the fact that the only thing messy to wash up was the yoghurt container, as the thermos only had hot water in it. The only negative is the fact that you are tied to the sachets they make for it, and their availability. There did seem to be a good selection though, with many other flavours I'm looking forward to trying.

Psycho Chocolate - Chilli Salted Caramel (@NLi10)

A colleague of mine triumphantly returned from the Warwick Chocolate Festival with the following bar.  She had sampled a small piece at the stall and thought it interesting enough to bring back.

If you call your product Psycho Chocolate, and include the hipster-bait from a couple of past years of both salted caramel and chilli then you are making several bold statements.

Some of those statements are even in Latin, and best left un translated.

We even have sea salt flakes here. The chilli is not only ghost pepper which has a bit of a reputation. This bar is 2.4% chilli, and only for the brave.

I do like to think of myself as someone who can take the heat of chilli snacks, but this was testing my limits. The initial burst wasn't so bad - mainly caused by the salt melting I guess and then the chillis hit. 

As you can see there is quite a lot of chilli, and the heat builds  and builds  and just doesn't go away. I couldn't really appreciate the Caramel, or the chocolate - the flavour is all chilli. And that flavour is fun, and novel and quite interesting, but you probably aren't going to need more than one square .  So great as something with a large group to watch each other's expressions, and extreme enough for a chilli challenge, but not something I'd consider buying to eat. 

Maltesers Merryteaser Mini Reindeer (WHSmith’s) By @SpectreUK

Merry Christmas! I know we just got through Halloween and then there was Bonfire Night, but I walked through the shops earlier and this packet of Maltesers Merryteaser Mini Reindeer practically jumped into my hand. Besides there is at least one bloke up the road that has put his Christmas lights on his house!

Anyway, with five individually wrapped milk chocolate reindeer with a crunchy honeycombed filling in the 59g packet, they seemed to be begging to be eaten. Each cute chocolate reindeer shape has a crunchy and slightly creamy centre that is a step away from the usual chocolate marble shaped Maltesers. I found the packet went down very quickly. Too quickly to share unfortunately for others, but not unfortunately for me! Merry Christmas! I’m sure I’ll get into the peace, goodwill and share with others mood as Christmas rolls on, however… I am exceptionally greedy!

Information on the packet;

With 63 calories per 11.8g reindeer, having 3.6g of fat, 6.5g of sugar, and 0.04g of salt. See photograph for ingredients.

Quality Street Honeycomb Crunch Bar (Waitrose) By @Cinabar

The Christmas items are leaking into the shops, and the chocolate treat bars from Quality Street have made a reappearance. I decided to give the new Honeycomb Crunch Bar a try, as it sounded like it had good autumnal flavours. The bar is wrapped smartly in the bright purple Quality Street packaging, with gold tipped edges.
I unwrapped the bar and found that it looked like four Honeycomb Crunch chocolates bridged together with more chocolate, this meant that easiest thing to do is to eat in four mouthfuls. There is a rich aroma of chocolate and toffee the minute the bar is unwrapped.
The bar is very sugary, and the scent of toffee follows through with plenty of rich tones. The milk chocolate coating is quite thick, and the filling in each chocolate is thick and silky smooth, with crunchy toffee bits. I liked the mix up of textures and the light crunch.
This is a soothing bar, a proper treat in the cold weather. The flavours are of strong toffee and plenty of sweet milk chocolate. Perfect for a treat on a cold night, particularly if you need an after work energy burst, while waiting a cold bus stop…