Well, as oldboots said, it's Brew York so is it likely to be terrible? It wasn't any preconceptions about the brewery that were bothering me, just the thought of all that fruit. What on earth does star anise taste like anyway?
I made the mistake of keeping this beer in my fridge for two or three days, so it was too cold to start with. What wasn't my fault, though, was that it was very gassy, pouring a huge head that took a while to subside. This is where being an 11% quadruple helps, because I wasn't going to be drinking this any quicker than the occasional sip, so the beer had time to warm up and to lose some of that carbon dioxide. At which point it became quite an enjoyable drink, with a lingering dryness that made up for some of the Ribenarish-ness of the initial flavour, and perhaps a hint of Belgian yeast that just may have been my imagination working overtime. The mouth feel, once the gas had subsided, was a bit thin, with not much maltiness to suggest that it's actually a beer.
I found myself feeling a little guilty, as though I really had bought a Trappist quadrupel and poured blackcurrent cordial into it, plus maybe a couple of ice cubes. As if! And anyway, even if I had, no one would ever know.
Overall impression: having recovered from the unfortunate cold, gassy start, this turned out to be a beer that I was eventually sorry to see the back of. Perhaps not to the extent of forking out £6.50 for another 440ml can, but probably scoring 6.75/10, if I can borrow london calling's metrics for a minute. (I still have no idea what star anise tastes like.)
Come On You Hatters!