It seems I can't go a day without getting an advert on YouTube asking whether I've leased or owned a diesel car recently. This question is usually followed by join our lawsuit against X-Manufacturer. Of course this hasn't affected me because I drive a God tier Honda Insight and those Japanese engineers at Honda can do no wrong. Well, these annoyingly smartly dressed lawyer type individuals in the videos got me interested in delving into why I get bombarded with these adverts. It is May 2014 and the International Council on Clean Transportation is conducting emissions tests on a number of German manufacturer vehicles. The non-profit is running some pretty average real world tests. Emissions rules are far stricter in the USA rather than the EU and the ICCT were looking to see the results of European manufacturer cars built for the US market and demonstrate the improved emissions to the Europeans. At the time there were pretty big discrepancies between cars sold in the two markets even though they were apparently identical models. They knew what the official tailpipe emissions were. Their test vehicles had just been certified at the California Air Resources Board Facility and they were shown to meet the state's strict rules. But real world tests would show how the vehicles reacted driving out on the open road. The team used three vehicles, a VW Passat, VW Jetta and a BMW X5. The Passat was of exceptional interest to the team as it was the most modern with a newer selective catalytic reduction system. As such the team of two professors and two students gave the Passat a long test drive from Los Angeles to Seattle and back roughly 2,000 miles in total. Upon returning to their lab the team found something very off. The emissions far exceeded legal limits set by both European and US standards, 20 times the NOx levels set on the dyno during the California Air Resources Board certification. A similar result came from the Jetta, surely there was an issue with the portable tailpipe emissions equipment the researchers must have thought. But strangely the BMW's results were within the expected Royal World range. The equipment had to be correct. What the researchers didn't know was that they had stumbled upon one of the biggest cases of fraud in automotive history. The results from this perfectly innocent test would rock a whole industry. Cost Volkswagen Group, billions of dollars, pollute the air we breathe and still be ongoing to this very day to remedy. Today we are looking at the Volkswagen emissions scandal. My name is John and welcome to Scandal, a plainly difficult series. Background. Our story starts strangely not with the W, but another German manufacturer, Mercedes. With a personal dream car of mine, the 300SD. Apart from looking like a West Berlin taxi, yes yes I know it was more the 1, 2, 3 but you know pale yellow diesel Mercedes equals taxi. And for me it's got to be that bleached yellow on a vintage Merc. But this is irrelevant to our story. Anyway, the W116300SD was the first sedan vehicle to make use of a turbo diesel engine. And like with most flagship Mercedes products, after a few years it made its way down to the cars and the masses. I'm still hoping for my Honda to grow night vision cameras, like I seem to remember Clarkson once saying in an episode of Top Gear, well the engine in the W116 was indirectly fuel injected. Seven years later, a direct injection turbo diesel had actually made its way into a car available for mere mortals. This was the 1986 Fiat Chroma TDI, lift back sedan. And Volkswagen would follow in 1989 with their own direct injection turbo diesel. I should say that diesels in Volkswagen vehicles weren't a new thing in 1989, they had been selling gulfs with naturally aspirated 1.5 units since 1976 and they had even been experimenting in the 1950s with a diesel powered boxer unit. Like many other manufacturers at the time using naturally aspirated diesel engines, the cars were painfully slow, horrendously loud and were very shaky. It was the implementation of turbo charging and direct injection that would push diesel engines to become more usable and less agricultural. But why diesel in the first place? Well the answer is pretty simple, cost. That is in fuel economy and reliability. These engines work by compressing diesel fuel to the point it spontaneously combusts. These engines have a very good thermal efficiency, which means less energy is lost during operation. Back to 1989 and the VW Group's first direct injection turbo diesel, which was named the TDI, it would be a 2.5 litre cylinder unit and became available in the Audi 100 and from there demand grew, for this new, smoother, more efficient engine, so did the development of the system. In the ever continuing battle to reduce turbo lag and increase efficiency, in 1999 the company would see its first common rail system. Common rail systems help increase pressure in the fuel system, which allows injectors to greatly improve the vaporisation of fuel, which makes combining of atmospheric oxygen easier, thus creating a better burn. These engines are more efficient and, if properly engineered, have longer durability than some petrol engines. On top of that, they also have lower CO2 emissions. So where's the catch? I mean even the most refined engines are still noisy and slower compared to similar turbocharged and displacement petrol engines, but the main thing is higher NOX emissions. Ok we need to pause here before we get into the scandal to quickly discuss NOX. Nitrogen Oxides NOx gases in our story are byproducts from combustion, when hydrocarbons are burned at high temperatures, the nitrogen and oxygen reacts to form nitrogen oxides, which are molecules containing one nitrogen and one or more oxygen atoms. Nitrogen oxides are responsible for the creation of smog and acid rain, the form of which can cause in humans, asthma, diabetes, DNA mutations, cancers and other respiratory conditions. The latter is well acid rain, needless to say that stuff is pretty nasty. The high temperature caused by the high pressures needed to create combustion is perfect for the production of fine particles in the form of NOx. It is thought that diesel engines produce between 5 to 10 times more NOx in comparison to a petrol car. Obviously most manufacturers don't care about this unless there are rules and financial penalties to encourage reductions of certain particulates, and this was the case for the USA. The country's emissions and pollution laws go way back to the Air Pollution Control Act of 1955. The laws would continue to develop over the next few decades. One such was the US National Ambient Air Quality Standards, which was an amendment in 1990 to an earlier Clean Air Act. This amendment was aimed at reducing several particulates in the hope of addressing acid rain, ozone depletion as well as general air pollution. As the decade rolled on, emissions regulations became stricter. One such change was in 1999 and Tier 1's replacement with Tier 2 rules, which reduced the NOx limit from 1.0 grams a mile to 0.07 grams per mile. Tier 2 standards would be phased in between 2004 and 2009 to allow manufacturers to adapt, and this brings Volkswagen back into the picture. During this phase-in period, Volkswagen ceased selling its diesel-powered passenger cars in the USA in 2007. The company announced that this hold was whilst they got hold of new compliant technology, but they will be back soon in the market. A year after the start of the phase-in, Volkswagen had looked into striking a deal with Mercedes in 2005 to license their BlueTek system. BlueTek uses a selective catalytic reduction system. This uses diesel-exhaust fluid known as AdBlue, and a system of NOx absorbers. AdBlue is a mixture of urea and deionized water. It is injected into the exhaust supplied from a separate tank. Because it is so hot in the tailpipe, the AdBlue decomposes to ammonia. This then reacts with the NOx, reducing it to oxygen and hydrogen. These are then exhausted to the atmosphere. The system, although rather clever, does have a number of drawbacks. That is, weight from the extra fluid and extra cost of having to buy the AdBlue, as well as generally the system being more complex. However, complications with branding of the system on Volkswagen vehicles resulted in Daimler AG and Volkswagen terminating their agreement. Now faced with no system, BW sought out to build an in-house NOx reduction system. The company looked to lean NOx trap technology, which was of all things most importantly cheaper than the BlueTek system. This system is much more similar to a conventional catalytic converter, but its media inside the converter captures the particulates. Once it is full, the system is purged by injecting fuel into the filter, which then burns off the NOx as hydrogen and water. The system was promoted as a wondrous new technical marvel of low emissions, high economy, as well as great low end torque and sprightly performance. What's not to like? With 39 US MPG on the highway, in comparison to the 2010 Honda Insights 40 miles per gallon, it hardly seems worth messing around with the newfangled hybrid systems over just one mile per gallon. Volkswagen went hard on the clean diesel thing, making the company the major player in the US diesel engine market, even earning green car subsidies and tax exemptions for its earth-friendly cars. When tested, the cars fell below the tier 2 maximum threshold for NOx particles. They had apparently made the perfect balance, but VW's magical lean NOx trap technology was more smoke and mirrors than amazement of modern technology. The company had actually failed to meet the emissions regulations for their diesel engine technology, but rather than admit defeat, management thought of a deceptive way to pass testing. The defeat device. You see, engines could meet regulations, but only when heavily detuned, resulting in the vehicle being more reminiscent of the 1970s level of power and economy. VW had a solution to this problem. How about having two operating modes in the engine, control unit software? One for doing emissions testing and another for the real world. The former would reduce power and efficiency purely for the purpose of passing national tailpipe regulations and latter for normal day-to-day driving. But how did the car know? Well, modern cars have loads of sensors such as throttle, steering, body control, traction control, etc. The ECU would be able to figure out due to the lack of input from things like the BCM and steering sensors, but it was being emissions tested. At this point, the ECU would change to its testing mode and thus nerf engine performance. It goes without saying that Volkswagen Audi group didn't tell anyone about this software and thus the deceit was set. Emissions. Too good to be true. The USA in the late 2000s had some of the strictest emissions testing in the world and Volkswagen Audi cars were meeting these standards. Even though cars with the same engines in Europe were showing to meet Euro 5 rules, but exceeded the US Tier 2 rules. And this brings us back to the ICCT and their testing of that Jetta Passat and X5 in 2014. The test was commissioned by John German, co-lead of the US branch of ICCT after a request from Peter Monk, the head of the ICCT's European branch. The four-person team, the ones who had been conducting the tests, repeatedly checked over their results. After every test, it was seen that the Volkswagen's were repeatedly emitting far higher than the official figures. Their results were passed back to German, who then passed them on to the EPA and CARB in May 2014. The EPA began its own investigation and found their real-world tests also to be far higher than lab testing. VW were asked why their initial responses was to put blame on isolated technical glitches. Over the coming months, the CARB and EPA continued to question VW management, with each meeting the defeat device was not revealed to government bodies. Even when threatened with the EPA not certifying the 2016 model year, VW continued to try and evade their ever-increasing accusations, but the company was now just digging its own grave. The EPA were also doing their own investigations behind VW's back. ECU defeat devices were not unknown to the industry, and because of this, the EPA focused its investigation on the onboard engine control system. Using owner's forums and Volkswagen's own service manuals, computer scientists were able to obtain and test the ECU's code. After nearly a year of searching, a line of code named acoustic condition was found. This code was responsible for taking the information from the speed, steering and traction control sensors and determining if the car was being tested. The code originally did work to manage the noise of the engine upon startup, but it served as the perfect camouflage to hide the defeat software. In August 2015, VW employees met with the EPA. They were given a script approved by management, which would continue to conceal the defeat device, but these employees ended up blowing the whistle. They told the EPA that there were two modes of operation programmed into at least the two-litre diesel engine, aimed at circumventing emissions tests. The smoking gun had been found, time to confront the company. The EPA took their findings and issued a notice of violation to VW on the 18th of September 2015. The company had admitted to the deception a few days before the official notice, but the notice gave Volkswagen Audi Group a head start to destroy as much documentation as possible regarding the defeat device. This destruction of evidence is pretty reprehensible. It would also come out that Bosch had written the original software with the original intention for it to be used only for in-house testing. Bosch had even stated to not use it in production vehicles, but obviously that was ignored by Volkswagen. On the 23rd of December, VW CEO Martin Wintercorn released this statement when he reluctantly stepped down from his position. I am shocked by the events of the past few days. I am stunned that misconduct on such a scale was possible in the Volkswagen Group. As CEO, I accept responsibility for the irregularities, and I am doing this in the interest of the company, even though I am not aware of any wrongdoing on my part. Well, the US government would beg to differ, but we will talk about that in a bit. The company around the same time stated that some 11 million cars were potentially affected worldwide. Volkswagen Audi Group announced on the 29th of September 2015 that it was planning to recall and refit the 11 million vehicles from brands Audi, VW, Skoda, Seat and Porsche. These vehicles were scattered throughout the US, UK, EU as well as many other countries across the globe. Some engines would require hardware fixes, where some others only just a software tweak. In the USA, VW dealerships were only allowed to sell some brand new 2015 or 2016 models, but no secondhand diesel engine cars. Needless to say, this was another financial hit, but the biggest was yet to come. The aftermath. A day after the announcement on the 21st of September, VW stock dropped by 20%. Another day later, after a $7.3 billion spend confirmed by the company, the stock dropped another 17%. 2016 wouldn't be any better. In March, Volkswagen US CEO Michael Horn resigned, followed by the company agreeing to buy back some 500,000 cars in the US in April, as well as offer compensation. Sales of VW cars dropped on average 24% in the US during 2015 after the scandal. On 11th of January 2016, Volkswagen agreed to omit guilt on an indictment relating to the emission scandal. As a punishment, they were ordered to pay $4.3 billion in penalties. Six executives were also charged with fraud at the same time. Well, you know I said the US government would have something to say about the now ex-CEO Martin Wintercorns involvement. He'd be indicted in May 2018 on multiple cases of wire fraud and conspiracy to violate the Clean Air Act. However, he hasn't yet faced those charges due to not going to the USA after his indictment. But in his native Germany, there would also be a criminal case against him. Martin Wintercorn was charged along with four other top VW bosses, but as of writing this script, the trial has been postponed due to the ex-CEO's poor health and the global pandemic. It does make you wonder if the 74-year-old will ever see his day in court. Even now, however, Wintercorn denies any knowledge. The execs still residing in Germany will unlikely see a US court, unless they willingly go, as Germany will only extradite its citizens to other EU countries or international courts. But there are a couple behind bars due to the scandal. Engineer James Lang and Compliance Officer Oliver Schmidt were sentenced to prison time in the US. The scandal cost the company roughly $29 billion, however, public opinion hardly seems damaged. As in 2018, they sold over 10 million cars, a company record. Since the scandal, VW has pivoted away from diesel towards hybrid and electric technology. Many Volkswagen and Audi Group cars, if not electric, have small turbocharged petrol engines, like the Skoda Octavia with its 1.4 turbo petrol, a car that used to be a very well-known sight as diesel-powered taxis outside London. I can actually admit that many a time I've crawled out of one of them on a Friday night. It is estimated that between 60 and 100 excess deaths are linked to the VW scandal alone, but they turned out to be not the only manufacturer dodging emissions regulations. Several other manufacturers have been found to be fudging the MPG figures, CO2, and NOx emissions of their vehicles. This hints at an industry-wide issue, which may one day become another episode of scandal. This is a plainly difficult production. All videos on the channel are creative commons attrition-share-arch licensed. Many difficult videos are produced by me in the currently average corner of southern suburban London, UK. I'd like to thank my Patrons and YouTube members for your financial support. If you enjoy the music in the background of this video, then please head over to my second channel, made by John, or even check me out on Spotify, or if you're feeling extra generous maybe even purchasing it on iTunes. I do have Twitter if you want to go on there to check out any hints on future videos, and all that's left to say is Mr Music, play us out please.


Hi everyone, this is Alice Gao. In the previous video, I talked about the motivation for using a Markov decision process to model an ongoing decision problem. Then I described the components of a Markov decision process. In this video, I will talk about how should we choose the reward function for a Markov decision process. Recall that for a finite stage problem, it is straightforward to think about how to model an agent's utility. There is a finite number of decisions to make, so there is a finite number of combinations of values for these decisions. We can write down a giant table, list all these combinations, and for each combination write down an agent's utility. So that's doable. Now for an ongoing problem, it's less clear how to do this because we have an infinite, potentially infinite number of time steps. So how should we model the agent's reward or utility over time? Let's look at three possible reward functions I put on this slide. Total reward, average reward, and discounted reward. For all of these reward functions, let's simplify our notation for the reward function a little bit. So let's assume that the reward only depends on the state I'm entering. So r of s is a reward of entering a particular state. Then let me write down the expressions for total reward, average reward, and discounted reward. When we're calculating total reward, we are simply taking the reward we get at each time step and adding them together. So the sum is the total reward. And when we are calculating average reward, we are again calculating the total reward, except that we are dividing that by the number of time steps in total. Now, since this is an ongoing process, the number of time steps might be infinite, so we'll represent that by taking the limit of the number of time steps to approaching infinity. And finally, for discounted reward, this might be a new concept for you. So I will explain this later after I explain the total average reward. So there are some problems with the first two approaches. What's the problem with using total reward? The problem here is relatively easy to see. If we have an unlimited number of time steps, then the sum of all the reward is likely to be infinite. So if we can get an infinite amount of reward for a particular process, then how do we compare which set of actions might be best, right? After all, our goal is to be able to solve this process and derive the optimum policy. So if we have two possible policies and the total reward for each policy for both policies are both infinite, then there's no way for us to tell which one is better. The average reward function has a similar problem. The problem is that in this case, if the total reward is finite, but if we average it over a potentially infinite number of time periods, then the average reward is going to be zero. So in that case, if we have two policies, both resulting in the finite total reward, then the average reward of both policies are zero. And again, we cannot compare them. Since both the first approaches have problems, you might have guessed that we're going to go with the third approach, which is modeling the reward as a discounted reward function. Now, you might not have heard of this concept, but the discounted reward is a widely used concept in microeconomics and in particular in game theory. So the idea is that for the reward for every time step, for the first time step, the reward is just what it is. So r of s zero, for then for the next time step, we will take the reward and multiply it by a discount factor. So gamma multiplied by r of s one. And then for the next time step, we will take the reward and multiply it by the discount factor squared. So every time, every new time step, we will take the original discount factor from the previous time step and multiply it again with the same discount factor. So this discount factor is represented by gamma, and it is a number that's greater than or equal to zero and less than one. Now, a large part of microeconomics in game theory is about modeling people's decision processes in real life using mathematics. So there is quite a bit of reason for why we want to model the reward in this discounted way. Let me give you two reasons. The first reason is that if we are going to get a fixed amount of reward, then we prefer getting this reward today rather than tomorrow, rather than the day after tomorrow. So this means that we value the same amount of reward received sooner rather than later. We prefer to receive reward sooner rather than later. And this has evidence in psychological experiments. People have done lots of experiments with real people and have found that people really have this preference of receiving reward sooner rather than later. So that's one reason for using the discount factor is that if I were to receive the same reward today, it's worse more than if I would receive it tomorrow. So if I receive it tomorrow, I will multiply it by a discount factor to show that it is actually worse less to me if received tomorrow. The second reason might sound a little depressing, but it actually makes sense. The reason is that every day there is a chance that tomorrow will not come. So we will use the discount factor to model the fact that there is some positive probability that tomorrow would not happen. So with only, for example, if the discount factor is 90%, then we are saying that with 10% chance the world is going to end tomorrow. So with only 90% chance tomorrow will actually arrive and we will get the reward that we're supposed to get. I hope you don't take such a pessimistic view on life, but apparently economists do. Now another advantage of using the discounted reward function is that we can prove if we use a discount factor, then the total discounted reward over a potentially infinite number of time steps is finite. So that's a nice thing where if we're comparing two policies, the discounted reward function will give us two finite rewards for the two policies, so we can compare them and get an answer about which policy is better. Because of all these reasons, we are going to choose to model our MDP using a discounted reward function. That's everything for this video. After watching this video, you should be able to explain what are the total reward, average reward, and discounted reward function. And you should also be able to explain why we chose to use the discounted reward function rather than using the total reward and the average reward functions. Thank you very much for watching. I will see you in the next video. Bye for now.


Nitrosamines are considered the most carcinogenic, the most cancer-causing agents in cigarette smoke. In 2011, scientists measured the amount of nitrosamines in meat products. This is a table showing quantities of seven different preformed carcinogenic nitrosamines. So from chicken meatballs to pork, turkey slices, hot dogs, foie gras, and sausage, processed meats come pre-packaged with carcinogens thanks to the transformation that occurs from nitrite to nitrosamine in the absence of phytonutrients. How much is there in meat compared to tobacco? The cancer project uses this graphic to warn consumers about the cancer risks associated with processed meat, which kind of suggests a few hot dogs may contain the carcinogenic load of a pack of cigarettes. Turns out they hit it right on the head. Filtred cigarettes have 11 times more nitrosamines than nitrosamides, but that's per kilo. Cigarettes have less than a gram of tobacco each. Hot dogs are about 60 times heavier, and so four hot dogs has more than a pack of 20 cigarettes. Here's how much nitrosamine you can measure over the course of a day in someone eating ham or sausage. And here are two representative graphs of how much is flowing through the bodies of those eating vegetarian. In fact, you can take people who eat smoked or canned meat, put them on a vegetarian diet, and very quickly see it drop as their body starts detoxifying itself within a day or two. Here's a chart of the effect of changing from a meat diet to a vegetarian diet on urinary nitrosamine levels, or a reflection of what's flowing through their bloodstreams. Looking at four different carcinogens, you can see day one and two, they're eating meat, then vegetarian days three through five, and you can see the dramatic drop, though it doesn't drop as low as those on the control vegetarian diet. Presumably though, a few more days eating vegetarian, and their bodies will be able to flush out the remainder.


Thanks for checking out this episode of brutal battle beer break and as you will recognize something is different with this one It's the number of beers in front of me Typically, I just do one beer per brutal battle beer break, but this one's different and it's special So it makes sense that I would do four at a time. So it's gonna be longer. So strap yourself in Anyway, this is the a special pack of beer. It's a seasonal pack by flying dog brewing out of Frederick, Maryland and They put this out. I think they've put this out for the past three years and around now And it's their Otterbind pack now Otterbind is a cookie company, which I believe is based out of Maryland and They what they've done for these packs each year is they will pick a cookie from Otterbind and then create a beer that they think Compliments the cookie or the cookie will complement the beer. We actually did a special Episode of the actual podcast just audio podcast about the very first one that they did so you can go back and listen to that Just check out brutal battle.com or look for it on iTunes stitcher or Google play So didn't do the one last year figured it'd be fun to just do this one as a brutal battle beer break and see what happens So it should be good should be cool and I'll tell you, you know, what they're supposed to be paired with I'm not doing the cookies. Sorry Not a big cookie person and I don't really want to You know commit to buying a ton of cookies for this, but just gonna evaluate these beers and see what's good So this is kind of my own pack attack just for the Video which we do pack attacks for audio, but anyway, all right, so the first one here is Pop it and then First one here is a raspberry leaf ale now This is a it's six point five percent alcohol by volume and it's an ale with grapefruit raspberry tea and Other natural flavors added So this one is supposed to pair with a lemon sugar cookie by Otterbine So I mean honestly, I'll just show you the first ones labeled They're all gonna look basically the same except different color and a different name on them So just get a good look at that and then I'm not gonna show you the other ones. So Raspberry leaf out and the reason that I have you know one one little goblet for each of them is because I don't want to take The time to go and rinse in between. So this just easier. Anyway, check it out It actually looks like you know, like a pale ale. Honestly, it just looks like a Orange with a little bit yellow tinge pale ale to it's got a lot of carbonation coming up from the bottom decent head around the top I do smell Now it's probably because I know this that it's like raspberry tea in there It does smell a little earthy a little leafy a little tea ask. I don't think I can actually get raspberry out of the smell I do get a little bit of that grapefruit aspect in there Smells pretty malty though. There's a bit of like a honey sweetness in there as well. So let me try this Super light. Let's say be me on this again 6.5. Yeah, it seems about 6.5 I can taste the raspberry tea in this or what I would assume a raspberry tea would taste like it's a very slight kind of raspberry flavor Um, just kind of like, you know hits your tongue lightly Traces along the top of it. It definitely has that kind of leafy tea aspect as well Yep, definitely get the grapefruit aspect in there, too That's like the second thing to come in the first is that raspberry tea and that's a grapefruit And then the finish that is a little bit honey a little bit of a hay Aspect to it as well I could see this going well with a sugar cookie. Is that what it is? A lemon sugar cookie. Oh, yeah I could see that because a lemon would enhance enhance the citrusiness Which the citrusiness isn't crazy the grapefruit and this is more of like a grapefruit peel. So Decent I'm done with it. It's pretty decent All right.  Definitely can smell some vanilla bean aspect in there Oh, yeah And I taste it Lots of cinnamon right up front and then it goes right to that vanilla bean malty Pretty like medium mouthfeel to it It's nice. This would this would definitely a good one for the winter season and it, you know Spices and that's the way that cinnamon and vanilla comes together just makes you think, you know cookies and with a sugar cookie I can see how that's nice Hmm. I respect that That's a good, uh, it doesn't even taste all that loggery in the in the finish either like there's typically a particular logger yeast flavor Um, I don't I can't even really get that so much It's just mainly the cinnamon and the vanilla bean and it's kind of nice It's not amazing, but it's good Cool. So the next one, uh, this is interesting a Christmas IPA And oh, I'm sorry. The horch out of logger is 6.8 alcohol. I didn't say that So here's the Christmas IPA. Um, it's 7.6 alcohol by volume It's an IPA with orange peel spruce and tangerine Which sounds quite good And this is supposed to be paired with the orange white chocolate chip cookie I didn't know they made anything like that. That's interesting Got the sucre Right in there All right So we have it looks like your typical IPA. It is very orangey. It's got a nice white head to it Um, not as much, uh, carbonation coming up from the bottom as the last two, but there's some Oh, yeah, very grape fruity Very grape fruity I can smell that tangerine. It's very very very citrusy Now it says there's spruce in there If I really reach for it in the smell, I can get the spruce at the end But I'm probably only getting it because I know it's in there And that spruce I feel like can sometimes come off as being like pine. So Smells good though. I don't like that. I don't like the way the spruce plays in this beer. I really don't Um I get a quick hit of those really nice grapefruit and tangerine flavors And there's a decent bitterness to it to back up those flavors But then there's that spruce and it just tastes it tastes like a tree. It tastes like spruce tips and sappy, you know, and um It's not integrating well to be honest What I do really like that is this same type of idea is dogfish heads, pennsylvania tuxedo I think they did this type of beer a lot better.  Not big on that. So I'm gonna get some water And then the last one oh and that one was to remind you was supposed to be with the orange white chocolate chip cookie I I can't imagine how that would go with it to be honest. Um, okay, I guess All right, then the last one is a Baltic porter I don't see enough Baltic porters out there and I quite like Baltic porters. They have a little bit more of like a salinity They're more robust style porters And I like that So this is 8.4 percent alcohol and it pairs with their straight up chocolate chip cookie And it's brewed with star anise Which anyone out there not that familiar with anise anise has a very licorice to like black licorice Taste to it All right, so it's a lighter looking porter. It's not super dark Um, so as you can see, I mean it looks dark much darker on the screen than it actually pours Uh in real life, but I I mean I can see through it on the edges It's like a reddish brown. Um, yeah, so I can see through a little bit on the edges. So Nice man There's a little bit of a coffee Like roasty coffee note in there There's a little bit of a salinity that I expect from a Baltic porter A little bit of a uh a jerky like beef jerky type smell with some type of soy sauce aspect Smells decent Can't really pick out any star anise though or I mean a nice really I don't know what the difference in flavor between regular anise and star anises. So It tastes like a thinner type of Baltic porter there's a bit of that salinity to it. There's a little bit of that beef jerky aspect There's a roastiness to it Sweetness on the end Um, it's decent I wouldn't say this is the best Baltic pour I've had. I wouldn't say it's the worst. It's kind of in the middle It's okay. It's just okay Okay, so I I could see maybe where this would go with a straight up chocolate chip cookie Actually, I could see where it would go with the chocolate chip cookie because adding chocolate to that flavor would kind of round it out a little bit more so You know, this isn't the full experiment because I didn't have the cookies But you know, draw your own conclusions based on the flavors I gave you on how the cookies would go with it Um, so overall, I mean Christmas IPA did not work for me Baltic porter was okay Uh, the horchata lager was good. Um solid interesting and the uh, raspberry leaf ale was pretty pretty nice Especially for like a lighter style with a little bit of a fruit aspect to it. So overall decent pack um Would I go out and purchase any of these again? Probably not Just because there's so many other beers out there and you really have to stand out for me to want to purchase you again so Sorry flying dog Although I feel like I did short change you guys just a little bit because I didn't do the cookies with these and the cookies could have enhanced the beer And who knows the beer most likely would have enhanced the cookies and you know, whatever But if people want to find out how that goes, uh, we like I said, we had done the original otter bind flying dog pack On the regular podcast so you can check that out. Uh, and that was that was a fun time Just go to brutal battle.com Or check it on itunes stitcher or google play. But anyway, thanks everyone for checking this out I know it's been much longer than it usually is. Hope you enjoyed it Uh, have any ideas for any of these send me an email at brew battle podcast at gmail.com Thank you so much and go have yourself an awesome beer