The chilli particularly bites with wheat beers, is only mildly noticeable with stout, porters and strong dark ales. The beer does, of course, get hotter over time (but never yet to the stage where I relegated it to cooking only!). Of course, hot is a matter of taste and training: recently in Bangkok I surprised my Thai hosts by blithely (apparently, at least) munching on their little bird's eye chillies (what they call, phonetically at least, "pricky nu") whilst waitnig for my next Singha to be served - I guess approx 50 years of various forms of excess has taken its toll on my taste buds as well as my brain cells
