Dark Star Six Hop Ale

Cask @ The Rake. Popped to Utobeer on my lunch break and thought I’d have a cheeky pint before heading back to work. I’m so glad I did! Clear golden amber with a thin white head. Fresh floral and citrus, grapefruit/orange, hop nose with some sweet underlying malts. Taste is much the same, nice bitter hop bite at first with a lovely sweet syrupy malt backbone and a long stingy swallow. Needless to say, I rode the bus back to the office with a big smile on my face.

cask at blackfriers- pours deep amber copper colour, smells earth toffee butter, and citrus, tastes juicy orange clementine lemon rind, in a delicate manner, fresh. citrus dominating but balanced in all. very good doesnt hint to its 6.5/ good stuffs.

Cask gravity at Planet Thanet BF 08. First beer of the festival and one of about 5 that I was genuinely excited about. Gold with lasting beige head. Big PNW grapefruity aroma. Fruity grapefruit in mouth, malts are a bit syrupy, rather than biscuity. Hops on finish are really crunchingly green and attack the mouth. Great English beer for a hophead like me. Lovely.

Cask at FFTMC Oxford 22-03-08 This looks stunning, poured amber with amazing clarity and with a nice little white head. First sip was a wonderful mouthful of marmaladeyness (if there is such a word) and then every subsequent taste brings an onslaught of hops. This is a well executed hoppy assault and its as though it’s been bought forth Cleopatra style, but instead of asses milk the hops are bathed in the most wonderful warm, sweet ,honey rich layers of liquid mmmmhhhh lovely. Yesterday it was Oakham Haka that stole the show, today its this. Yer know there is very little I can do to fault this beer but I felt that two days after being put on the aroma was starting to wane a little from how Casey had described it. Don’t get me wrong it was still good but it really needed a good swish to get much from it. But what a beer, go and get some and enjoy.

Cask conditioned at Far from the Madding Crowd, Oxford. Dark amber with white head, a lovely looking pint. Wow what a beauty this is the hops fill up the palate right from the off, its a hop sensation. Easy malty body carrying an alcohol fullness, but the main story is in the top notes, lychees, grapefruit, bitterness thet all dance on and off the tongue. A brilliant beer, thats all that can be said.