Bottle, Waitrose. Plainish copper. lots of dingey gray head. Odd tinned fruit aroma, old man caramel. Tongue-numbing menthol, oddly artifical mint and mouthwash, vanilla flavored cough drops. Surprisingly little direct alcohol flavor (you know, apart from the tongue numbing/mouthwash thing). This is an absolute trainwreck, and yet kind of a fun experience. In the way it’s probably sort of fun to drink your own moonshine, even as it dissolves the enamel off your teeth.

[January 2007, from Waitrose, Marlow]. I note that the beer is stronger than your regular ale, but comes in a smaller bottle, so I assume the extra 40p of my hard-earned cash I had to part with was for the value-added packaging! Having finally extricated my beer and made a quick visit to our cardboard recycling box, I was able to get at my beer and... woah, this is a weird one. The horrible sour smell from the bottle nearly put me off drinking it, but I persevered. The texture is smooth, but it’s the taste that grabs your attention. Tastes sweet, then more sourness, then as you get into it I caught glimpses of malt, vanilla, unripe bananas (I think this accounts for the sourness), ripe bananas as well, whisky, lemon and caramel. Oooh, was that some sawdust as well?! And.... errrm... margarine? I got the impression that someone is going for the complexity of a trappist beer, and simply hasn’t had enough practise at at mellowing the flavours so they complement one another. Instead the different levels of taste fight for dominance in your mouth with the sour green banana coming back to give the others a good hiding at regular intervals. So we have enormous depth but no refinement - the layers of flavour simply don’t sit easily with each other. Some will find this beer interesting, others simply bizarre - I’m wavering between the two. It’d probably be a good introduction for a newcomer to the noble art of beer tasting, and certainly provokes discussion. However, at present I’m not convinced that this beer is actually designed for drinking! I know for a fact I’ve never tasted a beer like this! Maybe it would mellow with cellaring (although I firmly believe that beers should be sold at the ideal drinking age, so I’m not having with any of this storage malarkey!). I also note that the brewers have only been in business since 2003, so I’ll be interested to see what their future beers are like - this one is intriguing and shows promise, but needs a little more time spent getting the recipe exactly right - if they keep persevering with this I think it could become a super beer. Perhaps it would also help to bottle condition it? Errm... is that cough mixture coming through now? *hic* feeling a bit drunk... and very confused... what just happened to my mouth?

Nice amber color with a good white head. Aroma is whiskey and vanilla. Flavor of whiskey, oak, vanilla. Sweet finish.

Bottle. Aroma of malt, biscuit, and vanilla. Pours a clear copper amber beer with a small cream coloured head. Oaky, malty flavour with vanilla and some sweetness. Creamy texture. A bit sweet for my liking.

Well, I suppose this is a bit better than the dire 6.6% Oak Aged. Slightly less of the vanilla ice cream, thank goodness. Amber colour. Sweet caramel aroma with a little toast and marmalade. Sweet, sticky taste with some alcohol and no bitterness to speak of. Come to think of it, it’s quite good.