Cask@Monsal Head Hotel, Monsal Head, Derbyshire. Black beer with a strongish head. The aroma is mildly chocolate and the flavour is mildly roasted and bitter. Overall a nice beer.

Treacle like dark brown colour. Bitter, burnt, malt aroma. Flavour is smokey and quite bitter with hints of coffee and treacle.

Gravity fed half pint at the London Drinker Beer Festival, dark with a bubbly white head. A syrupy toffee aroma. Roasted and bitter chocolate flavours dominate with a finish that is shirt and sharp. Grew on me more through the glass.

Cask (gravity dispense) at London Drinker Beer Festival 2007. Listed here as a porter (although I’m not sure where the commercial description comes from as the brewery doesn’t seem to have a website) but in the festival programme as a dark bitter. I guess there’s some truth in both, but, as a hybrid type of beer it struggles a little to assert itself into either style. There are roasted notes, a touch of chocolate and a hint of sourness on the finish that pushes towards the porter style. But the body is rather less substantial than the deepish red colour would suggest. And the malt has a slightly raw edge to it. Not unpleasant, but a bit of a mish mash.

Cask gravity at Notts BF 05. Dark chestnut. Disappearing biege head. Good dark malts on nose. Some acids in mouth with more rich malt. Some choc/coffee. Lacks body in the mouthfeel. Malty finish, slightly dry.