Backlog. Deep amber colour with a mediumsized foamy head, which leaves some lace. Aroma is honey, some toasted malts, caramel, mild spicy tones with some wood as well. Flavour is wooden, some caramel, mild biscuity and toffeeish tones with some honey, mild spiciness as well as some toasted sweet malts. Leaves a bit thin as for the palate.

Sample@Copenhagen Beer Festival, KPH Volume (20/04/2019) - amber pour with white head. Sweet and toasted malty with some caramel, biscuity malt, medium body, sweet malty close.

Keg at Mitchell’s Bar. It pours clear deep amber with a thick foamy off-white head. The aroma is sweet, perfumed, toffee, caramel, chewy malt and orange. The taste is firmly bitter, sweet, chewy, caramel, toffee, resin, grassy, fruit cake and peppery spice. Medium body and fine carbonation. Considering it is only 5% the alcohol is fairly present. Not bad for the style.

Backlog. From tap at Mitchell’s Scottish Ale House, V&A Waterfront, Cape Town, with QL 12.04.12. Copper in colour, persistent off-white head. Aroma of toffee and sweet malt. Smooth mouthfield with little carbonation. Maltiness is prominent over bitterness. Medium-long aftertaste. A superbly tasteful and well-balanced Scottish style ale brewed in Cape Town

Slightly ’aged’ sample Small off-white head, fast reduced to rim; fully muddy orange-ochre beer. Sourish nose, lactic, Brett or Pedio-like. Fermented milk or kvass, even. Weird. Bitter, even quite spicy-bitter, with initially only a shade of the lactic sourness that the nose speaks of. Especially the finish has a sharp, short vegetable or spicy bitterness. Yet the sourness creeps in again after some time, both lactic and as in wild fruit, berries. Very end has some bananaester, if devoid of sweetness. Very spritzy, yeast-filled, slick. Definitely other ferments. Question is: willed or not? And I wonder why I ought to be circumspect with 5% ABV? Many thanks to Mathieu & Louis!

Cape Town rating: Amber-brown with a bubbly cask-like head. The aroma has slightly smoky caramel. The palate is caramel, with a touch of smoke/toast and with a balanced finished that has a touch of dryness.

Knysna rating: Golden amber. Thin head. Fresh grainy aroma, toasty and appetizing. Caramel, toast, fairly earthy, complex..is this that Edinburgh yeast? Moreish. Better in Knysna, fresher and more complex.

Draught at the brewery in 2006. Nut brown, creamy head. Aroma of roasty malt and cinnamon. Dryish and gently malty with complex malt structure and notes of coffee. Pleasant salty finish.