Bottle. Copper with a thin beige head. Aroma is ale malt. Flavour is smooth malt with a dry spice base. Finish has fruit and maybe a touch of rum

I think this is also the ’Marks & Spencers’ Wiltshire Rum Beer as it looks and tastes identical. 500ml bottle best before 19th Dec 2012, poured into a UK pint sleeve glass. Looks good, full amber body with a good solid head of white bubbles on top, stayed well and gave some lacing. The nose is malty and heavy, the taste follows along the same lines: can’t pretent to find any Rum flavours but there is something diferent about the taste and I like it. Slight hop bitterness in the finish otherwise it is a malt favouring brew.
Earlier Rating: 4/4/2012 Total Score: 3.5
500ml Brown bottle, best before the end of Sept 2012: poured into my Abbot Ale glass tankard in Mar 2012. Wadworth 6X with smooth Caribbean Rum according to the rear label. I’d never have guessed there was rum in it, but once the thought is put in your head it tries to find it: no rum in the nose, but I might have picked up hints in the semi-sweet flavours found in the taste. Would love to have had a normal 6X to compare this bottle with: I might even do that in the future. Good amber body, clear and clean, the white head fell away to a wispy covering and collar half way through the tasting, but I did have some Brie and buscuits once I’d decided the smell and taste comments I intended to write, so that might have killed the head somewhat. The nose was malty, the taste simular but with a mini hop bitterness in the finish. This is a pleasant beer and I recommend you try it if given the chance.

Bottle shared at the Master Builder, West End. Pours hazy amber with an off white head. Aroma of malt, light caramel and a little fruit. Flavour has same aspects and is medium sweet and bitter. Light to medium bodied with soft carbonation. (offline rating from April 2012)

Slightly hazy dark amber with a small off-white head. Aroma of caramel, dark sugar and dried fruit. Sweet fruity and malty flavour with a vegetable note, and a hint of rum.

Bottle from Marks & Spencer. Clear dark orange colour, off-white head. Nose is rum, sewer smells, wood. Flavour is malty, caramel, rum. Dry and metallic finish. Not well.

Bottle 500ml. @ PBF 2011Clear medium amber orange colour with a average, frothy, fair lacing, mostly diminishing, off-white to white head. Aroma is moderate malty, toasted, caramel, toffee, vanilla - rum notes. Flavour is moderate sweet and light bitter with a average duration, toffee, malty. Body is medium, texture is oily, carbonation is soft. [20110701]Earlier Rating: 6/21/2010 Total Score: 2.5Bottle 500ml.Clear medium amber color with a average, frothy to creamy, good lacing, mostly lasting, off-white to beige head. Aroma is moderate malty, caramel, sweet malt, mazipan mase, fruity, cane sugar. Flavor is moderate sweet and light bitter with a average duration. Body is medium, texture is watery to oily, carbonation is soft. [20100612]

Bottled. Amber colour, small off-white head. Aroma is fruits, wood, some sweet notes. Flavour is being quite much the same. Still a quite pleasantly balanced thing.
Earlier Rating: 6/12/2010 Total Score: 2.6
Bottled. Amber colour, not much small white. Aroma is grass, very dry and horrible. Flavour is malty, bready and quite interesting. Bready and yeasty grassy finish.

Bottled 500ml (BB 12/2011)
Clear copper color, small white head. Bready, caramelly with aroma of rhum. Light to medium-bodied. Nutty, English hoppy with notes of rhum, less than in aroma. Despite of rhum, quite conventional ESB.

500ml bottle from M&S in Chelmsford near the railway station. I guess this is the Pussers Spearfish beer from the JDW festival, but in pasteurised bottle form. Chestnut colour with lasting beige head. Pasteurised darkish malt aroma. It’s a pasteurised dark English bitter. Still can’t tell where the rum is in the same way I couldn’t with the cask version. Some hop on finish.. Less good than the cask version unsurprisingly.