Bottle from Sainsbury's - the second beer I'd bought to share with my Dad on his birthday as he loves his traditional bitters but is not allowed to drink at present. Had this after the dreadful low alcohol version of Old Speckled Hen, and frankly anything was going to be an improvement after that travesty. This one actually looked quite decent - a deep amber with a decent cream head and a light fizz. Up front there's brown sugar, then malt extract, then the sickly taste of the fake sugar you get in diet drinks, and then... not a lot. No hop presence at all, nothing but fake sweet malt. On the plus side, it's actually got a reasonably full body compared to other low alcohol brews. Oddly, it made me think of a really low grade kvass more than anything else. It's pretty poor really but - and this is a big but - it didn't make me feel physically ill, and therefore was a huge improvement on the low alcohol Old Speckled Hen. But it was the second sorry Dad of his birthday, and for that I feel bad.

Bottle from Morrisons, Moston. Clear amber-brown with a small head. A very malty effort, in both aroma and taste, clearly low alcohol.