Cask conditioned at Merton Beer Festival Fri July 7th 2006. Very dark beer in fact black with barely a head but what there was appeared beigeish in colour. Roasted coffee bean aroma with a hint of bitter chocolate, flavours are much the same as well but this really is the Geoff Capes of the Porter world and takes no prisoners. Great bitterness follows and malty flavours sneak through every so often, along with their July Morning this was a storming beer from Eastwood and Sanders.

Cask conditioned at Merton Beer Festival Sat July 8th 2006. As I walked out this midsummer morning strolling unhurriedly across this pleasant, though unremarkable, Oxfordshire field with the pleasant liquid warbling of the skylark for company, interrupted only by the resonating harsh call of a startled pheasant and the low continual drone of the busying motorway. I had but one mission in mind to find a beer worthy of this day. The locals gathered and spoke excitedly about the merits of this beer and that cider but only one beer captured my gaze: July Morning. Poured to perfection it sat before me, it’s dark golden appearance only disturbed by a strengthening shard of light coursing in through a window and teasingly playing games across the surface of the beer leaving myriad pinpricks of light to briefly dazzle then wane. It was the hops that hit you first along with the slightly less noticeable hint of soft fruits. Then the gentle hum of chatter around me silenced for a second, as I was transported back to a simpler less chaotic England, devoid of motorcar and cellular phone. I was back in an England of high hedgerows, twisty roads and that glorious scent of an English summers day. The first sip and a pleasant fruitiness swept around my mouth then came a splendid bitterness and oh this beer really was quite something. The bitterness continuing to hold out and back came those images. I walked out of the hall, should I stroll with just my beer for company in some vain hope of trying to find that England of past decades? I shook my head resigned to the fact that it had gone, living only in ones memory. I took another sip and it was back this fruity hoppy beer was truly magical. But it was disappearing and fast and the clouds were beginning to gather on the horizon. The end was in sight but the bitterness lingered refusing to give. My glass now looked a sorry sight and like Mr Benn the thought of being transported elsewhere loomed again as I set eyes upon the wonderfully named Jaipur.