Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 4 | Flavor - 4 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 4.5
Nut brown. Sweetish and on the thin side....................................
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 5.5
Brown/black. Dry, medium bodied, looong coffe flavour. OK, but moderately interesting.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7
Darkish red-amber. Rather malty, some nice hop aroma, some fruityness, bitter finish.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 7 | Flavor - 6 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 6.5
Golden coloured. Sweet maltiness, balanced bitterness. An odd hint of cellar flavour.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 6 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 2 | Overall - 6.5
Has a flowery, curranty hoppiness and toasty caramel notes. However, it is very thin for a beer of 6%. This allows it to be quaffed of course, but leaves a bit of an empty feeling when you realize that Wellington Arkell on the next handpump over has a much fuller body and flavour at 4%. That said, the thinness allows the beer to seem fairly hoppy even though the IBUs really aren't that high at all (maybe 22-26).
Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 4 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 4.5
This is a rather mellow brew, with just touches of chocolate. I have to give thanks for that, since I don't like this concept. I think this was a one-off since I've never seen it again.
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 2 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 5.5
On cask: dark brown, hardly any aroma; very beany-tasting. I don't know what kind of beans these are, but I don't like them. They give the beer a pronounced vegetal taste. On cask this is subdued a little bit, and the chocolatey malt profile is much more prevalent. The body is ultra smooth, too, with more hop bitterness. On nitrotap all the good things about this beer are killed leaving just the raw, vegetal bean notes. The rating for the cask version is given. The rating for the nitro version is 0.7, with the only points coming for appearance.
Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 5 | Texture - 4 | Overall - 5
Actually kind of similar to the rye - same muddy tannish colour and fair to middlin' character. Less spicy though, with freakin' goldings in the finish (how creative).
Appearance - 6 | Aroma - 3 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 8 | Overall - 7.5
Underneath the nitrogen blanket there is a fantastic mild just waiting to break out. You get hints of wonderfully complex malt, chocolate, toast, and a dash of hop in the finish. Considering that this is made at Durham, the cask ale specialists, I can see no logical reason why they wouldn't serve this on hand-pump. If they did, my ratings would undoubtedly jump.
Appearance - 4 | Aroma - 5 | Flavor - 7 | Texture - 6 | Overall - 7
Full malt character, with tannic, spicy notes...............................