Ok. I’ve noticed different reviewers have stated different ABV’s for this beer so it must vary between batches. My bottle (bottled 5 weeks ago) has an ABV of 5.5%! 330ml bottle into pint glass. Aroma of smoky malt and dark chocolate, not what I was expecting. Hazy golden bronze beer with rapidly dissipating white head. Highly carbonated. Full body, sticky texture. Caramel malt in the finish then a little hoppy fruitiness right at the end. Funny old beer. Calls itself ’Pale’, is classified as a Golden Ale but reminds me of a strong English Bitter. Must be easy to drink because it’s all gone!

Bottle. Hazy dark red brown with thin loose short-lived yellowish head. The initial aroma reminded me somewhat of homebrew, however that dissipated it became rather more pleasant dark malt with chocolate and a slight apple tang. The palate was very interesting. It has a very full body coating the tongue and mouth and very light carbonation. It is quite unusual but actually works very well. A fruity foretaste gives way to richer flavours of dark mal and raisins with a subtle tang. Overall I enjoyed this, but in some ways it is a bit strange. It is rather too cloying to be a beer that you would want to drink a lot of. Also it is a very atypical stout. The thick richness I felt needed something to balance it and would have benefited from more complexity. Then again, that would make it even less like a stout.

Bottle. Clear amber (but avoided pouring the sediment in the bottle) with a short-lived very loose white head. The aroma was fairly pleasant: not very pronounced but mostly floral. The palate is wrong, it has a light body but weird carbonation. It froths up in the mouth making it hard to taste and not quenching. It wasn’t obviously over-carbonated in that it did not froth out of the bottle on opening, but the mouthfeel of the carbonation didn’t work. The flavour was disappointing. There is very little foretaste and what there is is rather sharp - somewhat acidic, but not say in a pleasant citrusy way. It shifts gear abruptly to a rather metallic bitter finish, although there are some pleasant floral notes that develop when the initial harsh bitterness subsides. Disappointing.