Clear amber with medium off white head. Sweet with fruity and caramel notes. Ends mild bitter.

Clear brown with white head. Sulphur aroma. Light body and carbonation. Taste not terribly pleasant with a sharp seawater tang.

Cloudy golden with medium off white head. Sweet fruity flavor with floral hops and caramel notes. Creamy mouthfeel and bitter end.

[Keg at The Bugle, Reading] Astonishingly, in all the time I’ve worked in Reading amongst its many Courage pubs, I’ve never come across this beer before, and as a lover of milds I was quick to try it. It pours deep brown, almost black, with a moderate but lasting creamy head. There’s very little smell, which makes your first taste more of a surprise. This is dominated by beautiful deep, roasted malts, with a hint of coffee in the background. Unfortunately, once you’ve enjoyed the first hit of flavour you realise that it is a little weak and watery, and feel that it could have been much improved by being cask conditioned rather than merely kegged. That said, it still has a few surprises up its sleeve. There is an unusual twist of lemon in the finish, and a growing gentle smokiness in the aftertaste. It leaves an odd mixture of dryness and syrup on the inside of your mouth. There are certainly many better milds out there than this, but considering this is a relatively low ABV kegged effort invented by a brewer whose other beers weren’t that much cop, this is actually a pretty decent effort. I wonder if, now that Wells & Youngs have taking it over, they might produce a cask version…? We can but hope…

Cask-conditioned at the Swan, Tockington Gloucs 20/5/08. Deep amber coloured with a moderate white head. A bit lightweight in both flavour and aroma, but this resulted in the beer being inoffensive rather than poor. Had less character than the Bristol version I used to drink a lot of, but the malty edge was decent enough. There are a lot worse bitters around.

Medium caramel aroma. Coppery amber color with a white head that didn’t persist. Medium body with near creamy carbonation. It’s caramel, but there’s almost enough floral bitter to balance. Maybe a tad too malty for an ESB, or not. Finishes with a decent amount of bitter. Pretty much fits the style.

[i] [b] Cask at The Chandos, Oakley, Bucks, Jan’ 08 [/i] [/b] I had three pints of this having cycled over from Merton (the first two didn’t even touch the sides) This was really pretty good and something of an improvement on the Courage Directors I last had a few years back. Poured brown (the pub is quite dark it’s difficult to be more acurate than that) good frothy white head. Really nice, fruity beer good dryness at the end slightly more bitter than I recall, not a classic but a damn fine pint.

275ml bottle from the Three mariners, Hythe, Kent - BBF 31/10/08. Gold with a white head; grassy aroma; lacking in flavour, some caramel malt, and not as heavily carbonated as a traditional light ale; dry biscuit finish.

Cask-conditioned at the Pump House, Bristol 2/1/08. Amber coloured with a slight white head. Caramel aroma with some grassy hops. Flavour began with some sweet malt before a bitter finish. Good.