Abbeydale Piracy

Cask conditioned - handpump - Malt Shovel, Northampton. A black beer with a whitish head and lacing. The aroma is fairly sweet with caramel notes. The taste has sweet notes, with caramel, licquorice and lactic qualities. A little coffee too. Pretty decent.

Cask@The Criterion, Leicester. Blackish beer with a reddish timge. The aroma is roasted and coffee, and the flavour is malty, roasted and slightly coffee. Overall a nice malty dark beer.

Cask conditioned at The Woolpack, Banbury. Dark brown, almost black with white head. Unbelievably difficult to categorise, this is darkly roasted with coffee husky notes, chocolate malts, but also there is a really pleasant hoppy bitterness, almost IPA like in hops with a light grassynotes, sweetish but dry. It is a most complex beer and very enjoyable. The finish is long and burnt. Great stuff.

Cask at The Woolpack, Banbury, Oxon 31-03-08 This is a very, very dark brown beer on first view I was not even sure what it was it looked very stout or poirter like, is it a bitter? Has a sticky off white head, there is good bitterness and the hops were still in the mouth as I was half way down the High Street. There is a good balance though with some nice sweet malts and a little sprinkling of rich indulgent cocoa, I liked this, but in the pub I was struggling to catergorise this maybe it is a bitter but its bloody dark, very dark in fact although taste wise I have to say its got more bitter characteristics. Nice to try a dark beer from Abbeydale and once again a very decent beer at that.