Hepworth Classic Old Ale

500ml bottle from Trafalgar Wines, Brighton. You see this is really good and shows that bottles really can vary from batch to batch. A bit cola-ish in the mouth perhaps, but the choccy coffee charcoal is lovely. Only slightly sour on the aroma, but mostly of a coffee liquer to be honest. Good smoothness in mouth. And then this very good coffee liquer finish. A bit like coffee cake icing. Pretty good my friends. Really drinkable and one of Hepworth’s better beers i thought. Good drinkability and certainly something that I would drink again. Rather amazing coffee to be honest. Not big in your face stuff, but certainly very good. A Big Gay Al, super.

A Mes rate: bottle from Budgens.
Dirty mid brown with a thin beige collar. Creamy malt with hints of tobacco and straw and a faint manure type notes. Slightly buttery and sweet but the diacetyl is not as bad as some. All in all, below average.

Bottle: Looks a little fizzier than I like something this dark but we shall see. Lovely dark charcoal aromas with hints of roasted coffee it somehow smells a little stuffy, very round and big. Sweet chocolate dissipates quickly to a dry bitterness in the back of the throat containing smoke and coffee. It leaves the mouth strangely tingly. It is indeed slightly over carbonated. Pretty good though from a brewery I often find a little samey.

Bottle at chris o’s teabag for 2009 tasting. Alround rating: Sweet, old cellar, small liqourice character, hay hop. Alright.

Lovely sweet roasted chocolate and black coffee aroma with plenty of smoke and musty hop back up. Deep ruby with a filthy tan collar. Charred, chocolatey and coffeeish with bitterness. Big hop and scorched malt IBUs, no hint of sourness. Nice.