Thames Welsh ESB

Brewed by Felinfoel
Style: Premium Bitter/ESB
Llanelli, Dyfed, Wales

Dark copper color, with a rich fruity, plum, curants aroma. A wonderful aroma. Small diminishing head. Heavy, syrup like, full bodied, fruity, malty with a slight bittering at the end. Minor alcohol aftertaste. Very nice.

Bottled at 6%. Pours a dark maroon color. Aroma is dark and slightly woody. Some dark fruit along with some vinous qualities. Rich dark fruity flavor. A very rich ESB.

A nose full of caramel; a rather dark appearance. The taste is really too malty, with some rather untasty hops used. Really too chewy and icky for me.

Pours deep hazed mohogany w/ a shallow creamy froth. Aroma is rustic and malty. Medium nectar w/ mellow residual effers. Flavors of aged malted wood and tobacco. Some slight champagne flavors also. Nice bitterng on the finish.

Bottle from Bella Vino in Ann Arbor Michigan. Dark brown body, small beige head. Lightly nutty malt flavour with a mild bitter tang to it in the finish (7+). Very sweet malt aroma, very lightly nutty (7+). Average palate. Quite pleasant.

From the bottle.

Pours a deep hazy brown with red tints. The aroma is sweet and redolent of dried fruit, washed in grassy British (Goldings?) hops. The nose also brings forward a musty and cider-like sourness.

The flavor is dominated by chewy dark toffee malts, faintly sweet early, decidedly vinous and sour later; the bitter finish, accented with dark-toasted malt, is mild at best. The palate is smooth, amply carbonated, amply rich but neither heavy nor sticky --- well done for the style at 6.5%, even if the alcohol is noticable on the long end of the finish. As the beer warms, the dark malts and sour cider flavors become overwhelming, and the beer is less enjoyable. A bad sign.

This is a fine enough ESB, for certain. Still, the various well-crafted compoents do not merge into a greater whole and I’m left with something good to drink but not necessarily near the top the list for the style.

Pours a dark, murkey reddish-tan. Dark for tan I mean. Smells exactly like apple cider. Maybe some toffee, caramel...no just cider. Its a pleasant smell but has me worried. Tastes a bit cidery, but this time there is toffee, caramel, fruity esters, etc. Brown sugar, cinnamon, apple pie spices. A sharp, acidic bite. A little yeasty/bready. Its actually an interested beverage, lots of flavors mixing. I probably won’t get another, but a its worth a try...

Medium to deep amber, creamy slight head, rather attractive. Aroma softly of caramel with a bit of dried apricot. Flavors matched. A bit of alcohol surprisingly shows up, a touch fusel. Not often I detect something I would consider a true flaw, but this, albeit slight, was clearly not supposed to be there. A touch thinner on the finish than I would like, I wanted more caramel. Not awful, but I wasn’t pleased with the execution here. You can’t have flaws in a beer with this kind of subtletly.