Dark Star 'Sunburst'

Another of the three Dark Star brews I got for my birthday last month courtesy of my sister-in-law in Brighton, and an entirely different animal to the Espresso.

There was a slight haze to it, a golden, beer with a lovely frothy head. I got lemon on the nose, and on the palate it's a tease, it plays and flirts with resinous pithyness, while still remaining gentle, never leading you right into the grapefruit flavours. It's all tempered by a subtle sweetness in the finish, with a touch of spice, which makes it very moreish. OK, this was in a bottle but I can well imagine that on tap this would be close to my ideal pub pint if I was out for an evening rather than a cheeky swift one on the walk home. It's not the world's most challenging beer, but it's tasty enough to be interesting, and not all beer has to be of the contemplative (navel-gazing?) sort to be enjoyable.



4.8% Again, it was a present but as a guide, Beer-Ritz sell it for £2.50 (50cl)

Dark Star Espresso

I've been looking forward to trying some Dark Star brews for a while, and my sister-in-law coming up from Brighton to visit gave me the opportunity to get some brought up.

As I have ranted about on this blog recently, there is a lot of rather mediocre beer knocking about. a lot of it seemingly constrained by having to be a certain style in order to fit into certain market brackets. This is a 'speciality beer,' and while I hate the term when used by supermarkets to describe anything that's not cans of generic lager or bitter, in the case of flavoured beers it's more appropriate.

It's a black beer and I initially found more 'export stout' aromas than coffee, but once you dive in the bitter coffee takes over. It's a lovely rich (without being sweet), robust beer, but multi-dimensional too. It's not just the coffee flavours, there's bitter cherry in there too, and an excellent smoky finish. The depth of flavour without lots of alcohol is impressive, and it doesn't seem to rely on the coffee to achieve it, there's much more to it than that.

Not sure how much it is since it was a (scrounged) birthday present! 4.2% abv (50cl) Beer Ritz charge £2.42.