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Best beer and travel writing award 2015, 2011 -- British Guild of Beer Writers Awards
Accredited Beer Sommelier
Writer of "Probably the best book about beer in London" - Londonist
"A necessity if you're a beer geek travelling to London town" - Beer Advocate
"A joy to read" - Roger Protz
"Very authoritative" - Tim Webb.
"One of the top beer writers in the UK" - Mark Dredge.
"A beer guru" - Popbitch.
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Top Tastings 2009
ABV: 9.4%
Origin: Fort Bragg, California, USA
Website: www.northcoastbrewing.com
 North Coast Brother Thelonious Belgian style abbey ale There are multiple puns in the name and marketing of Brother Thelonious, a Belgian-inspired strong abbey ale that is indeed connected to a monk. The monk in question is, however, not one of the mash tun stirring Trappist variety but eccentric and influential jazz colossus Thelonious Sphere Monk (1917-82), composer of the timeless standard ‘Round Midnight’. I’m not sure whether Monk was really a beer drinker — the fact that he named one of his best known tunes ‘Straight No Chaser’ rather suggests a preference for harder stuff. But it’s still a cool idea, and has inspired a cool label design with a Monk-like figure in monk-like robes looking enigmatically hip while wreathed in a piano key halo. It’s also perhaps symbolic of the way Americans have taken European models of brewing, shaken them up with all sorts of cross cultural influences and produced something native and unique, a little like the way African Americans invented jazz. A donation to the Monk Institute of Jazz is made from sales.
North Coast brewery, which is indeed on the north coast of California in Mendocino county, is another outgrown brewpub which under brewer Mark Ruedrich has earned renown for superb strong ales loosely based on European models — I also couldn’t fault Old No 38 Stout, Rasputin Imperial Stout and Old Stock Ale. Brother Thelonious pays some homage to those dark ales at the upper end of the Trappist scale, like Rochefort 12 and Westvleteren Abt, the sort that US beer style gurus, following the Dutch Trappists at Koningshoeven though not their Belgian brothers, term Quadruple, though with a slightly sour touch that has more in common with secular Flemish browns, and a vividness that is wholly Californian.
The dark ruby bottle conditioned beer has a loose bubbly pinkish head and a complex and elusive aroma with cherry brandy tones at first, becoming more broadly fruity with a touch of milk shake syrup and sourness. There’s also a cherry tartness to the dark chocolate malt palate, which develops an edgy roast note and a slug of hops. A long and weighty finish has lightly tart cherry fruit with a tapestry of hoppy flavours, lead pencil notes and a roasty bite. This is a distinctive and excellent beer that, like Monk’s music, makes you question received categories.
This was one of several bottles I enjoyed at the excellent Monk’s Kettle gastropub in San Francisco’s Misión.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/north-coast-brother-thelonious/58540/
Top Tastings 2009, Beer sellers: Landbierparadies
ABV: 5.2%
Origin: Forchheim, Franken/Bayern, Germany
 Neder Schwarze Anna Franconia is still the secret garden of beer appreciation. There are about 300 breweries in the three districts that make up modern day Franconia, a culturally and historically distinct region of what’s now the German “Land” of Bavaria. Most of them are in Upper Franconia, which boasts a staggering concentration of one brewery to every 1,000 inhabitants. The beers span a range of styles, many of them locally specific, unusual and still brewed by traditional methods, and standards of quality are overall impressively high. But despite these riches, many of the beers are unknown and untasted outside their brewery’s immediate locality, let alone the wider world. Breweries are mainly small and rural, only supplying their own pub and maybe a couple of neighbouring outlets. Some beers only appear on selected summer days at outdoor beer gardens tucked away in the countryside.
A few outlets in the bigger cities specialise in making some of these obscure delights available to a wider population. Last year I went to Nürnberg to investigate one of them, Landbierparadies (Country Beer Heaven), for Beers of the World magazine. Sadly the magazine folded; the resulting piece was eventually posted here. The enterprise is run by expert enthusiast Joachim Glawe, who actively seeks out smaller breweries in the more rustic reaches of the region, persuading them to bottle their beer or put it into small casks, which are then sold through a shop near the station and in a mini chain of pubs around the city.
Black beer Schwarze Anna was among the most impressive of a range of excellent beers I sampled on the trip, recommended to me by Joachim’s daughter Sabine, who turns out to have been brought up on Tyneside. It’s from Neder, founded in 1554 and now the oldest of four breweries in the important and historic town of Forchheim. Neder makes some astoundingly good beers, some of which are now popping up at UK beer festivals. Its Erstes Forchheimer Braunbier (first Forchheim brown beer) also earned a near-maximum score from me.
The town is known for its Annafest, a folk festival on and around St Anne’s Day, 26 July. It’s now a massive visitor attraction but has its roots in an annual pilgrimage to a nearby chapel dedicated to the saint. All four breweries brew a Festbier for the occasion. Schwarze Anna is not one of these — it’s a Franconian Dunkel in the clothing of a northeast German Schwarzbier — but its name invokes the local saintly connection. By tradition Anne (Channah) was the mother of the virgin Mary, grandmother of Jesus, and the label with its silhouette reminded me of the numerous historical depictions of members of the holy family as black skinned.
It’s a very dark amber-tinged brown with a fine light beige-grey head. The sweetish malty aroma has notes of cola and an unusual and beguiling perfumed and slightly fruity whiff. The roasty, malty and slightly smoky palate is wonderfully grainy under the tongue, with rich chocolate emerging. The beer finishes lightly dry with more of those perfumed notes, a gentle whiff of smoke and subtle hops. All in all a delight, especially when supped in a leafy beer garden on a sunny July day while grazing on Obatzda, the local cheese-based delicacy pepped with paprika and raw onions and served with black bread.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/neder-schwarze-anna/26205/
Top tastings 2009
ABV: 8.1%
Origin: Bodegraven, Zuid Holland, Netherlands
Website: www.brouwerijdemolen.nl
 De Molen Bloed, Zweet en Tranen Menno Olivier’s De Molen (“the mill”) brewery is in a 17th century windmill called De Ardkuif beside the Oude Rijn river bang in the middle of the Groene Hart, the rural “green heart” within the urban cordon of the Netherlands’ major cities. From this unlikely location streams forth a succession of vibrant, category-challenging beers that place Menno more in the line of the North American “extreme” brewer in a country with a microbrewing scene that, though burgeoning, is still sometimes hidebound to cloning Belgian and British models and rather too often tripped up on quality. Unsurprisingly this approach has won admiration on the international beer geek scene — De Molen is easily the highest scoring Dutch brewery on online rating sites.
The standard Bloed, Zweet en Tranen (Blood Sweat and Tears) is a beer inspired by Bamberg smoked lagers, but upped in alcohol and with the addition of English peated malt to the Franconian smoked stuff. This variant is the result of an incident in which Scottish peated malt intended for Bruichladdich whisky got into the mash tun by mistake. Some of the resulting beer was matured in a sizeable Bordeaux cask which ended up alongside its brewer at 2009’s Great British Beer Festival. Some drinkers wrongly assumed it was a whisky cask — I would have done too, without Menno there to explain it to me.
The beer is very dark brown, with a bubbly beige head and a casky, winy aroma with a very definite smoked peaty hit and a note of witch hazel. The dry, malty, winy palate has caramel but also notes of soy sauce, balsamic vinegar, chocolate, cider and firm hops, with the peat also yielding flavours which in whisky are often tagged as iodine and seaweed. After this succession of taste sensations on the palate, the finish is more straigtforward, sappy and sweet-sour with more peaty notes and malty richness balanced by drying woody tones.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/de-molen-bloed-zweet–tranen-40bruichladdich-oak-aged-version41/108198/
Top Tastings 2009
The beer also featured in BEER May 2011 as part of a piece on the influence of different malts on beer flavour. See additional text below, and to read about other beers featured see Vale Black Swan.
ABV: 4.8%
Origin: Market Deeping, Lincolnshire
Website: www.hopshacklebrewery.co.uk
 Hopshackle Nigel Wright’s Hopshackle brewery, specialising since its founding in 2006 in beers inspired by historic recipes, was undoubtedly my top British beer discovery in 2009. For this I’m grateful to fellow beer writer Jeff Evans — this year also saw publication of the latest edition of his Good Bottled Beer Guide, and as with the previous edition I suggested we do a tie-in with my column in BEER, asking Jeff to recommend brewers or beers new to the guide that I could feature. Hopshackle came back high on his list, and with good reason. Every one of the review bottles Nigel sent me contained something exceptional, displaying not only quality but the sort of ambition and flair that’s sadly not as common as it should be among British microbrewers.
To balance the mix of beer styles in my piece, I ended up featuring the brewery’s Double Momentum India Pale Ale in BEER, but my personal favourite was actually this wonderful porter, brewed with a dollop of treacle.
It’s a very dark ruby brown, with a bubbly beige head and a big chocolatey aroma with blackcurrant and cherry fruit and notes of led pencil and burnt rubber. The creamy palate starts with tart fruit then develops rich chocolatey tones with a sting of roast and hops. The lingering finish has dark malt, fine plain chocolate, a controlled roasty note and fleeting hints of geraniums. The whole thing hangs together beautifully as a seriously rich and complex delight.
The brewery name, incidentally, is from a word Nigel once heard on vintage TV game show Call My Bluff — to hopshackle something is to hobble it, restricting its gait, so for example you might hopshackle a horse. Thankfully Nigel’s brewing skills seem far from hobbled, so let’s hope he gallops ahead over the next few years and gets recognised as one of the country’s top craft brewers.
Added May 2011: Roasted flavours come into their own in stouts and porters, usually achieved with roasted malts or even roasted unmalted barley. Award winning Hopshackle Historic Porter (4.8 per cent) from Lincolnshire avoids the latter in favour of highly kilned chocolate and black malts and a touch of black treacle. This dark ruby beer is seriously rich and complex, with cherry and blackcurrant fruit, smooth chocolate and a prominent but controlled roasty note – a modern classic of the style.
To download BEER if you’re a CAMRA member, see http://www.camra.org.uk/page.aspx?o=beer.
To find out more about CAMRA membership, see http://www.camra.org.uk/page.aspx?o=joinus.
For more on malts in beer see Breconshire Winter Beacon.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/hopshackle-historic-porter/85496/
Top Tastings 2009
A shorter version of this piece originally appeared in BEER May 2009 as one of several milds for May.
ABV: 4.4%
Origin: Cleobury Mortimer, Worcestershire, England
Website: www.hobsons-brewery.co.uk
 Hobsons Postman's Knock May is the month to celebrate beers which in the words of the promotional materials for CAMRA’s endangered beer styles campaign are “smooth and suave, tall, dark and mysterious and effortlessly tasteful”. Yes, it’s mild month again, as this captivating British beer style continues to shed what’s usually referred to as its “cloth cap” image and establishes itself as a must-have for the portfolios of innovative craft brewers. Research for this review even unearthed examples from Switzerland – Two Reverends from real ale specialist Spiffing Ales at Uetikon near Zürich – and Canada – website ratebeer.com lists Mill Race, from Grand River Brewing, Cambridge, Ontario, as the world’s fifth best mild.
For British Real Milds in a Bottle, let’s start in the style’s heartland of the West Midlands. Hobsons, founded in 1993 at Cleobury Mortimer, South Shropshire, caused a stir in 2007 when its cask interpretation became only the second mild to be declared Supreme Champion Beer of Britain. Its stronger bottle conditioned mild, Postman’s Knock, is equally outstanding. The name commemorates writer, broadcaster, postman and Cleobury character Simon Evans (1895-1940).
Brewed with Maris Otter pale, dark crystal, pale chocolate and wheat malts, dashes of caramel, salt and vanilla, and Worcestershire Fuggles and Goldings hops, this is a deep amber brown beer with a smooth fine yellowish head and a very chocolately character. The fresh aroma has milk chocolate, vanilla and roast malt with a leathery note, leading to a malty but dry and very chocolatey palate. Hints of soot, petrol, vanilla and lead like minerals mix with orangy fruitiness.
The petrol note persists in a roasty and very smoky finish with a burr of slightly peppery hops round the edges and a late developing final touch of chocolate. An intriguing and very drinkable beer that confirms the Worcestershire brewery’s place among the leading mild producers.
For the next mild reviewed in this piece see Vale Black Swan.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/hobsons-postmans-knock/67594/
Top Tastings 2009, Beer sellers: The Beermongers
ABV: 10%
Origin: Portland, Oregon, USA
Website: www.hairofthedog.com
 Hair of the Dog Adam
Hair of the Dog, founded in 1993 by Alan Sprints, is now known as one of the most adventurous and consistently high-hitting breweries in the craft brewing heartland of the Pacific Northwest. They clearly started as they meant to go on — this massive and world-beating bottle conditioned ale was the first Hair of the Dog beer. It was originally inspired by brewing historian Fred Eckhardt’s writings on an extinct beer style from Dortmund known as Adambier, but has since been rededicated by the brewers to a late fellow brewer and friend, Adam Kerchival.
Brewed from a grist of organic pilsner barley malt, coloured malts and unmalted barley specially roasted to the brewer’s specification, with a substantial amount of Pacific Northwest hops, the beer comes out near black with a massive light beige head. There’s a sharpish herbal aroma with a note of angelica over leathery dark malt, while the huge palate yields prunes, chocolate, Stilton rind and a complex mix of herbs and spices, with obvious alcoholic weight and a firm hoppy note. The beer softens in a very long finish, with luscious caramel and raisins a prelude to developing drying hops that play out on a complex bitterness.
As well as being rich and beautifully made, it’s a truly distinctive beer and if you haven’t tried it you probably haven’t tasted anything quite like it either. That was certainly my thought when I encountered my first bottle in the salubrious surroundings of speciality gastropub The Monk’s Kettle in San Francisco.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/hair-of-the-dog-adam/568/
Top Tastings 2009, Beer Sellers: Landbierparadies, Nürnberg
ABV: 5%
Origin: Huppendorf, Franken/Bayern, Germany
Website: www.huppendorfer-bier.de
 Grasser Hupperdorfer Bier Vollbier, “full beer”, is a tax category that accounts for the vast majority of German beers and rarely appears on labels, except in Franconia where it’s become specialised to full-bodied standard strength lagers that come out a deeper shade of blond. This delicious unpasteurised, unfiltered example is from a village brewery and brewpub in Huppendorf near Königsfeld which dates back to 1688, and has been in the Grasser family since 1742.
It’s a deep golden beer with a fine off-white head and a lightly hoppy and malty aroma with creamy yeast tones and a slight hint of farmyard. The generously malty palate is smooth, straightforward and slightly peachy, with a slight dry edge. The beer dries further in the finish which is full of flavour, with a biscuit malt keynote, a slightly warming sweet tang and a light sprinkling of hops. It was part of my haul from beer shop Landbierparadies in Nürnberg, a fresh, honest, impeccably made and wonderfully drinkable quencher.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/grasser-huppendorfer-vollbier/29781/
Top Tastings 2009
ABV: 9 per cent
Origin: Erpe-Mere, Oost Vlaanderen
Website: www.glazentoren.be
 Glazen Toren Saison d'Erpe-Mere You’d expect something special from the “glass tower”, a relatively young micro tucked away in the hilly country of the so-called “Flemish Ardennes” — it was co-founded by beer writer and leading Belgian beer expert Jef Van den Steen, editor of De Zytholoog, magazine of beer consumer organisation Zythos. Its beers are beautifully presented in tissue-wrapped 750ml bottles and the contents don’t disappoint, particularly in the case of this saison which, though brewed in Flanders, challenges many of the Wallonian examples as a paragon of the style.
This “eindejaar” (New Year) edition is more special still, with the strength racked up from 6.9% to 9% ABV. It’s a hazy pale straw with a thick white head and a meaty, hoppy aroma scented with caraway seed, dried orange peel and a trace of wild yeast. The spiciness is notable as no spices are actually added — the ingredients include only barley and wheat malts, hops and liquid sugar.
The palate is firm, complex and lightly astringent, with exotic fruit, orange and muscat grapes giving a winy note, followed by a big burst of spicy hops. The lovely moreish finish has vanilla, apricot nectar and a bitterish peppermint-like note.
Read more about this beer at ratebeer.com: http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/glazen-toren-saison-derpe-mere-speciaal-ende-jaar/116677/
Note this post has been superceded. It has been left here for archival reasons. Read a more complete and up-to-date post about this beer.
Top Tastings 2009
CAMRA North London tasting 2010
ABV: 8%
Origin: Chiswick, London, England
Website: www.fullers.co.uk
Note: tasting notes on further vintages can be found after the main article.
 Fuller's Vintage Ale 1999 My favourite beer event of 2009 took place in the historic Hock Cellar at Fuller’s brewery, London’s last surviving classic family brewery and an icon of English ale. In early December, members of the Fuller’s Fine Ale Club gathered with brewery managers and staff and a smattering of beer writers to celebrate that club’s 10th anniversary with a special tutored tasting. Our host was head brewer John Keeling, a man whose world class skills with malt, hops and yeast, encyclopaedic knowledge and good taste are almost matched by his ability to deliver an informative and entertaining presentation brimming with obvious enthusiasm for his products. John is clearly a man who could have successfully followed a whole range of careers — people who care about beer should be glad he chose brewing.
John has a fascination for the process of maturation and ageing, and took that as his theme for the evening, beginning with the relatively short but vital maturation Fuller’s famous cask beers undergo at the brewery and in the pub cellar. We then moved on to explore the portfolio of strong bottle conditioned beers the brewery has built over the last couple of decades, including Prize Old Ale, inherited from the takeover of George Gale, and the recently launched Brewer’s Reserve matured in malt whisky casks. The grand finale was a succession of three examples of Vintage Ale, the bottle conditioned barley wine Fuller’s has been issuing annually since 1997.
Essentially Vintage Ale is a version of Golden Pride, the brewery’s regular filtered barley wine, though each year there’s a slightly different recipe, so this wasn’t a strict parallel tasting of the “same” beer at different ages. But it was still a superb demonstration of the potential of bottle ageing, and a reaffirmation that in Vintage Ale John has come up with one of the world’s best beers.
The new 2009 version was an amber beer with a big foamy yellow-orange head, a slightly phenolic smooth malty aroma with a biscuity note, and a zesty fruit sherbet palate with savoury malt flavours and that spicy orange note that’s part of the house character. A warming smoothly malty finish began with orange flavoured foam from the high condition and settled into mouth coating fruit, hops and nuts. A fine beer packed with vivid flavours, but perhaps still too fresh and bright.
The 2005 version came next and demonstrated what a difference four years can make to a beer of this type, as evidenced by the vocalisations that filled the room once glasses had been lifted to noses and lips. This one was also amber, brewed with floor malted Optic pale barley malt and a single hop, Fuggles, and though still lively it poured with a much less bubbly and energetic head. The aroma was still full of fruit but had taken on a mature woody pencil lead note and had more complex spicing. Also gaining in complexity was the palate, with fruity berry and orange flavours, sherry and that note of “madeirised” oxidation often found in aged beers (and mature red Bordeaux-type wines) that always tastes minty to me. A lovely sappy mouth-coating finish followed, with cream, oranges, nuts and a light roast touch.
Finally the decade-old 1999 version emerged, exhibiting some of the characteristics John mentioned when covering the effects of ageing, such as a thinning body, mellowing hops and darkening colours. Again this had been a pure pale malt beer (Champion Optic) but was now a nut brown, with only the smidgen of a head and a very complex port-like aroma rich in malt and fruit cake notes. The Chamption Fuggles hops that had gone into the beer was notably less pronounced. The palate had lots to say, with orange, cherries, mellow red wine, mint and meaty flavours and a sweeter effect than its predecessors. That spiced orange was back in the finish, though mellowed, with gritty slightly roasty notes and mildly bitter wash, and all sorts of intriguing retronasal hints.
The oldest beer was extraordinary, and got the majority vote when John called for a show of hands. Only one or two hands were raised in support of the 2009 as the best of the three. Myself, on balance I enjoyed the 2005 the most, but I’ll remain grateful I had the chance to try all of them.
Further vintages:
A case of mature Vintage Ale 2004 generously provided by the brewery turned out to be the majority favourite beer at the bottled beer tasting I hosted for North London CAMRA in February 2010. That particular beer, made to a very simple recipe of Maris Otter pale malt and Goldings hops, was more widely available than some vintages have been, and I’ve tasted it at different stages of maturation.
Drunk young in January 2005, the beer was a lively copper-amber with a yellowish head and a rich, hoppy and complex aroma with seeds, burnt wood, nail varnish and yeast. A creamily malty and fruity palate had nutty hops, almond toffee flavours, orange marmalade and a touch of meatiness. A sharply fruity swallow was followed by a hoppy citrus pith finish that turned winy and warming.
That summer a rare cask version turned up at the Catford Beer Festival – I found this a rich, if slightly cloudy, brownish amber, with a bubbly persistent white head and a complex strawberry and banana toffee aroma with a touch of liquorice. There was more strawberry on a salty, oily palate with marmalade and varnish notes and emerging hops. A sweet swallow led to a firm and warming finish with complex tongue-drying hops.
In December 2006 I noted that bottle 37209 poured a rich reddish-amber, with a smooth, nutmeggy head and a very rich and complex petrol, fruit and new leather aroma. A gum-tingling fruiy malt palate was chewy with intense orange flavours, cake, mint and jammy fruit. A cleansing swallow introduced a long and warming tangerine peel finish that ended very dry with late tongue puckering hops.
Tasting bottle 04560 from the beer tasting batch in March 2010, I noted how dark a shade of ruby the beer had become, with a thick and fine slightly orange tinged head. The aroma was intoxicating, with orange, apricot and raisin fruit, mature port and cream. A full but quite dry and woody madeirised fruit palate yielded complex spices and notes of chewy hops, turning quite woody and slightly tannic. Raisin fruit and bitter herbs emerged on a warming, tingling finish with nuttiness in the back of the mouth, some olive flavours and a slightly pursing woody note. I’d hazard the 2004 overall is a little less complex and a bit sterner than some other years, especially as its fruity intensity seems to be mellowing with age, but still, what a treat.
Read more about these beers at ratebeer.com:
http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/fullers-vintage-ale-1999/1038/
http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/fullers-vintage-ale-2004/39460/
http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/fullers-vintage-ale-2005/51040/
http://www.ratebeer.com/beer/fullers-vintage-ale-2009/108168/
Top Tastings 2009
ABV: 8%
Origin: Esen, West Vlaanderen
Website: www.dedollebrouwers.be
 De Dolle Brouwers Cosmos Porter This experimental brew divides opinion. I’ve spoken to several people who have hated it, and even its brewer, Kris Herteleer, seemed in two minds about it when serving it to the public at the 2009 Zythos beer festival in Sint-Niklaas, but it was voted Beer of the Festival at that event by visitors and has stirred up some interest subsequently.
De Dolle Brouwers — the “Mad Brewers” — need no introduction to world beer devotees as they’re well known for producing several remarkable beers from their base at Esen near Diksmuide in the “Westhoek”, the far west corner of Flanders. Regulars like Oerbier and Arabier are eccentric in anyone’s terms but still unmistakably Belgian, though Kris has a long held interest in British traditional styles, perhaps prompted by the fact that he began his brewing career with a Boots homebrew kit. In particular he’s interested in stout and porter, and quite how sour from mixed fermentations these styles would have been in their heyday, a question posed in liquid terms by the whiff of brettanomyces in Dolle’s own Imperial Stout.
Dolle’s beers are so contemporary it’s easy to forget the Herteleers established themselves by taking over a pre-existing, though near-defunct, brewery, previously known as Costenoble after its owning family. Under its previous ownership it brewed a dark “patersbier” — “father’s beer” or abbey beer — known as Cosmos that clearly had a relationship to British porter styles. Kris’s version is an unhopped dark beer using the sourness of lactic fermentation to offset the malt, lent body by being blended with the brewery’s wood-aged Oerbier Riserva. The widow of the brewery’s previous owner apparently thought the new version appropriately similar to its earlier namesake.
I found it a dark brown beer with a low fawn-coloured head and an intoxicating aroma with pencilly malt, minerals and chocolate over sour overripe Autumn fruit. The palate was initially very sweet and malty, rapidly souring with lambic-like notes to give a sweet and sour sauce effect with hints of cherry wood. The finish was moreish and tangy, turning nutty at the back of the throat with a brown sugar sweetness coming through. Unexpected sour flavours might be a barrier to some, but to me Cosmos was not only interesting but enjoyable in its own right.
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