First tasted at a Brick Store tasting in March of 2009, and subsequently twice more.

This is a VERY odd beer that frankly I don’t much care for. I seemed to remember hearing that this was built on an “original” or old style recipe for a Porter and if it was I am glad that the style has subsequently evolved.

The pour yielded a beer that was essentially porter-like, but with the emphasis on brown rathern than black. Head was poor.

Nose was a little non-descript and offered nothing more than a touch of maly sweetness and some typical, roasty notes.

The mouthfeel and tastes are where things started going south for me. Firstly this is basically a very thin Porter. If you want to call it watery then go right ahead, I think that would be appropriate. In terms of the taste there ARE some of the usual Porter characteristics (roasted notes, caramel type malts etc.) BUT the overwhelming experience for me was NUTS! It tasted like someone had taken a whole bunch of crushed hazelnuts and liquidized them. Literally, nuts on top of nuts. I did not like this at all, and thought it was off-putting and basically nasty. It also seemed oddly carbonated for the style.

As I say, IF this is based upon some very old recipes, I am delighted that we have got where we are today with the Porter style as opposed to where were once were.

Value for money is TERRIBLE @ around $15 for the 750 mL bottle that tastes really poor. Avoid.