Portrait (John Constable)
Nethergate Brewery Co. Ltd.

Tasted by half-pint at the Black Bull, a freehouse nr. Whitechapel, East End London, on 13/09/2006. The beer seems to commemorate the famous English painter around late 18th to early 19th century, John Constable, who used to hang out in Essex and Suffolk and painted quite a few landscapes there.

A: chesnut red hue, with a fluffy and thin off-white beer head; low carbonation, great clarity.
S: medium-bodied, mildly sour-sweet apple-ish and pear-ish fruitiness, plus dried-grassy and earthy note of hops. Smooth and simplistic.
T: lightly roasty bitter-sweetness with a malty tinge of toffee, roast nuts and black tea-leafy hops on a par with the mild entry of peary fruits; the second part of the palate sees an increasingly tangy and dryish bitterness lingering at the back, with a slightly citric-zesty kick to go with the bitter finish, where lots of hops hover in the end.
M&D: softly carbonated, fresh, with fruity malts balanced with a superb length of earthy and roasted hops with a 3D-textured bitterness... A brilliant autumny bitter, aptly named after a lengendary English painter, as this is a true landscape in a glass.