Stone Faced
Lymestone Brewery

Judging by the appearance, this is just another brown bitter. It's brown. Call it bronzed amber if you want to get fancy. Not much head to speak of. Aroma, too, is pretty middling – toffee, fallen leaves, oatmeal with brown sugar. Pleasantly ho hum. Flavor – again, unambitious and plain. Not bad, but I could basically copy and paste a style description for English bitters here and it would be accurate. Balanced but boring, tasty but devoid of character, complexity and depth. Just another brown bitter, and not one I need to revisit, at least not from a bottle.

500ml Brown bottle, best before Jan 2012: poured into my Abbot Ale glass tankard in April 2012, some three months out of date.

Good looking beer: amber and clear, with a full, rocky head of white bubbles.

The nose is malty molasses with slight piney notes from the hops.

The taste is a crisp blend of semi-sweet maltiness and hop bitterness. Malts rule the initial flavours with the hops arriving later in the mouthfeel as the mouth begins to dry.

Easy to drink and although out of date I really enjoyed it.