John Smiths Winner's Tipple
John Smith's Brewery (Heineken UK)

Brown 500ml bottle, drank 10 days before its best before date of 30 Nov 2008. Poured into a Corsendonk tulip shaped glass.

Deep mahogany, but clear when held to the light with a good sized light tan head which laced the glass as the liquid went down.

A light aroma of malts, molasses and toffee came to me, getting sweeter as the beer warmed in the glass.

The taste followed the smells, add liquorice on toast and you are not far away from what I thought the beer tasted of.

Tangy, sharp, bitter and a bit too fizzy. To be a true winner it needs to be richer, creamier and an inject of more alcohol. Not wonderful, but I did enjoy the beer apart from the over carbonisation.

Purchased at the Sainsbury's supermarket, this limited-edition, filtered and pasteurised beer is said to brewed in celebration of the "2008 John Smith's Grand National and People's Race" (horse-racing). Coming in a 500ml long-neck brown bottle, served cool in a straight imperial pint glass.

A: reddish copper, topped with a beige frothy head with decent retention; lively carbonation suggests abundant CO2 injected into this ale during bottling.
S: a lightly dusty note skirts the very very sweet main theme, suggesting caramel, raisins, toffee, sweet black tea, and a little sweet nuttiness; smells right for a Premium Bitter, but the sweet elements (exactly like brown-sugary-water) seem to disturb the balance.
T: quite juicy upfront, but slightly too fizzy on the palate, suggesting lots of caramalts, jammy black fruits, and a touch of licorice... preceding a moderate aftertaste of bitter-sweet nuttiness, raisins, and dryish+chewy palate of roast malts and bittering hops.
M&D: effervescent, even "floating", is the mouthfeel throughout the drink, making the supposed nice flavour very thin and in lack of a gravity and weight. This could be slightly better should there ever be a cask-conditioned version to test the water. In this bottle, alas, it has achieved only 40% of what it purports to be - a "Full-Flavoured, Full-Bodied, No Nonsense Premium Ale" (as written on the back label)...