Felstar Good Knight
Felstar Brewery & Felstead Vineyard

Purchased at the OnlyFineBeer, Chelmsford. Coming in a 500ml brown bottle, this beer is bottle conditioned and the label claims to be a porter rather than a mild. BB Feb. 07, served cool in a straight imperial-pint glass.

A: nearly black hue with ruby glows when seen against light; the creamy, tan head builds up slowly to a 1 cm cap than gradually settles down, on top of quite restrained carbonation for a bottle-conditioned ale. Looking settled and nice for a dark ale.
S: a beautiful and juicy fruity aroma comprises ripe longan-fruits and a bit of lychees, laced skilfully with a lovely tinge of flowery hops (a bit like American hop varieties?) and an underlying stream of honey-ish chocolatey maltiness, underlined by an even deeper layer of chewy, roughly-crushed juicy dark malts... Each layer of aroma is placed on top of another, showing a clear structure throughout. Tempting~~
T: a smoked/lightly-roasted bitter maltiness as well as a Chinese herbal+grass bitter-tea-ish flavour approach upfront, along with lots of chewy but not-overly-bitter coffee-beans and a faint tinge of tabacco; gradually the dark fruit flavour develops (mainly longan-fruits) with a balancing sour touch, before the slightly dryish roasty and bitter-sweet maltiness rounds off the evolving palate with a light texture in the end. Very low in bitterness overall, and that dryish roasty touch reminds me of a Mild really.
M&D: a cross b/w a Dark Mild and a Porter IMO, this beer comes with lots of rich dark malt flavours of a robust fruity Porter, and a distinctively soul-lifting texture and dryish roasty edge of a Mild, making this a nicely-balanced enjoyable beer across given borders. A superbly refreshing mouthfeel results from great efforts on bottle-conditioning of a utterly tasty beer! Highly recommended!

Beautiful mild. Irresistable texture. Lovely subtle rich chocolate flavour, with a touch of banana, raisin and wood. Silky smooth palate, with a long, ever so slightly roasty finish. Everything appeared to be in its right place, the mouthfeel was lovely and everything was in balance. Definitely the surprise and perhaps even the winner of the day, definitely 'mild' in flavour however (Cask- ChelmsfordBF 03')