Treacle Stout
Itchen Valley Brewery Ltd

Bottle-conditioned, coming in a 500ml brown bottle. BBE DEC 06, served cool in a straight imperial-pint glass. The beer label states that it's brewed with liquorice, so it gives a pretty good "hint" at how it might taste: treacle+licorice~~

A: nearly black, with faint ruby hues; the tan beer head comes moderately foamy and slo...wly settles to a thin cap.
S: deep and intense aroma of roasted barley and dark/crystal malts upfront: charred wood-chips, Italian-roast coffee-beans, faintly smoked prunes; the second layer of aroma is comprised of sweet plums and, guess what, a subtle hint of licorice and treacles! surprise, surprise~~The latter two play only the second, or indeed the third, fiddle, adding to the overall complexity rather than dominating the nose. Pretty nice.
T: upfront a slightly sharp, sour edge of deep roasted barley sort of outperforms the smoother, bitter-sweetness of dark malts, but gradually giving way to a chewy, coffee-flavoured toffeeish taste, plus a solid overtone of dark chocolates with a faint herbal touch of bitter-sweet licorice; mild bitterness (from both hops and malts) lingers in the end, finished rather clean on the mouthfeel. Treacle is hard to find on the overall palate, though, perhaps it's already "absorbed" into the bitterness.
M&D: light-med. bodied, very smooth on the texture, but at times it does feel a bit thin-ish at the back of the palate. Not bad for a light and easy-drinking English stout, but I'd expect much more from the capital letters on the label: TREACLE and LIQUORICE...