It's not Nutty Black, it's Very Nutty Black: this is Thwaite's super-charged mild with the ABV savagely ramped up to 3.9% ABV from the usual 3.3 -- handle with care.Once you're safely strapped in and have popped the cap with your asbestos bottle opener you'll find a beer that pours promisingly black with a nice tan head. The texture is velvety smooth and the flavour is... really quite boring, actually. I'm looking for the roasted coffee notes that one would expect from a mild but there's no sign of them. I've always liked Thwaites beers in the past and I know they're the sort of brewer that can pack all sorts of interesting stuff into a low-ABV package, but this isn't one of those. Yes it's slightly dry and if you concentrate really hard you might get a whisper of plums, but there's little else. There's certainly nothing that I would count as even remotely nutty. But it is black: I'll grant them that.
