Brewery: Dark Star [Rudgate Ruby Mild (which went down extremely well in the Museum Tavern) and a Fuller’s London Porter (a fantastic night-cap at the Doric Arch). Hoping for a successful hat-trick, I decided to nip into the Bree Louise on the way back to catching my train from Euston and see what they had to offer.

The obvious choice, that positively leapt out from among their typically broad selection, was Dark Star Six Hop; a strong pale ale weighing in at 6.5% ABV, it sounded like just my sort of thing. I briefly thought about sticking to a safe half, but decided what the hell – it wasn’t like I was going to be driving myself back to Manchester, was it?

Dark Star Six Hop poured a dark golden colour with a decent white head (even sans-sparkler) and gave off a light, slightly floral aroma. The first sip resulted in a big, strong and quite delicious hop-burst of flavour. Hardly surprising, the current Dark Star Tasting Notes sheet reveals that it’s brewed with five varieties of hops and then dry-hopped with a sixth (apologies to hop-heads: no further detail on the pdf there and the Dark Star website isn’t exactly geared for regular updating).

Despite the massive hop-profile, Six Hop wasn’t as drily acerbic as the big US IPAs tend to be. Instead its strength was tempered with a lot more subtlety: there was a distinct sour-sweet citrus note – bitter-orange or grapefruit – and a syrupy sweetness, carried along on a slightly sticky mouth-feel, that became more pronounced as the pint went on.

All in all: a great mix of deep, rich, lingering, sustained flavours. Tongue-tinglingly good; the sort of beer you could happily drink all night, as long as someone else was happy to carry you home at the end of the session…