Beer Murray's Anniversary Ale 5

Usual practice at Crafty Manor when it comes to the Anniversary Ales from Murray's is to buy a couple and hold onto them for a later date to allow them to age, only to get scared of ever opening them as once they're gone, they're gone. Thankfully, a special occasion recently saw bottles of 3, 4 and 5 opened one after the other. Crafty felt the love particularly for 3, general consensus elsewhere favoured 4, while 5 - with the addition of darker chocolate malts and roasted barley to the old recipe - was noticeably sharper up front, but soon settled into a familiarly warm, rich and soothing multi-layered experience. "Of what sort?" we hear you cry. Well, the Anniversary Ales are oak-aged wheat and barleywines, with this one also boasting a bigger hop profile - a new blend of Green Bullet, Pacifica, Motueka and NZ Cascade - that comes through on the nose and in the bitterness. It's designed to stick around for up to ten years, so quite why Crafty's cracked one already......