Brown ale is a style of beer with a dark amber or brown colour. The term was first used by London brewers in the late 17th century to describe a lightly hopped ale brewed from 100% brown malt. Brown ale is a type of

Ale Ale is a style of beer, brewed using a warm fermentation method. In medieval England, the term referred to a drink brewed without hops. As with most beers, ale typically has a bittering agent to balance the malt and act as a preservative. Ale ...

History

In the 18th century, British brown ales were brewed to a variety of strengths, with original gravities (OG) ranging from around 1.060 to 1.090. Around 1800, brewers stopped producing these types of beers as they moved away from using brown malt as a base. Pale malt, being cheaper because of its higher yield, was used as a base for most beers, including

porter Porter may refer to: Companies * Porter Airlines, Canadian airline based in Toronto * Porter Chemical Company, a defunct U.S. toy manufacturer of chemistry sets * Porter Motor Company, defunct U.S. car manufacturer * H.K. Porter, Inc., a locom ...

and

stout Stout is a type of dark beer that is generally warm fermented, such as dry stout, oatmeal stout, milk stout and imperial stout. Stout is a type of ale. The first known use of the word "stout" for beer is in a document dated 1677 in the E ...

. The term "brown ale" was revived at the end of the 19th century when London brewer Mann introduced a beer with that name. However, the style only became widely brewed in the 1920s. The brown ales of this period were considerably stronger than most modern English versions. In 1926, Manns Brown Ale had an original gravity of 1.043 and an ABV of around 4%. Whitbread Double Brown was even stronger, an OG of 1.054 and more than 5% ABV.Whitbread brewing records held at the London Metropolitan Archives. The introduction of these beers coincided with a big increase in demand for bottled beer in the UK. In the 1930s some breweries, such as Whitbread, introduced a second weaker and cheaper brown ale that was sometimes just a sweetened version of dark Mild. These beers had an original gravity of around 1.037. After World War II, most breweries stopped producing these stronger brown ales, with the exception of some breweries in the northeast of England. The majority had an OG in the range 1.030–1.035, or around 3% ABV, much like Manns Brown Ale today.

North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere, Northern and Western Hemisphere, Western hemispheres. North America is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South Ameri ...

n brown ales trace their heritage to American

home brewing Homebrewing is the brewing of beer or other alcoholic beverages on a small scale for personal, non-commercial purposes. Supplies, such as kits and fermentation tanks, can be purchased locally at specialty stores or online. Beer was brewed dom ...

adaptations of certain northern

English English usually refers to: * English language * English people English may also refer to: Culture, language and peoples * ''English'', an adjective for something of, from, or related to England * ''English'', an Amish ter ...

beers, and the English influence on American Colonial Ales.

Description

English brown ales range from beers such as Manns Original Brown Ale,Manns Brown Ale – a bottle with real character
which is quite sweet and low in alcohol, to northeastern brown ale such as

Newcastle Brown Ale Newcastle Brown Ale is a brown ale, originally brewed in Newcastle upon Tyne, England. It was launched in 1927 by Colonel Jim Porter after three years of development. The 1960 merger of Newcastle Breweries with Scottish Brewers afforded the bee ...

, Double Maxim and Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale. North American examples include

Sam Adams Samuel Adams (, 1722 – October 2, 1803) was an American statesman, political philosopher, and a Founding Father of the United States. He was a politician in colonial Massachusetts, a leader of the movement that became the American Revolu ...

Brown Ale and

Brooklyn Brooklyn is a Boroughs of New York City, borough of New York City located at the westernmost end of Long Island in the New York (state), State of New York. Formerly an independent city, the borough is coextensive with Kings County, one of twelv ...

Brown Ale. They range from deep

amber Amber is fossilized tree resin. Examples of it have been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since the Neolithic times, and worked as a gemstone since antiquity."Amber" (2004). In Maxine N. Lurie and Marc Mappen (eds.) ''Encyclopedia ...

to brown in colour.

Caramel Caramel ( or ) is a range of food ingredients made by heating sugars to high temperatures. It is used as a flavoring in puddings and desserts, as a filling in bonbons or candy bars, as a topping for ice cream and custard, and as a colorant ...

and

chocolate Chocolate is a food made from roasted and ground cocoa beans that can be a liquid, solid, or paste, either by itself or to flavoring, flavor other foods. Cocoa beans are the processed seeds of the cacao tree (''Theobroma cacao''); unprocesse ...

flavours are evident. Brown ales from northeastern England tend to be strong and malty, often nutty, while those from southern England are usually darker, sweeter and lower in alcohol. North American brown ales are usually drier than their English counterparts, with a slight

citrus ''Citrus'' is a genus of flowering trees and shrubs in the family Rutaceae. Plants in the genus produce citrus fruits, including important crops such as oranges, mandarins, lemons, grapefruits, pomelos, and limes. ''Citrus'' is nativ ...

accent and an aroma, bitterness, and medium body due to American hop varieties. Fruitiness from

ester In chemistry, an ester is a compound derived from an acid (either organic or inorganic) in which the hydrogen atom (H) of at least one acidic hydroxyl group () of that acid is replaced by an organyl group (R). These compounds contain a distin ...

s are subdued. When chilled to cold temperatures, some haziness may be noticed.

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Brown Ale Beer styles

History

Description

See also

References