Brown Ale

Back in my youth, the drink of choice for my crowd was either Bateman's XB or XXXB. However, in the late 1980's, there were many a pub that limited, sometimes no, real ales and also many that had real ale, but it was kept appallingly. So the budding drinker needed a back up plan. For us, it was brown ale. Now, in 1987, Newcastle Brown ale was a very different beast to what it is today, and this was the bottled brown that most likely to be found in a pub that was otherwise a fine ale desert. Today's Newkie is a shadow of its former self, in the late 80's it was actually worth drinking. Sometimes, however, there were occasions where something else was on offer.

One such occasion was in Louth trad jazz club. A club that was open once, possibly twice, a week, and probabally had no opportunity to offer anything from a cask. In fact, I'm not entirely sure that they had anything on tap at all, although I may be wrong. They did, however, have brown ale. Another such occasion was a Northern Soul do in a working mans type club somewhere around Chapel St Leonard's (I have hazy recollections of this evening, other than the music being a revelation, I may even be mixing up several different similar evenings in different places, such were the heady days of my late teens). On one of those occasions I had a pint bottle or ten of a really fine brown ale that wasn't Newkie brown or the dreaded Manns; and it is to my great shame that I don't know which establishment, or remember what ale it was.

Fast forward to 2018 and my better half and I have a weekend in lovely York; a place I really like and one of the few cities in the UK that I actually enjoy visiting rather than just tolerate. One of the pubs we visited was the Sam Smiths pub, the Kings Arms. A bottle of Sam Smiths Nut Brown ale got me thinking nostalgic thoughts. What were those other brown ales I sometimes used to come across?

It was possible, maybe, that Bateman's might have still been brewing and bottling their Double Brown and Nut Brown ales, although I have my doubts ~ I think I would have missed them by a couple of years. Double Maxim possibly? Shipstones perhaps?

Why am I telling you all* this? Well, I have decided to try and recreate a brown that 1980's mod JJSH would have enjoyed. In order to do this, I'm going to search out every brown ale I can that is being commercially brewed, review them, and then start from there. If anyone has any ideas of UK brown ales for me to try, pop them in the comments.

So far, my list is;


Cat Asylum Brewery ~ Nutty Brown
Cat Asylum Brewery ~ HB - A Newark Brown Ale
Ashover Brewery ~ Thor Cake
Blue Monkey Brewery ~ MonkeyNuts
Sam Smiths ~ Nut Brown Ale
Shipstones ~ Nut Brown Ale
Maxim Brewery ~ Double Maxim
Heineken International ~ Newcastle Brown Ale
Marstons ~ Manns Brown Ale



* I use the term 'all' but am not actually sure anyone reads this blog at all, looking at my stats.