Episode 64: Samuel Smith Nut Brown Ale – Over the Chunnel and through the woods

We finish up our brown ale series with Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown.

News

The news story this week comes from the Lehigh Valley, one of the many places Jim has lived courtesy of Sam Adams. The have recently opened the Sam Adams PA brewery, located right outside Allentown, PA. The brewery has had several different owners over the years including Strohs, Pabst, and most recently Diageo, who SA bought it from for $55 million.

Samuel Smith Nut Brown Ale

• Brewed at the Samuel Smith Old Brewery in Tadcaster, England, the beer is one of the best, if not the best, brown ale on the market.
• The Old Brewery at Tadcaster was founded in 1758 and is both the oldest brewery in Yorkshire and the only surviving independent brewery in Tadcaster.
• The beer has a minerally essence that can be detected due to the use of local water in brewing. Brewing water for ales and stouts is still drawn from the original 85 foot well.
• The beer itself weighs in at 5% ABV, so a pretty good evening drinker, and comes in a brown bottle with a gold foil cap.
• The pour is dark brown with a white head with some brown highlights around the edge.
• The smell is a lot of malt; think of caramel, and maybe some butterscotch there as well.
• When you taste this one it is mainly malt with only a little bit of hops. Think of a nice biscuity flavor, a little bit of a buttery flavor too boot.

Next Week

That is it for the brown ale series. And to be perfectly honest, I am not sure what we are going to talk about next week. It may be an amber series, it may be an IPA series, who knows. It will be something summery though, so tune in.

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Episode 63: Brooklyn Brown Ale – Back to the Big Apple

Another week another Brown Ale. This week we look at one that is widely considered the best domestic offerings, Brooklyn Brown Ale. Sorry that Jim cuts out in the intro, don’t worry we haven’t changed it on you.

News

Anheuser Busch (AB) has bought shares in Crown Beer International…in fact it bought all of the shares that International. Crown Beer International has been doing very well in India lately and the company is responsible for 60% of the beer in India. The question is, will this effect the Inbev/AB deal that could or could not go through in the future?

Brooklyn Brown Ale

• For those of you who don’t remember, Brooklyn Brewing Company is located in, you guessed it, Brooklyn, New York and was opened in 1987 by Tom Potter and Steve Hindy.
• A lot of what I have learned about beer has to be looked at through the lens of Brooklyn and their current brewmaster, Garret Oliver. His book, the Brewmasters Table, was one of the first beer books that I ever read and probably the most influential.
• This beer was also originally dry hopped, which we haven’t really talked about much on this show. Dry hopping is the process of throwing hops in the fermentor with beer and letting the flavor come out through fermentation.
• Weighing in at 5.5% ABV, Brooklyn Brown is described as having a blend of 6 malts.
• The beer pours a dark brown with a small head.
• The aroma is chocolaty and malty, with a lot of roast notes here. Not as strong as a porter or stout, but just shy of it.
• The flavor is what you would expect from the smell, malty and roasty, however there is also a hop presence here that makes itself known.

Next Week

Next week we wrap up the brown ale series with a trip over the pond to a British brewer and Samuel Smith Nut Brown Ale.

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Episode 62: Dogfish Head Indian Brown Ale – Another beer from the beach.

Beer number two in our brown ale series is Indian Brown Ale.

News

Well there is big news in the beer world this week. InBev, the worlds second largest brewer, made a bid of $65 a share for a total of $46.3 billion dollars to buy Anheuser Busch. This is a deal that we have talked about before on YNB, but up until last week, it was all speculation. If the deal would go through, it would be the 3rd biggest purchase of an American corporation by a foreign corporation. Initial reports suggest that either this may be blocked by politicians, InBev may have to raise their offer to $70 a share, or AB may try to buy another corporation to make itself less appealing to InBev. We will keep you up to date when things happen.

Indian Brown Ale

• Opening in 1995, Dogfish Head, whith a slogan is Off Centered Beer for Off Centered People, has been a rockstar in the brewing world since.
• Owner Sam Caligone is also involved in a hip hop group called The Pain Relievaz.
• Dogfish head is available in most states, however some in the Middle of the country may be tough to find. For most of our listeners though I think that you should be able to get a hold of these products.
• This weeks product, the Indian Brown Ale, weighs in at a heavy 7.20% ABV, which is a little bit heavier than most Brown ales, but that isn’t too shocking coming from Dogfish Head.
• The beer pours a dark reddish brown, with a decent size head that has ok head retintion.
• The aroma on this one is a sweet one, think of things like caramel. It almost smells a little too malty and sweet for a brown ale, but just appreciate that for what it is.
• The taste is almost like that of a porter or a stout, almost kind of chocolately. There is also some sharp hoppyness to this beer.
• This is a great beer for spicey foods and BBQ alike. For the spicey foods, it can almost wipe away the spiceness, and with BBQ it melds very nicely with the other flavors.

Next Week

Alright, next week we are going to move just a little bit up up the coast and head to Brooklyn and look at, Brooklyn Brown Ale.

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Episode 61: Newcastle Brown Ale – Not where Jake lives, the real Newcastle.

We start a new series this week with Newcastle Brown Ale. As with our other series we start with a widely available easy to drink beer. For the record this podcast was edited on a ferry traveling between Bainbridge Island and Seattle, WA.

News

The news this week is not good for a craft brewer in upstate New York. F.X. Matt Brewing, who contract brews Saranac, and Brooklyn beer among others, had a fire that caused 10 million dollars worth of damage. The fire was started by some careless welders who lit a plastic conveyor belt on fire. No one was injured during the fire that took 15 hours to get under control. Amazingly, brewing commenced just five days later, although the canning operations were destroyed and the bottle operations damaged.

Brown Ale

• The brown ale has been around for quite a while, in fact up until the late 1600’s, just about all beers were brown. In the late 1700’s however, newer malts became available and the pale ale became all the rage.
• As the pale ale became popular with the middle class in England, the Brown Ale became strong with the working class, who saw the more expensive pale ales as a “yuppie” beer if you will.
• Brown Ales tend to be maltier and sweeter than other beers, with the color ranging from reddish brown to dark brown.
• Some beers will have a slight fruity taste, while others tend to be drier with nutty characters.
• All have a low hop aroma and bitterness.
• Generally speaking, these weigh in at around 4-7% ABV

Newcastle Brown Ale

• First brewed in 1927 by Colonel Jim Porter in Newcastle, England, it is considered a northern England version of the beer, which tends to be a little lighter than the Southern style.
• This beer is actually a blend of two beers, a lighter amber ale and a stronger brown ale, something that is a sort of throwback technique in regards to brewing.
• Weighing in at 4.7% abv, this is just about the same as an average light beer in strength.
• This beer is not too complex in regards to its flavor. It is a very lightly sweet beer with solid carbonation and some subtle bitterness.
• Also this beer tends to be better on draft, since the bottle is clear.

Next Week

Next week we will continue in the Brown Ale series and will talk about, Dogfish Head and Indian Brown Ale.

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