Is "Southern English Brown" really a thing?

[woblylegs]

In Newcastle, we always talked about the local hospital, the Royal Victoria Infirmary, having a special ward for people who'd drunk NBA for too long

yea its called the mortuary

was always told when growing up that it was St Nicholas mental hospital that had the ward for the people with the drink problems and was mostly frequented by NBA drinkers.

[Flaneur]

I think previous posters have pretty much got it. As I see it, brown ales in this part of the world are generally low in alcohol and sweet to taste. Up north they are generally stronger, paler and drier. But most generalisations are dangerous, including this one.
What hasn't been mentioned yet I think is that brown ales here in the south seem to be used as a mixer, generally with mild. Mild beer was often ropey old stuff and a splash of bottled brown gave it a bit of life.

[Cpt.Frederickson]

There is much 'Southern English Brown' to be found in Kent, particularly the Medway towns and Thanet...but it is of the injectable/smokable variety.

[critch]

How would Vaux Double Maxim be characterised? I know Vaux are gone but somebody else was making it - Robinson's?

nope, maxim brewery, though I do believe they have a family connection to vaux

http://www.maximbrewery.co.uk/brands/double-maxim.aspx

[JKaranka]

Like most things I'd expect that brown ale was just a bottled mild. Once more and more bottled milds died out, the few remaining ones defined the BJCP styles the same way as Guinness defined "dry" stout. Breweries have always had wide variations, the same way as regions, and that includes hopping, strength and colour. It makes little sense to carve up brown ales into North and South. You get all kinds of weird stuff anyway, like the very pale bitters of Manchester, the fact that dark mild was strong in South Wales (and not just up North), that some still brew pale milds and not just dark ones, etc, etc. To try to even think about beer in clearly defined styles is sort of nonsensical as there are so about as many exceptions as beers adhering to any plan. It's not like all these breweries got together and tried to brew the same thing!

[YeastWhisperer]

The beer as described in BJCP guidelines sounds delicious, and the beers I've tasted which are brewed to these BJCP guidelines are delicious. I was just skeptical about how prevalent it actually is in Southern England, what exactly the guidelines are based upon, and if actual Englishmen even think about it the way BJCP does...

I am a BJCP judge, and I can tell you from first-hand experience that a lot entries that are brewed to style are not very good. There's more to making great beer than matching the BJCP style guidelines. The BJCP style guidelines are just a tool to assist brewers and judges in competitions.

By the way, a lot of input from outside of the United States went into the revised style guide. It's much bigger than the 2008 BJCP Style Guide.

http://www.bjcp.org/docs/2014%20BJCP%20 ... AFT%29.pdf

[minesapint]

For me in the seventies and eighties, a bottle of brown was only used to try and improve a feeble pint of bitter.
If the bitter was not up to scratch you drank half of your pint and then bought a bottle of Manns Brown or Greenalls Nut Brown to try to improve on the taste or fizz in your pint.
If you knew that the beer was dull from previous visits , you asked for a "brown bitter" and if the barmaid knew what you were talking about you received a half of bitter in a pint glass and a bottle of brown to fill it up yourself.
Different regions used names liked Mixed or Split and these tended to mean different things in different regions.
Some of the rougher pubs and night clubs insisted on the bar staff pouring the bottle as they didn't want any bottles going over the counter to be available as weapons by the customers .
It needed pouring very slowly into the bitter otherwise it all frothed up and if it did, the embarrassed , inexperienced barmaid would usually dump a pint glass full of suds and a half empty bottle of brown in front of you and leave you to sort it out yourself.
I may be wearing rose tinted spectacles these days but I don't think that the Manns brown is as good as the old stuff from my youth.

Doesn't answer the North and South divide but it is a happy bit of nostalgia.

Cheers all.

EDIT 19/4/2015.
I do not wish to deviate from the subject of brown ale but for the sake of completeness I would just like to mention another drink.
Last night I was reading "Sketches by Boz " written by Charles Dickens , and came across a drink called "half-and-half" , the notes say this is "A drink of equal quantities of mild ale and bitter beer, or ale and porter.
Just thought I would add that to brown bitter , mixed and split.
I promise not to go off on a tangent any more.
Back to subject of brown ale.
Cheers.

[mshergold]

Newcastle Brown has always been sold in clear bottles which cause most beers to become sunstruck and taste skunky. That obviously doesn't happen to Newcastle Brown. Perhaps all the chemicals and additives stop that happening or maybe they just mask the bad taste. I know it's pasturised, that must help.

As far as a I know, lightstrike/skunking only happens to unfiltered, unpasturised beer. As for chemicals (or at least bad ones) in beer, I think it's a bit of a myth: blog.timesunion.com/beer/debunking-8-beers-that-you-should-stop-drinking-immediately/2425/

[f00b4r]

Newcastle Brown has always been sold in clear bottles which cause most beers to become sunstruck and taste skunky. That obviously doesn't happen to Newcastle Brown. Perhaps all the chemicals and additives stop that happening or maybe they just mask the bad taste. I know it's pasturised, that must help.

As far as a I know, lightstrike/skunking only happens to unfiltered, unpasturised beer. As for chemicals (or at least bad ones) in beer, I think it's a bit of a myth: blog.timesunion.com/beer/debunking-8-beers-that-you-should-stop-drinking-immediately/2425/

A lot of commercial breweries use isomerised hop extract which is not susceptible to skunking.

[Dr. Dextrin]

My early drinking days in the south of England usually involved "mild n bitter" which was a 50/50 mix of draught beers (favoured by us students as it was a little cheaper than a pint of bitter). If there was no mild on tap, though, then a bottle of brown ale was a reasonable substitute to get much the same flavour. As I recall it, the bottled version was generally known as brown ale and the draught version as mild ale. I don't recall the flavour being much different, although the bottled beer may have been a bit darker in colour. They were both quite soft and slightly sweet beers, suited to a quiet reflective mood beside a log fire with an occasional game of darts. Manns and Greene King Harvest Brown are the only two that come readily to mind after all the years.

A bit later, I ventured north and was exposed to NCB and Maxim. I found them both to be lighter-coloured and far more aggressively-flavoured/carbonated beers, with a distinct nuttiness, better suited to student parties. Neither would have fitted my description of "brown ale", coming from the south, and neither impressed me greatly at the time, although I've learned to enjoy the occasional bottle since.

So in my view the north/south divide in brown ale is real and the axis is mainly defined by (say) Manns at one end and NCB at the other, as others have mentioned. If you don't have a bottle of Manns available, then think bottled mild (maybe a touch darker) and you won't be too far out.

[Good Ed]

There was a "Southern Brown" that bucked the style police guidelines, this was Whitbread's Double Brown with a gravity in the 50's and was more heavily hopped than their PA, I brewed it to a recipe from Ron P, and very nice too it was.

[mshergold]

A bit later, I ventured north and was exposed to NCB and Maxim. I found them both to be lighter-coloured and far more aggressively-flavoured/carbonated beers, with a distinct nuttiness, better suited to student parties. Neither would have fitted my description of "brown ale", coming from the south, and neither impressed me greatly at the time, although I've learned to enjoy the occasional bottle since.

Ahh. Nut Brown Ale anyone? I think one the first kits I brewed was a Burton Bridge Nut Brown Ale.

[woblylegs]

i have a bottle of Sam smiths nut brown regularly in a little local club. nice drink it is too.

[mshergold]

I thought I could recollect having had a bottle of Samuel Smiths within the last few years.

[seymour]

Sure, but Sam Smith's is Northern England, right?