Is "Southern English Brown" really a thing?

[mshergold]

That's right Seymour - Tadcaster, Yorkshire. The same town as John Smiths Magnet Brewery. I think I'm right in saying that you can (or at least could within the last few years) buy John Smiths cask in the local area.

[Mattpc]

Sam Smiths brewary is next door to John Smiths or certainly very very close. You can see both from the A64 as you go past Tadcaster towards York.

The Manx Brown Ale you talk about, I totally agree with the other poster. To me, it's a mild. It's not unpleasant but it's the sort of beer you see very cheap in discounts stores. I can't understand why it would be used as a benchmark to base a brown ale style upon.

Newcastle Brown. Not unpleasant flavour, certainly brown in colour. Almost always highly carbonated and served in the bottle from my experience of drinking in the UK and quite a bit in Newcastle and the towns around there. What I would say though is it used to give me stonkingly bad hangovers when I drank it on a night out as a 20 something. I remember waking up one morning and really struggling with my eye sight all morning. My friend was the same and we blamed the "newkey brown".

Northern Brown Ale and Southern brown ale.....

Main differences I'm thinking of straight away are a tightly packed, large head on the Northern pint and a loose head (if any at all) on the southern pint. Next, different yeast strains.. The whole concept of cask conditioned ale in the North and South of England is different. By this I mean the presentation of the ale. Northern ales are usually served with a sparkler on the end of the beer engine. This is rarely the case with Southern ales. I happily drink both presentation styles but I prefer the Northern sparkler presentation. To me the Southern style is too flat and watery. The Man and the Newcastle ales though rarely have even been served on cask in my experience as a drinker from late 90s until present. Both normally found served fizzy in the bottle or possibly on fizzy keg. More modern brewaries seem to be reviving the brown ale style as part of their lineup of traditional english beers. However, beyond my ideas about yeast and presentation I'm not sure I could give you my definitive examples of Northern and Southern Brown ales.

Probably teaching granny to suck eggs with my comments but I enjoyed writing them anyway. Cheers!

[Mattpc]

That's right Seymour - Tadcaster, Yorkshire. The same town as John Smiths Magnet Brewery. I think I'm right in saying that you can (or at least could within the last few years) buy John Smiths cask in the local area.

Hi mshergold. Yes you can. Certainly in North Yorkshire it's quite popular still on cask. It also goes as far West as Huddersfield in West Yorkshire in cask format (although more commonly on keg). John Smiths cask is actually quite an interesting tasting bitter. Pretty unusual in my book (within the traditional style of a Yorkshire Best Bitter). Johns Smiths Extra Smooth is the keg version. I think they do this on Nitro keg as you get a big creamy head and a caricature of best bitter flavour. I used to drink it regularly as I grew up in a small village in East Yorkshire where real ale was most uncommon 20 years ago. Fortunately that has at least somewhat changed now and there are some excellent pubs and brewers in the area.

[stevej383]

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

A little interesting fact where the name came from

Double Maxim was first brewed in 1901 (26 years before Newcastle Brown Ale) to celebrate the return of the Maxim Gun detachment from the Boer War. It was commanded by colonel Ernest Vaux and the North East style Brown Ale is one of the oldest surviving beers in the United Kingdom.

[f00b4r]

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

A little interesting fact where the name came from

Double Maxim was first brewed in 1901 (26 years before Newcastle Brown Ale) to celebrate the return of the Maxim Gun detachment from the Boer War. It was commanded by colonel Ernest Vaux and the North East style Brown Ale is one of the oldest surviving beers in the United Kingdom.

It's also a much nice beer than Newcastle Brown

[stevej383]

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

A little interesting fact where the name came from

Double Maxim was first brewed in 1901 (26 years before Newcastle Brown Ale) to celebrate the return of the Maxim Gun detachment from the Boer War. It was commanded by colonel Ernest Vaux and the North East style Brown Ale is one of the oldest surviving beers in the United Kingdom.

It's also a much nice beer than Newcastle Brown

I agree with you, never been a big fan of newcastle brown tbh

[Tony1951]

I've never liked Newcastle Brown. It's too full of chemicals and additives. They are changing the the recipe soon to take some of the chemicals out beca]use they may be carcinogenic.

This may be why my grandfather's generation of working class Geordie men were lucky to live past 70. It was either the Newcastle Brown or the Woodbines - not sure which. Huge numbers of those old guys died in their sixties.

Posted from Newcastle upon Tyne. My school was within the exhaust plume of Newcastle Breweries. I was educated to the smell of wort boiling in vast quantities back in the 1960s.

[scotsloon]

Another excellent source of information is the Durden Park Beer Circle. One of their members published a small booklet "Old British Beers and how to make them" I have a copy and there is no distinction in there about northern and southern brown ales.

[mshergold]

Yes you can. Certainly in North Yorkshire it's quite popular still on cask. It also goes as far West as Huddersfield in West Yorkshire in cask format (although more commonly on keg). John Smiths cask is actually quite an interesting tasting bitter. Pretty unusual in my book (within the traditional style of a Yorkshire Best Bitter).

I had a pint of John Smiths in hand-pull about six weeks ago in The Phoenix in Rainham, Essex. I couldn't belie it! Not the best pint I've had, but not bad. It too my back to my college days when it was 95p a pint in the bar.

[Mattpc]

WOW i've never had it in Essex!