Smuttynose Brewing Co: Old Brown Dog Ale

Back into the variety back we go...

And I have to say, this one is quite a find. Old Brown Dog is Smuttynose's take on a brown ale, and they do a damn good job of it. The predominant taste here is a sweet toasted maltiness that you taste immediately. It's followed by a quick, but balanced hop bitterness that slowly fades, leaving you with a pronounced (but not overpowering) sweet malty aftertaste. It's substantially lighter-bodied than most brown ales, though by no means watery. It's also got a very pleasant fizziness, making it one of the most drinkable brown ales I've had to date.

Old Brown Dog dispenses with any of the flavor accents you otherwise might find in a brown ale--e.g. coffee, chocolate, fruits, etc--in favor of focusing on the taste of malted grains. Nevertheless, it manages to pull off a very full and satsifying flavor, making it one of the mainstays of American browns. Furthermore, its hops and malts are very well balanced, which means that this brew probably will have wide appeal. This is a beer I would recommend to just about anybody.

Bell's Best Brown Ale

Since Rojas hasn't come through yet on his promise to pick up the blogging, and because I'm just so goddamn happy to have made it through another week (only two to go!) I decided I'd blog another beer. Since pretty soon I'll be back in Cali and the easternmost beers will be out of reach, I figured I would try one more beer from a tried-and-tested brewery that we don't have access to out west. So here comes Bell's Best Brown Ale.

Brown Ales are generally pretty mild as ales go, so it can be tricky to pull of a genuinely satisfying brew. Properly executed, they're subtle-yet-complex. Poorly done, they're bland and forgettable. Bell's version falls somewhere between these poles. It has a very pleasant toasted malt flavor that is accented by a very faint spiciness that comes through in the end. It's got a decent amount of carbonation, which actually ends up working out very well; a nice balance to the maltiness.

Overall, a solid take on a staple brew. Definitely rates high on the drinkability scale. Somewhere above a Nukie but probably below a Downtown on my scale.

Lost Coast: Downtown Brown Ale

I come back to California for a few weeks but the miserable weather seems to follow me home. So I find myself still in the mood for darker, roastier beer rather than a dry and hoppy one. But so long as I'm back on the West Coast I'll sample something from out here, and so I stumble upon Downtown Brown. Downtown is a nut brown ale, and not being all that familiar with the genre, I'll just give my first impressions.

The beer has a fairly light mouthfeel, but still manages to pull off a fairly complex taste. it's very nutty and carmelly, and has only barely a hint of hops. This is the kind of beer that you want to go for if you're in the mood for something darker, but for whatever reason a stout sounds like just a little bit more than you're ready for. It's also missing the much stronger bite and the thicker feel of an amber ale (i.e. Fat Tire), which makes for easy drinkability. So even if it doesn't ever register as one of my big favorites, I imagine I'll be picking it up again in the future just because it will fit just about any occasion.

Downtown Brown is brewed by Lost Coast Brewery in Eureka, CA. Lost Coast is also well known for their Great White Ale, though from the looks of it, Downtown has actually won more awards.

Brooklyn Brewery: Brown Ale

I usually go for really hoppy beers: Pales, IPAs, Czech Pilsners. But for whatever reason Brooklyn Brown is my new ale-of-the-moment.

Beers are usually described as either "hoppy" or "malty." If you want to know what malty tastes like, grab a Brooklyn. It has a smooth flavor that rolls over your tongue with caramel and nutty elements. It's also much more satisfying than Newcastle Brown Ale (the first other brown ale to come to mind), having a much fuller and bolder flavor. In fact, Brooklyn is so bold and dark for a brown ale that at first you might mistake the taste for that of a porter. But the taste is much smoother, and in my opinion, much more satisfying.

I owe Rojas credit for introducing this beer to me, and I suspect that as fall wears on in New England and temperatures begin to fall it will become more and more appealing for him (as well as I). It's definitely more of a wintery ale (it's Pyramid analogue would be Snowcap, though Snowcap is much stronger and much less smooth.)

The benefit of a beer as full bodied and full flavored as Brooklyn is that you can serve it right along just about any sort of food without worrying that you'll miss some of the flavors. Go ahead and serve it up alongside the boldest steak, burger, or burrito you can find.