Brown ale is a style of beer with a dark amber or brown colour. The term was first used by London brewers in the late 17th century to describe their products, such as mild ale, though the term had a rather different meaning than it does today. 18th-century brown ales were lightly hopped and brewed from 100% brown malt.

Today there are brown ales made in several regions, most notably England

English beer

English beer has a long history and traditions that are distinct from most other beer brewing countries.Beer was the first alcoholic drink to be produced in England, and has been brewed continuously since prehistoric times...

, Belgium

Belgian beer

Beer in Belgium varies from pale lager to lambic beer and Flemish red. There are approximately 178 breweries in the country, ranging from international giants to microbreweries..-History:...

 and North America

American beer

Beer in the United States is manufactured by more than 1,700 breweries, which range in size from industry giants to brew pubs and microbreweries. The United States produced 196 million barrels of beer in 2009, and consumes roughly of beer per capita annually...

. Beers termed brown ale include sweet, low alcohol beers such as Manns Original Brown Ale, medium strength amber beers of moderate bitterness such as Newcastle Brown Ale

Newcastle Brown Ale

Newcastle Brown Ale is a beer produced by Heineken International. It was introduced in 1927 by Newcastle Breweries. In 2005, brewing was moved out of Newcastle upon Tyne for the first time, to Dunston on the other side of the River Tyne, and in 2010 moved entirely to Tadcaster, North Yorkshire...

, and malty but hoppy beers such as Sierra Nevada

Sierra Nevada Brewing Company

The Sierra Nevada Brewing Company was established in 1980 by homebrewers Ken Grossman and Paul Camusi.Located in Chico, California, Sierra Nevada Brewing is one of the top craft breweries currently operating in the United States. Sierra Nevada's Pale Ale is the second best-selling craft beer in the...

 Brown Ale.

History

In the 18th century, British brown ales were brewed to a variety of strengths, with gravities ranging from around 1.060º to 1.090º. These beers died out around 1800 as brewers moved away from using brown malt as a base. Pale malt, being cheaper because of its higher yield, was used as a base for all beers, including Porter and Stout.

The term "brown ale" was revived at the end of the 19th century when London brewer Mann introduced a beer with that name. However, the style only became widely brewed in the 1920s. The brown ales of this period were considerably stronger than most modern English versions. In 1926, Manns Brown Ale had a gravity of 1.043º and an ABV of around 4%. Whitbread Double Brown was even stronger, 1.054º and more than 5% ABV. The introduction of these beers coincided with a big increase in demand for bottled beer in the UK.

In the 1930s some breweries, such as Whitbread, introduced a second weaker and cheaper brown ale that was sometimes just a sweetened version of dark Mild. These beers had a gravity of around 1.037º.

After World War II, stronger brown ales, with the exception of a handful of examples from the northeast of England, mostly died out. The majority were in the range 1.030-1.035º, or around 3% ABV, much like Manns Brown Ale today.

North America

North America

North America is a continent wholly within the Northern Hemisphere and almost wholly within the Western Hemisphere. It is also considered a northern subcontinent of the Americas...

n brown ales trace their heritage to American home brewing adaptations of certain northern English

England

England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...

 beers, and the English influence on American Colonial Ales.

Description

English brown ales range from beers such as Manns Original Brown Ale, which is quite sweet and low in alcohol, to northeastern brown ale such as Newcastle Brown Ale

Newcastle Brown Ale

Newcastle Brown Ale is a beer produced by Heineken International. It was introduced in 1927 by Newcastle Breweries. In 2005, brewing was moved out of Newcastle upon Tyne for the first time, to Dunston on the other side of the River Tyne, and in 2010 moved entirely to Tadcaster, North Yorkshire...

, Double Maxim

Double Maxim Beer Company

The Double Maxim Beer Company was set up to rescue the famous Double Maxim beer, which had ceased production when the Vaux brewery was closed in the same year....

 and Samuel Smith's Nut Brown Ale

Samuel Smith Brewery

Samuel Smith's Old Brewery, popularly known as Samuel Smith's or Sam Smith's, is an independent brewery in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire, England. It is Yorkshire's oldest brewery, founded in 1758.-History:...

. North American examples include Sam Adams

Samuel Adams (beer)

Samuel Adams is an American brand of beer brewed by the Boston Beer Company and its associated contract brewers. The company was founded in 1984 by Jim Koch, Harry M. Rubin, and Lorenzo Lamadrid in Boston, Massachusetts, USA...

 Brown Ale and Brooklyn

Brooklyn Brewery

Brooklyn Brewery was started in 1987 by former Associated Press correspondent Steve Hindy and former Chemical Bank lending officer Tom Potter. Hindy learned to brew beer during a six year stay in various Middle Eastern nations such as Saudi Arabia and Syria, where possession and consumption of...

 Brown Ale.

They range from deep amber

Amber

Amber is fossilized tree resin , which has been appreciated for its color and natural beauty since Neolithic times. Amber is used as an ingredient in perfumes, as a healing agent in folk medicine, and as jewelry. There are five classes of amber, defined on the basis of their chemical constituents...

 to brown in colour. Caramel and chocolate

Chocolate

Chocolate is a raw or processed food produced from the seed of the tropical Theobroma cacao tree. Cacao has been cultivated for at least three millennia in Mexico, Central and South America. Its earliest documented use is around 1100 BC...

 flavours are evident. Brown ales from northeastern England tend to be strong and malty, often nutty, while those from southern England are usually darker, sweeter and lower in alcohol. North American brown ales are usually drier than their English counterparts, with a slight citrus

Citrus

Citrus is a common term and genus of flowering plants in the rue family, Rutaceae. Citrus is believed to have originated in the part of Southeast Asia bordered by Northeastern India, Myanmar and the Yunnan province of China...

 accent and an aroma, bitterness, and medium body due to American hop varieties. Fruitiness from ester

Ester

Esters are chemical compounds derived by reacting an oxoacid with a hydroxyl compound such as an alcohol or phenol. Esters are usually derived from an inorganic acid or organic acid in which at least one -OH group is replaced by an -O-alkyl group, and most commonly from carboxylic acids and...

s are subdued. When chilled to cold temperatures, some haziness may be noticed.