Beer of the Week: NW Peaks Magic Brown

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I have come to realize that one of my guilty pleasures in beer drinking is brown ales. For years, one of my favorite beers was Sam Smith’s Nut Brown Ale, and then, for some reason, I took a very long break from drinking them. In the last couple of years, there has been resurgence in browns, and with that, they have become my dirty little secret – a beer that I wouldn’t generally order, but when I am in the mood, there is nothing quite like a brown. NW Peaks does a couple of browns – the Pecan one they do in November and the Magic, which makes an appearance in March.

From the NW Peaks Website:

The name. The mountain. Magic is situated right off of Cacade pass (near Sahale), but it is just S and E from the pass rising above Trapper Lake. I climbed Magic Mtn on the front end of a week long trip, on the famous Ptarmigan Traverse – one of the most traveled alpine climbing traverses. The day trip to Cascade Pass is certainly one of the “must go to” areas of the N Cascades, with several options for continuing the trip, including over to Magic and it’s environs.

The beer. Magic Brown fits the schizophrenic March Seattle weather perfectly. It is dark and malty for the cold/wet, but it’s body is light enough that it will be great on a warmer day as well. Unlike the typical “brown,” we built this brown up to have some more residual malt character by adding some extra munich, caramunich, and other specialty malts, but keeping the overall alcohol content and roast character down.

Malt: ESB, Special B, Crystal, muncih, caramunich, carafa 2, flaked. Hops: Apollo, golding. British ale yeast.

The beer pours deep brown with hints of amber. There are strong notes of malt on the nose with mild hints of chocolate, coffee and hops. The beer starts off on the palate with a pleasant grain note and a touch of sweetness before moving off into very light notes of milk chocolate with just a hint of coffee hiding in the background. Those flavors are joins by a malty sweetness that embraces the roast and the finish displays just a touch of hop character, playing hide and seek on a long fade. Not as deep as some browns, but easy to drink and well layered.

NW Peaks Magic Brown takes the stage and pulls 3 rabbits out of a hat out of 5.

Beer of the Week: Reuben’s American Brown Randall with Cocoa Nibs and Raspberries

By Iron Chef Leftovers

I really have become a fan of the brown style of beer over the last year or so. Actually, that is not accurate, I have rediscovered my love of browns over the last year or so. They were a staple for me back in the late 90’s/early 2000’s before I discovered my love of hops. That, coupled with a decline in breweries making browns, I sort of forgot about them until the last year when the Ballard breweries started making them regularly. Reuben’s produces a great one and they took a shot at putting it on randall with cocoa nibs and raspberry. Couple those flavors with a nicely roasty, malty beer and we have potential for greatness.

The beer pours deep brown in color with a just a tinge of ruby color. Significant notes of malt and berries appear on the nose, with just hints of chocolate in the background. The beer is surprisingly chocolate forward with nice cocoa nib flavors coupled with hints of sweet chocolate from the malt, coupled with a light raspberry flavor, bringing a mild tartness to the picture. The beer then moves into the malt with touches of hop bitterness before finishing off slightly sweet and chocolaty with a pleasant dark chocolate bitterness and a very long chocolate finish. The chocolate and raspberry start to show more prominently as the beer warms, making this beer nice and deep with great balance and complexity, reminding me of a chocolate truffle.

Reuben’s American Brown Randall with Cocoa Nibs and Raspberries fills you days 4 worlds of pure imagination out of 5.

Beer of the Week: Smuttynose Old Brown Dog

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Way back in my college days, we were in the early years of the craft beer revolution. I was living in Boston and that generally meant that craft beer was either Sam Adams, Harpoon, Rogue or Red Hook, all beers that were generally from sizeable enough breweries they had at least regional distribution. I remember going into the package store in the mid ’90’s (what is a package store? That is for another post) and seeing a beer from some new brewery in New Hampshire (a whopping 40 miles from Boston) with a harbor seal as its logo. I remember looking in the case and seeing they had 2 beers – Shoals Pale Ale and Old Brown Dog. Since I was on a limited budget, I went with the 6 pack of Old Brown Dog (hey, what can I say, I am a sucker for a good dog picture), thus beginning my long love affair with the beers of Smuttynose Brewing. They have since expanded their brewery and are regionally distributing to most states east of the Mississippi (sadly, not out on the West Coast). When I was back in NJ over the winter, it afforded me an opportunity to pick up a 6 pack of this old friend and bring it back to Seattle with me.

From the Smuttynose website:

Old Brown Dog has been cited as a classic example of the “American Brown Ale” style of beer. Compared to a typical English Brown Ale, Old Brown Dog is fuller-bodied and more strongly hopped.

Old Brown Dog has been around for many years. It was first brewed in 1988 at the Northampton Brewery. In 1989 it won a silver medal in its category (American Brown Ale) at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver.

Color: deep reddish brown

Malt Bill
North American 2-Row, Munich 10L, C-120, Chocolate

Hops
Bittering: Cascade and Galena
Flavoring: Willamette

Starting Extract 15° Plato
Terminal Extract 3.26° Plato

ABV 6.7%

IBU 18

Recommended Food Pairings
Griiled meats, especially sausages, ribs and steak

Silver Medal 1989 Great American Beer Festival

The beer pours medium amber in color with a cream colored head. It shows significant notes of grain and yeast with hints of toffee and caramel supporting. The beer starts out with a light sweetness coupled with hints of toffee followed by pleasant grain middle with just a hint of roast flavor and malt before finishing dry with an ever so slight pleasant bitterness that lingers happily in a semi-long finish. As the beer warms, the deeper roasted and toffee flavors become more prevalent, particularly on the finish where it lingers pleasantly with the light bitterness. Deep and complex, I had no idea this beer was as high on the alcohol content as it is, since it is well balanced without any hints of the alcohol. If you ever get a chance, give Smuttynose Old Brown Dog a shot.

Smuttynose Old Brown Dog comes in from the yard and gnaws on 3 bones out of 5.

On a side note, a few years back, Smuttynose did a one-off, imperial version of this beer called Older Brown Dog. I wanted to try it and I was able to find a single bottle of it on a trip back to Boston. I shipped it back to Seattle, but it, alas, did not survive the trip, and I never got a chance to try the beer.

Beer of the Week: Populuxe Cask Beer Snob Brown

By Iron Chef Leftovers

If you are free on Thursday nights, you should head down to Populuxe Brewing for their cask night. Yes, you will see a number of pale ales and IPA’s on tap with a variety of different dry hops (and they are fantastic), but the guys at Populuxe aren’t afraid to give the cask treatment to their other style of beers. A few months back, the Beer Snob Brown was the candidate – not too many NW breweries do a brown and even fewer do it on cask (this one was done with Crystal hops), so this was definitely a must try beer.

The beer pours a nice solid brown in color with really nice chocolate on the nose and just a hint of citrus from the hops (think a chocolate bar with orange peel). The beer starts out with a pretty heavy dose of coffee and chocolate before yielding into the addition of hops – slightly floral and citrusy/orange. The beer then fades quickly in a burst of chocolate, coffee and malt before disappearing completely off the palate. Giving the Beer Snob Brown the cask treatment highlights the deeper roast flavors in the beer, almost turning it into a liquid chocolate confection without the sweetness. My only complaint about this beer is that the hop character starts to disappear the deeper you get into your pint and is overpowered by the darker flavors in the beer – it does not cause the beer to become unbalanced at all, but it does lose that layer of the flavor.

If Beer Snob Brown makes another appearance in the cask rotation, you should drop what you are doing and head down to Populuxe.

Populuxe Beer Snob Brown on cask thumbs its nose at you with a solid 3 silly English Kn-iggits out of 5.

Beer of the Week: Populuxe Beersnob Brown

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Populuxe has made a name for itself by brewing beers that you normally would not find at other breweries and doing them well. Beersnob brown is no exception. Browns are an old English style described as such on Wikipedia:

Brown ale is a style of beer with a dark amber or brown color. The term was first used by London brewers in the late 17th century to describe their products, such as mild ale,[1] 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.[2]

Today there are brown ales made in several regions, most notably England, Belgium and America. 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, and malty but hoppy beers such as Sierra Nevada Brown Ale.

The beer clocks in at 5.1 abv.

Beersnob pours mahogany brown in color with pleasant notes of chocolate and roasted malt and very mild coffee notes. The beer starts off with significant malt with building complexity – yeast appears first before moving into the heavier flavors . Initially, roasted malt appears then dark chocolate and toffee before finally finishing off with black coffee without any real bitterness. Layered and complex, the beer has incredible balance and depth without being overly sweet or bitter at any point. Call me a beer snob, but this is as good a brown as I have had anywhere.

Populuxe Beer Snob Brown walks around with its nose in the air gathering a well-deserved 5 cicerones out of 5.

Beer of the Week: Stone Collaboration TBA

By Iron Chef Leftovers

Another Stone collaboration beer, this time with Bear Republic and Fat Head’s Brewing to produce a beer style known as a Texas Brown Ale. What is a Texas Brown Ale you might ask? Well I have never heard of the style, so I will let Stone’s press release talk about it:

This particular beer pays homage to a relatively little–known beer style called Texas Brown Ale, which, strangely enough, has its roots in California. It originated as a hopped up version of a brown ale recipe, and it got pretty popular with a group of NorCal homebrewers in the early 1980s.

“These California guys were tweaking an English-style brown,” explains Matt Cole, Head Brewer of Fat Head’s Brewery. “They added some Crystal and Chocolate malts, and supercharged it with a bunch of Cascade hops to get a bigger version with more hop forward aromas and flavors.”

While delicious, these beers failed to fare well in homebrew competitions, since there was no recognized category they could be entered in. They were far too hoppy and bitter to be considered a traditional brown ale. But when a competition in Houston, TX, accepted entries for what they named the “California Dark” category, the American Homebrewers Association followed suit soon after, though they perplexingly changed the name to Texas Brown Ale.

The beer was sampled out of a 12 oz. bottle and this review is for the 2012 version of the beer – Stone is getting together with the same breweries to brew this beer again in 2013. The skinny on the beer:

Stats: 7.1% abv, 81 IBUs
Malts: Pale 2–Row, Crystal 60, Toasted Wheat, Victory, and Chocolate Malt
Hops: Bravo, Brewer’s Gold, Cascade, and Columbus

This beer is reddish amber in color with a tan head, not the brown you might expect from brown ale. The nose is a pleasant conglomeration of hops, malt, sugar and molasses. A smattering of light hops appear on the first sip, but fade quickly into a pleasant nut brown profile. The sugar and molasses are there but don’t dominate and subtly compliment the nut brown characteristics of the beer without overpowering it. The finish is like drinking a liquid pecan pie with hints of hops; which makes for a fun and very interesting beer. Considering the hop levels on this beer, I thought the use of them was restrained and very balanced, so much so that occasionally I found myself wanting a slightly bolder hop flavor profile.

I really like TBA and wish there were more breweries doing a style like this.

Stone Collaboration TBA saunters in with an excellent 4 Lone Stars out of 5.