Newcastle Brown Ale
Most of us will have Rated / Reviewed this beer as there are few British Beers with such a well-known profile as this one. Newcastle Brewery / Tyne Brewery had been around quietly in one form or another since 1749. However; it wasn’t until 1927 that Lieutenant Colonel James (‘Jim’) Herbert Porter, a 1st World War veteran, along with chemist Archie Jones developed the beer. Initially they were attempting to recreate Bass Ale, so they believed they had failed. The 5 pointed Blue Star came a year afterwards, again inspired by the Bass branding of a red triangle, it signified the 5 breweries that had combined to make up Newcastle Brewery.
Newcastle Brown Ale quickly became popular amongst working class, heavy industry workers in the North East, as although it was relatively expensive for the time, it had an ABV of 6.25%, very strong for post war Britain where beers were generally from 3% to 4.2% under strict government guidance to enable the workforce to keep turning up.
In 1960 Newcastle Brewery merged with Scottish Brewers of Edinburgh, this enabled the beer to be distributed nationally, following the movement of Geordies leaving the area and resettling throughout the country with the decline of the shipyards on the Tyne. The beer also became popular in student union bars, again due to its high strength. I personally came across the beer while working in a working man’s club bar in the 1970’s, the exiled Geordies would only drink bottles of Newky Broon and tried to introduce everyone else to it. It was the biggest selling bottled beer that we had and we used to get dozens of crates a week.
Scottish & Newcastle announced the closure of the Newcastle Tynebank Brewery in 2004, so production moved to the Federation Brewery in Gateshead. Then in 2007 production was moved away from Tyne & Wear to the John Smith’s Brewery in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire. Carlsberg combined with Heineken bought S&N a year later.
In 2017 production became split between Tadcaster and the Heineken plant at Zoeterwoude, Netherlands. Then in 2019 U.S production commenced at Lagunitas Brewery.
Over the years the main selling point of the 6.25% ABV, that made it popular initially, became reduced to a rather dull 4.7% in the UK, they have also removed the caramel flavouring that they employed. It may be that the beer of the Geordies is not their ‘National’ drink anymore.
On Ratebeer the beer has over 3,600 reviews and over 5,000 ratings making it the 2nd highest in number of ratings for the UK, behind Youngs Double Chocolate Stout. Unfortunately the cost saving exercises over the years has given it an overall rating of only 27, at an average score of 3.03, far below what the beer would have received in its heyday you would imagine. My rating / review of a curmudgeonly 2.1 noted the changes that had already happened by 2003 compared to the beer I had tried in the 1970’s.