Tom Paine Original Brown Ale
Harvey's Brewery

Into a pint glass, pours a dark stouty brown with no head, then bubbly tannish head of a quarter inch fading to more bubbles around the sides, little lacing to speak of. Aroma is nutty, good husk of malts, brown sugar, maple syrup, decent. Taste has the same cast of characters, a medium body and carbonation, and its kind of boring. This is the same reaction I get with most browns, good but boring, and so I can't really fault it too much as being in line with style, but man, I hardly noticed this beer go by.

 

 

Poured a deep reddish brown color with virtually no head or lacing.

Smell is predominately molasses with a touch of roasted malt.

Taste also has a strong molasses flavor with some slight essences of chocolate and coffee.

Leaves a nice strong taste sensation in the mouth with a hint of dryness at the ending.

This is a good beer, easy to drink and nice to session.

Poured from 16oz bottle into a standard pint glass.

Appearance- Beer pours near obsidian with reddish hues, but when you look a little closer, it becomes clear that the beer is transparent after all. Hardly any carbonation on the head and it quickly dissapates from about a fingernails width to nothing. Lacing clings to the glass and lingers.

Smell- A subdued noble hop and light malt aroma. I have a lingering suspision that this beer may be a bit overaged. A bit of toffee. Not too much on the nose here.

Taste- Toffee caramel malt, a bit of a honey sweetness, some dark fruitiness, plums mostly. Hops are nearly nonexistant. A sweetish smooth malty aftertaste. Light cardboard oxidation.

Mouthfeel- Light-medium bodied with low carbonation. Not particularly sticky on the tongue.

Drinkability- A decent brown ale, but not one that I would return to. The original ale and porter are way more drinkable and worth a revisit in my opinion.

Appearance: Pours a coffee brown color with a rocky tan head that dissipates quickly with a few splashes of lace

Smell: A nutty, milk chocolate character, but very modest

Taste: The first sip brings a nutty, malty flavor, with a growing milk chocolate aspect arriving by mid-palate; after the swallow, a vinous, but phenolic plastic flavor appears that is not particularly attractive

Mouthfeel: Medium body but watery; low carbonation

Drinkability: After the Original Ale, this is a disappointment

Purchased at beergeek.biz

Pretty, ruby brown color. No head though a decent carbonation level. Really is a perfect example of what a British beer often looks like. Nice aroma-big toffeeish and caramel smell to it. Huge malt flavor upfront. Again with the caramel-slight spicy flavor-almost like cinnamon. Big body for the low abv. This beer seems much bigger then 5% abv. Very, very enjoyable. Sort of shatters what I was expecting for a UK brown. I could do this one all night.

500ml bottle on sale at Wilbur's in Fort Collins, CO for $1.99.

Pours a cloudy opaque dark amber-brown under a light and frothy one-finger head that fades quickly to a solid ring and leaves thick sheeting.

Smell is light of caramel malt, light fruity hops. Not much there.

Taste is decent nutty malty with a pleasantly bitter hop presence and a little spcey finish. Pretty nice flavor.

Pretty thin in the mouthfeel department.

I suppose this would be a decent session beer at 5.0%. Pretty okay.

Sample at AleFest Dayton: Dark brown color with a nil off-white head and very little lacing. Aroma of molasses and sweet malt. Medium-bodied and smooth with a mild malt and nut flavor, with a bit of stale coffee. The finish is short and soft with a roasted malt and tart fruit aftertaste. Pretty average.

Dark Brown. Unpleasing slighty sour and astringent nose with hints of tree branches, dark berries, brown sugar and toasted grains. Notes of chocolate, brown sugar and dark berries reside on the palate with an odd for the style tartness and just a hint of different spices that put grim on my face. I don’t like this.

Harveys Thomas Paine Oringinal Brown Ale

Appearance- dark brown almost black with a soft creamy tan head.
Smell- chocolate and molasses.
Taste- nice soft roasted hops with a chocolate/ molasses malt.
Mouthfeel- very smooth with a pinch of usgary sweetness.

Overall- a very good Brown Ale. A beer I'll keep an eye out for on tap. Good to see Harveys has a beer better tasting that that wretched x-mas ale.

Creamy tan head over a dark brown body. Great lace and decent head retention. Smells of sweet malt and rum raisin. Light roasted malt, mildly sweet, vinous fruit. Light body. Smooth and clean finish.

A bit too light in body and flavor for my tastes, although the clean finish and light body makes it decent for session work. I can't get past thinking that this tastes like flat coke. Considering the price and lackluster flavor of this little bloke, I don't think I'll be revisiting it anytime soon.

Brown appearance, slight chill haze with orangey highlights. Head of under 1/2 an inch, medium bubbles deconstruct in a little over a minute. Nice complex laces all over the glass. Smells of caramel, a bit of mace and cinnamon. Lower carbonation, creamy smooth mouthfeel. The predominant flavor is just slightly buttery caramel, sweet without a lot of counterpoint. Practically no hint of hops. Settles into a malted skim milk tone by the finish. Nice tasting, practically dead-on for style, a bit boring for those looking for more adventure, but with tons of drinkability.

Presentation: 500ml broad bodied brown glass bottle with a thin short stubby neck. The main label has a picture of Thomas Paine set against an orangey-brown and gold background. Tom Paine was an English ‘radical’ by birth who eventually went on, so the legend goes, to assist in drafting the American Declaration of Independence and was to eventually die in the USA. Labeled as ‘Harveys Tom Paine Original Brown Ale’, and listed at 5.0% ABV. No freshness date.

Appearance: Darkish Newcastle brown body with a light brown vanilla colored creamy uneven surface that is pock-marked. Fine conditioning runs start to finish and replenishes the head throughout the drink.

Nose: Rather simplistic and one-dimensional staid aromas. Mild chocolate and cocoa mix with toasted malts and some reticent wooden barrel hints.

Taste: Lovely barrel rounded woody malts that have an earthy feel. The ending has a mild hop character and a little dry chocolate that fleshes out in the swallow. A lot more involving than the simple nose suggests, but nevertheless this is still a well-organized collection of simple flavors rather than an arrangement of complex ones. Basic but bloody good.

Mouthfeel: Smooth conditioning and a soft carbonation make for an exceptionally palatable feel in this one. It just gets better in the swallow and has a very rounded silky texture which is highly attractive.

Drinkability: A down-to-Earth Brown that is how it should be; honest, simple, straight forward and certainly never pretentious. Wish I had another on hand.

Overall: A lovable English-style Brown Ale that accentuates in the finish rather well. It gets better as you get down the bottle and a lot more approachable. My sample cost a rather high $4.99 but it was well worth it. Stick with it – because this it builds into a lovely English Brown Ale!!

Pours a very dark brown, looks like a porter. Good lacing. Smells like candied vegetables, which is bad. Taste is too sweet upfront, but compensates nicely with a roasty finish. Lively mouthfeel, stings a little bit. Might be overcarbonated. Not much reason to seek this one out.

Thanks to weeare138 for the bottle.

"He that would make his own liberty secure must guard even his enemy from oppression; for if he violates this duty he establishes a precedent that will reach to himself."

--Thomas Paine


Significantly murky russet with highlights the color of blood orange peel. The creamydense cap is the color of golden brown sugar and displays a pitted, rough-hewn surface. Thick, nearly contiguous sheets of lace are beginning to appear and look to be sticking with some authority. A very nice brown ale look.

A few deep, full inhales leaves me unimpressed. While it isn't a bad brown ale nose, it's by the numbers and is nothing to get too excited about. I can appreciate heavily toasted malt with some mild cocoa notes, perhaps some nuts and a modicum of British hops. I certainly hope the flavor displays more of an extroverted personality.

Tom Paine Original Brown is pretty good beer. Like the nose, though, it doesn't overly impress (note: it does improve somewhat with warming, but not enough to earn a score increase). It's appropriately malted with plenty of flame-kissed grain, toasted walnuts and a smidgen of cocoa powder. The amount of hop flavor outpaces the amount of hop bitterness and stays neck and neck with the malt.

The mouthfeel is medium in heft and is soft, almost powdery. If a beer's mouthfeel can match its looks (murky, remember?), this one does. The sedate feel of the carbonation is an especially good fit. Lace update: the glass is positively covered; a wonderful look.

Tom Paine Brown strikes me as the quintessential English brown ale, although not the best. It's a lot like the Tom Paine Porter that I had a few weeks ago in that it's straightforward and drinkable without being 'light up the sky with Roman candles' amazing. Perhaps the fact that I think a little less of this beer has more to do with my preference for porters over brown ales than anything else.

Pours a muddy brown with a small light brown head that doesn't last long, not much lacing either. Nutty and bready aromas, nutty and bready flavors as well, kind of bland. Light bodied with a somewhat watery mouthfeel, has a mild buttery sweet finish, overall just an average brown ale.

Pours a light tan, one finger head, fades slowly and leaves a good lace. Light carbonation and light-medium bodied. Deep, clear red/brown color. Nose is not distinguishable. Starts with a light mellow sweetness and finishes with just a hint of bitterness, epitomizes an English brown. $4.25 for a 500ml bottle from Colonial Spirits Acton, MA.

Appearance: Turbid, ruby-tinted brown color. About a quarter inch of tan foam on top, with nice retention. Good lacing.

Aroma: Fairly nutty, sweet toffee-ish nose.

Flavor: Quite sweet malt flavor, caramel-like in flavor, somewhat milk-chocolate like (actually, makes me think of chocolate milk. Mmmm!). A slight roast-almond nuttiness helps cut through the sweetness. Hop bitterness is low.

Mouthfeel: Medium, though creamy, body. Carbonation on medium-low side.

'Brown Ale' is a style that's so wide open that just about anything brown qualifies, whether hoppy, nutty, or sweet. This is definitely on the latter end of the spectrum, but it's an interesting, complex sweetness. This would be a wonderful, truly appetizing dessert beer.

Ruddy brown color, with crimson highlights 'round the edges, thinnish, faint head...unimpressive aroma, cola-ish, bits of maple and brown sugar, but not very appealing...as for taste, impresses much less, no hops, mild malt...just flat is all it is...it drinks down okay, but ...that's all you can say, pleases the palate not a bit, unfortunately...too soda-like, very light in the body, with a MIA finish...one of the saddest brown ales I've ever let loose on this mouth of mine.
I keep drinking in the hopes that my opinion will change, but that happens only in minor degrees...could be worse, but never gets better...proof positive that naming your beers after a political philosopher does not guarantee greatness.