Newcastle Brown Ale
Heineken Nederland B.V.

 

 

 

poured from a 12oz bottle into a FFF pint glass. pours brown with ruby red edges and a khaki colored foam head. heavy malt on the nose and taste. nutty with a slight hint caramel. easy drinking with a full mouthfeel. haven’t had one of these in years and while this bottle was brewed by Lagunitas, it still reminded me of the old bottles i used to consume as an early twenty something kid.

 

 

 

 

Look: Brown on the pour which yields an off-white to beige head that builds and quickly settles to a film, leaving spotty lacing behind
Aroma: Caramel, toffee, warm brown bread, piloncillo, light roasted tree nuts, and wafts of earthy notes
Taste: Starts out with subtle bready malt notes along with the bread, layers of sweetness trickle in with caramel and piloncillo being the dominate two. Closes with bread and earthy notes
Mouthfeel: Full, clean, medium-high carbonation, soft, and smooth and fairly soft on the finish
Overall: This is good stuff. A classic OG and the first “big, bold, and flavorful” microbrew I tried besides the few AAL’s I had had at that point in my beer journey, almost 18 years ago and still a good one. Good malty, nutty, and sweet flavors in good combination with enough earthy hop presence to not come across as sweet. Fun to revisit and recommended if for some reason, you have never had it

 

I miss the old clear bottles with & it being brewed in England. I believe it's made in Colorado now. Still a decent little brown ale. Nothing special.

Pours a dark shade of brown, crystal clear, light brown dense and creamy head; retention in form a thick uniform film; moderate initial lacing.

Nose is caramel malty sweetness, weak watered down coffee, some darkened toast, and damp woodsy smell.

Taste is malty sweet, a dark toffee like taste, weak earthy coffee, with minor generic hop note on the finish.

Body is light but slightly sweet and syrupy to me, smooth though with a low but noticeable bitterness on the finish.

I liked the flavors of this beer a lot but it was just a little overly syrupy on the tongue to me.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Ok. Ordered it thinking it was an English Brown Ale, but it was nothing special. I understand why now that I’ve read some recent reviews about it being sold to Lagunitas and not what it once was. I would agree it was somewhat syrupy. Ok to drink if nothing else malt forward available.

This is an incredibly disappointing beer. I could end there but will keep going...

Purchased at Purvis Beer in Richmond, a suburb of Melbourne, in Australia in November 2021.

The beer looks more like a soft drink in the glass than a beer. Its clarity is astounding for a brown beer; it's a burnished copper with light brown highlights where the light reflects from the glass. But that is as good as this beer gets.

Aroma-wise, there's a sweet, syrupy cola/Dr.Pepper mix that brought to the fore thoughts of fly spray and even citronella. There was nothing appealing at all about the smell, in fact quite the opposite.

Taste is no improvement on the smell. It's as sweet as the aroma hints, and there's that cola/Dr.Pepper thing going on. It's clearly a light struck beer as evidenced by the skunky, metallic taste that overrides everything else.

In the mouth it's thin and light, just like a soft drink.

Overall this is a disappointing shell of a beer. I understand it's now brewed under licence, and can only presume it's been bastardised in the name of fiscal efficiency. Well, I can't imagine ever paying to drink this beer again, so I suppose it will help with my fiscal efficiency, so mission accomplished?

Cheers!

Gave the look a four because it looks like a Newcastle Brown Ale. However, my understanding is that this is now a Lagunitas product. Combined with the recipe change five or six years ago, the firm’s obstinate refusal to do away with the clear glass that ruins the beer and selling out to macro garbage like Lagunitas, this is undrinkable swill. One of the admonishments from BA is that we’re supposed to be respectful of the brewer. That statement is obviously ridiculous, taken out of context. I understand the idea behind it though. As such, I didn’t give it straight ones.
I have had Newcastle Brown Ale in not a few pubs across the pond, as far back as 1997. Reviewing that beer would be a wonderful time. Drinking this (er, taking two swallows and pouring out the rest) was such a departure from those halcyon days, I may have unconsciously used this beer as a stand in for my deep regret of having returned to the Disneyland Freakshow States of Oligopoly.
Whatever the case, this is tragic. No, this was never the finest beer. But it was relatively inexpensive and decent (out of a keg) - pretty much the opposite of whatever this is.

Drank this so much and so often in the 90s I certainly tried, and failed, to replicate it when I took up brewing. Wasn't even close, enjoy one very now and again, but of course there's better browns about these days.

Dark brown look with a nice foamy beige head that recedes to a ring. Ruby look in light. Malty smell, rye bread smell, New York bagel hints. Low bitterness taste with a bready, malty, low low hip taste. Pretty bland. Watery but still vicious feel in your mouth. No super creamy, but not super citrusy. Middle of the road beer.

 

 

 

I still remmeber stealing a few of these out of my dad's minifridge to bring to a neighbor girl's house, swigging it while grimacing, pretending to like it...

It's a supremely bland take on the brown ale, with tons of budweiser flavor and none of the savory goodness a true brown ale should have. Gutter tripe

Drain-pour!

 

My Favorite Brown.

They can do better. The first time I made my own beer for a youtube video, I made a kit called "back to basics beer" It was nothing fancy, 6.6 pounds of DME, some copper colored grain in a bag some hops and Nottingham yeast packet. My beer, with mistakes I made like squeezing the bag, stirring the wort, not mixing the priming sugar with hot water and some other rookie mistakes, my beer came out tasting better than a New Castle Brown Ale. NCBA is good with making beer bread with it, but not drinking it. This is just okay I prefer Bass Ale over NCBA.

 

 

What could they possibly have been thinking when Lagunitas turned Newcastle into this syrupy brown pablum of an excuse for a beer? This was a unique ale in almost every way, but foremost in flavor and texture. Now it is entirely unremarkable. Avoid this like the plague if you are expecting anything like what this justly famous ale was known for.