Nut Brown Ale: How many contain nuts?

The Dudes' Brewing here in Torrance use Georgia pecans in their Grandma's Pecan English-style Brown Ale (it's pretty damn good and chock full of pecans). They are an up and coming brewery here in SoCal that just started canning recently. Here is a one-minute video they have posted on their web site showing how they make it. Pretty neat.



I've had Rogue's Hazelnut Brown Nectar, too, that jesskidden mentioned earlier. It's a really great beer (FWIW, I don't like many other offerings from Rogue). Definitely no lack of hazelnut flavor in that one.

I know this thread started because the OP is allergic to nuts, but these two beers are really great and make me want to seek out more nut brown ales, a style I have (until recently) been overlooking.

 

I'm still waiting for you to come up with any real evidence. Or find me a beer called Nut Brown before 1910. Oh, and any brown Victorian beer other than Porter and Stout.

 

That's the point. You will not find a beer called Nut Brown as old as the poem because it was not a style designation or trade name. Even if you have a 300+ year old bottle of beer, it won't say "nut brown" (lower case) because it was not the name of the style. But, this does not mean people didn't refer to it as nut brown. You can't assume that, just because that poem existed before the style used the name in sales and labeling that no one called them nut brown as a sort of slang. You are using faulty logic. And, perhaps, choosing to ignore possibility because you don't know about it. Not very open-minded.

 

Brown ale (the description meaning) existed along with brown beer until about 1700. Brown beer morphed into Porter and Stout which became so popular that brown ale disappeared.Around 1910 the name began to be used again though Martyn Cornell has reservations on the subject.Already posted but worth repeating;
http://zythophile.wordpress.com/2011/03/31/why-theres-no-such-beer-as-english-brown-ale/
Regarding nut brown ale , until 1880 it would have been illegal to incorporate nuts (the law was stricter than the Reinheitsgebot) and after that date there appears to be no record of it happening.

 

the comments on this article with someone calling out Ron for "proof" reminds me of the post wherein some USian home brewer insisted that ALL Scottish beers have smoked malt.

Hilarious, but still utterly wrong and somewhat stupid.

 

wow, you need to read some real beer history besides the tasting beer book. I like to for what it is, but its not a history book. Ron and Martyn are the experts. In fact they are in the BA mag from time to time. But experience is the best teacher and being wrong makes you learn.

 

Pattinson vs. Mosher… I pick Pattinson.

And research? How about publication?

 

Yea and there is a new IPA book out and I still pick Patterson. But they keep trying to prove those IPA myths.

 

Great book I have a lot but not quite all of Ron's great books, learn something new everyday, sadly I cannot remember it all, but then I have the book to refer too.

 

As youi have no evidence of any kind to support that, your theory is nothing more than a wild-arse guess. As I've pointed out several times, Brown Ale disappeared completely for around 100 years. And you've still failed to provide one example of a dark brown British beer from the 19th century that wasn't Porter or Stout.

You can keep ignoring my requests for actual evidence and trying to attack my logic, but you're never going to convince me.

Where's the evidence that people did actually refer to a certain type of beer as nut brown?

I've probably looked at 19th-century British beer in more detail than anyone else. There are no references I've found to Nut Brown Ale as a name, either colloquial or used by breweries. And I've looked in a huge variety of sources: magazines, brewing manuals, brewing records, newspapers, novels and all sorts of archive documents. I'd actually be pleased if you could find one, as it would entail a radical overhaul on my thinking about 19th-century beer.

 

Dude do you even have ANY idea who you are arguing with? Check out this link: http://barclayperkins.blogspot.nl/
Don't feel too bad. I once made the same mistake....lol

 

Well, as TruePerception couldn't find any evidence about Nut Brown Ale in the 19th century, I went and had a look for it myself.

And I found plenty of uses of the phrase from around the middle of the century. I'd probably not found them before because I hadn't specifically looked for them.

It was only used in certain specifric circumstances.

First, in poems or when people were wrting in a florid style.

Second, when they were trying to conjure up images of Merrie Olde England.

Third, as a way of describing the beer served at particular celebrations: Christmas, Harvest Home, the majority of an heir. Often it's how the beer provided by the master to his tenants is described. Whether or not it's really a specific type of beer, or just a poetic name given to beer consumed on certain occasions, is unclear.

This is an advert from a newspaper:

Christmas Ale.
THOMAS BERRY has received supply of STRONG NUT BROWN ALE, from 15s per nine gallons, of extra superior quality.
Lewes, 15th December, 1851.
Sussex Advertiser - Tuesday 23 December 1851, page 1.

Which makes it pretty clear there was something sold as Nut Brown Ale. But note that it's a beer especially intended for Christmas. What sort of beer it was is unclear, other than pretty damn strong. That works out to 60 shillings for a 36-gallon barrel, which implies a gravity of around 1090º.

Whether or not it was really brown as in a modern Brown Ale is also a mystery. Though given its strength, even brewed from 100% pale malt, it would have been darker than a standard-strength Mild.

Which has got me very confused. Because I've never come across a beer in a regular price list described as any type of Brown Ale. And I've looked at hundres of the things. Nor is there any beer called Brown Ale in the thousands of 19th-century brewing records I've analysed.

It looks like it was a poetic way of decribing a celebratory beer. Interesting. Doubtless inspired by the song I originally posted, whcih was a popular Christmas carol.

 

Lazy Magnolia out of MS has a pecan beer, as does De La Vega's out of Las Cruces, New Mexico.

 

Just a caveat. The concept of styles was 150 years into the future when this was written. What we called beers were simply names ( often enough the beer might be called different names at different times and in different places). People called beers pretty well what they wanted.I well remember Luncheon Ale being popular , that was never a style as far as I know.Quite likely the article in question was a Strong Ale which was a particular colour.I would say that a single mention does not imply a style; with tens of thousands of brewers at the time one would expect large numbers of mentions if it was a specific style of ale.

 

Just picked up another 1 gallon beer-making kit from
Brooklyn Brewing Co @ Bed Bath + Beyond. It was
"Chestnut Brown Ale" (English Brown Ale style).
The recipe says I can add actual roasted chestnuts, may
give it a go.

 

So I need proof, but you do not. You claimed that the name came from the poem. But, there is no proof of that. That is all that I'm saying. I could be wrong, but that seems ridiculous. I don't need to provide the "proof" you are asking, because it is irrelevant to what I am actually saying! Now, if you had said "The earliest known reference to nut brown ale is...", that would be one thing; but you said "It comes from an old English song.". Remember correlation is not causation. Just because you have found no earlier reference (regardless of how knowledgeable you may be), it doesn't mean that it is the earliest reference. If people were colloquially referring to brown ales as "nut brown" at his favorite bar for 10 years before hand, we would have no evidence from that poem, unless the author intentionally subscripted such information (which was rarely done in old poems). All I'm asking is a little common sense, here.

 

Lazy Magnolia Pecan, Rogue Hazelnut, and Abita Harvest came to mind immediately. Love all three.

 

Part of Ron's work is going through old brewery records , tens of thousands of them from around 1800.If there were such a style as Nut Brown Ale or even Brown Ale it would surely have appeared.Like Wee Heavy , it simply isn't there and he is free to reasonably draw his own conclusions.He also works through old newspapers and journals.Again, a recognised style would have come to his attention. I'm not sure how much more you can expect as it is of course impossible to prove a negative. As Bertrand Russell said, prove to me that there isn't a teapot orbiting round the Sun.
Did you mention common sense ?

 

yea like dinner ales, that was new to me until i read amber, gold and black

 

This is just hilarious. Some dude arguing with a professional beer researcher about the historical usage of the term "nut brown".