Name: Brooklyn Brewery Brown Ale

Style: Brown Ale

Country: U.S.A.

ABV: 5.6%

Beer description: The beer pours a nice nutty brown with a light but consistent head. This beer sits well in the glass and is very enticing to look at. It looks to be a typical American brown ale and it just needs to be drunk.

Sugar and spice and all things nice are in the aroma. The smell here is malt driven, it’s a brown ale after all. There’s some spice in there as well, as the beer nods to its darker cousins. With this is also some citrus. Other smells that come out in the beer are some general earth tones and a little bit of cut grass. All these smells were found with a little bit of hunting, but as the beer warmed up, they came out a little bit more. Hunt for aromas in this beer and be rewarded.

It would be expected that this brew would be more malt driven. While this is the case, there is a surprising amount of bitterness about this beer – for the style at least. By no means is this a bitter beer, but it has a much drier and bitter finish than what is usually associated with a smooth and malty brown ale. The body of the beer is quite thick, and the beginning of the beer is malty and smooth. On the end though, the brew starts to feel more like a British style pale ale than a brown ale. It’s an interesting turn of events!

Being such a well hopped brown, the build up of bitterness begins to take away from the more malty characteristics at the front, which is one of the main reasons to go with a brown! Adding to this, there’s not much hop action beyond “bitter” and playing with other hop flavours, especially for a hoppier brown, might have been nice.

This beer would go well for those trying to explore maltier beer. There’s plenty in there, but for the hop heads there’s a bit of bitterness as well.

Check out more brown ale reviews.

Go to other reviews of beer by Brooklyn Brewery.