Name: Mornington Peninsula Brown

Style: Brown Ale

Country: Australia

ABV: 5.0 %

Beer description: Oh brown ales!  A good brown ale can often be just right: a porter or stout may be too heavy, but you want a little malt and quite a bit of body.  Go for a brown ale.  Browns can often have the best of both worlds and there’s a lot breweries can do with them.

Mornington Pensinsula Brewery often takes a traditional, measured approach to their beers, and this usual approach is found here. Mornington usually makes some very good beers, as long as you’re not expecting something unusual or different: they make beers carefully and to style, and it’s refreshing.

Morning Peninsula Brewery set out to make a traditional English brown ale and they’ve really accomplished it.

A sweet maltiness full of raisins comes through in the first sniffs, with a bit of toffee and molasses for good measure as well.  There’s not a lot of aroma hops here, but there’s a mild spiciness, maybe cinnamon, about the aroma that compliments everything well.  It reminds me of a crumble my mother once made – I’m sure there were raisins and cinnamon in it – and with the malt, well…

The taste offers hints of coffee and chocolate, with an all around nuttiness that’s quite welcome.  The toffee continues a little bit as well, but it’s a little more well hidden.

There’s not a lot of bitterness, after all, it is a more traditional style, but the hint of bitterness at the back is quite nice and an interesting twist on fairly malty and traditional beer.  It gives the beer a nice earthy quality that goes well with the general nut flavours throughout the beer.

Refreshingly, while this beer has a lot of body, it’s relatively dry; the brewers have obviously avoided anything to sweeten up this beer.  All of this just adds to the traditional feel of this beer.

Check out other brown ale reviews.

Check out other Mornington Peninsula Brewery reviews.