Brown Ale – The Tap Takeover

Beer Review: Braxton Labs Chocolate Cinnamon Roll

Name: Braxton Labs Chocolate Cinnamon Roll
Brewing Company: Braxton Brewing Company | Braxton Labs
Location: Covington, KY
Style: Brown Ale – Imperial / Double
ABV: 8.8%

“A delightful dessert beer that delivers exactly what the name says, cinnamon and chocolate in a deliciously crafted Imperial Brown Ale..”

From untappd’s entry/page for the beer:

This dessert style imperial brown ale has a sweet, full mouthfeel due to flaked oats and lactose. Specialty malts of pale chocolate and crystal malts bring a base of roasted chocolate and caramel. Additions of cinnamon and cacao nibs after fermentation bring together all the flavors of a delicious cinnamon roll with a sprinkling of chocolate chips.

The 20 Years 20 beers theme continues with this week’s beer review and introduces me to another new brewery! Braxton Brewing Company is a brewery I’m aware of, but prior to this beer I haven’t had the chance to try a beer from them.

Like the previous beer (and all 20 beers in this gift project), my wife gave me a taster of a few ounces to see if I could guess the beer. I was immediately hit with cinnamon, which stands out the most. Cinnamon is usually not what you’d call a subtle flavor element, after all. I thought the beer might be a Dessert/Pastry Stout, but looking at the beer, it isn’t quite dark enough to be a stout, so I guessed Brown Ale. I was close, my wife says, since it is an Imperial Brown Ale.

The full beer in the glass is a dark brown, a shade under black. In a certain light it *might* be mistaken for a Stout, but closer inspection reveals the beer’s true brown nature. The aroma of the full beer is largely cinnamon and very inviting.

Diving into the full pour, the cinnamon asserts itself immediately and plays very nicely with the roasted malt that gives a Brown Ale its smooth and sometimes chocolatey flavor. The fact that cocoa was added to the beer brings these flavors together even more strongly and makes for a delicious beer. The same disclaimer I make with big dark ales applies to Chocolate Cinnamon Roll: let the beer get a little closer to room temperature to allow the flavors to breathe a little and it tastes even better.

Perhaps the smartest thing Braxton Labs did with this beer was at the very beginning of the creative process. Now I’m not sure what came first, the style, or what they wanted to achieve with the end result in terms of flavor, but this works better as a big Brown Ale than it would have as a Stout, I think. The roasted elements of a Stout could potentially take over the cinnamon and chocolate and the more muted malt elements, as I pointed out previously, play really well with those two adjuncts.

Braxton Brewing has proven that a Brown Ale can be a flavorful, delicious beer when crafted well and that Brown Ales should not be overlooked. This is a great dessert beer. My wife is batting 1.000 with the 20 Beers 20 Years theme so far.

Highly recommended, link to Untappd 4.25-bottle cap rating.

Bravo for Brown (Level 10)

Dating back to the 17th century, Brown Ales come in a number of varieties. With malty, nutty characteristics and a smooth finish, it’s sure to cure your cravings.

Tavour (Level 3)

Beer Review: Cypress Brewings’s Northern English Nut Brown Ale

Beer Review

Name: Northern English Nut Brown Ale
Brewing Company: Cypress Brewing
Location: Edison, NJ
Style: Brown Ale – English
ABV: 4.6%

From Cypress Brewing’s beers page:

Dark and malty with roasted barley and chocolate malt. Earthy hops and a sweet, nutty finish. Full flavored but very sessionable with a low ABV.

Cypress Brewing has been brewing and selling beer in New Jersey for about three years and this Brown Ale is one of their earliest brews. As it so happens, this beer was one of the first available when the brewery opened its doors to the public for the first time. I said back when I reviewed Bell’s Amber Ale that, in addition to the ever-popular IPAs and seasonals, many breweries have staple classic styles they keep on draft like Ambers Ales, straightforward Pale Ales, or in Cypress’s case this well-crafted Brown Ale.

I had this during a visit to the brewery about which I’ll go into more detail in a couple of days. Relative to this beer, I had a flight before getting a glass of this one and I was largely inspired to give it a try because one of the brewer’s assistants was hanging out in the tap room (whose name escapes me, sorry!). He said this beer was one of his favorites, even before he started working at Cypress. If I didn’t already have one flight, I would have ordered a full pour of this beer.

In look and aroma, the beer comes across just as you’d expect from the name – brown, opaque, and with a pleasingly sweet aroma. First sip is very tasty with the type of sweetness and feel that encourages you to take another, larger sip of the beer.

It has been a very, very long time since I had Newcastle’s Nut Brown Ale, but I imagine brewer/owner Charlie Backmann was trying to evoke that flavor profile (or at least in name) or maybe even Cigar City’s Maduro Brown. Whatever he and his fellow brewers at Cypress were *trying* to do with this beer, they created a really enjoyable all-day kind of beer. With the low ABV of 4.6%, this is a seissionable beer you could enjoy throughout the day without getting too verschnicken while still enjoying a flavorful beer.

Cypress has been canning many of their IPAs for distribution and selling a few of their beers from the brewery in cans, like their long-standing Hefeweizen (which I *just* missed having) or some of their smaller batch sours. Let’s face it, IPAs sell hand over fist what brown ales sell, I assume, but this beer seems like it is tailor made for a six-pack of 12oz cans.

A well-flavored classic style ale that hits the right buttons for wary craft drinkers and craft enthusiasts alike. The IPAs may draw folks to Cypress’s tap room in Edison, NJ, but I would caution people against leaving without giving this tasty ale try whether as part of a flight or a full pour.

Recommended, link to Untappd 4-star rating.

Beer Review: Cigar City Brewing’s Maduro Brown

Beer Review

Name: Maduro Brown Ale
Brewing Company: Cigar City Brewing
Location: Tampa, FL
Style: Brown Ale – English
ABV: 5.5%

From Cigar City Brewing’s Landing Page for the beer:

Maduro is a Northern English-style Brown Ale with some American affectations. Maduro is higher in alcohol than the common English Brown Ale and features flaked oats in the malt bill which imparts a silky body and works to mesh the roasted, toasted and chocolate components together in Maduro’s complex malt profile. The end result is a remarkably full-flavored yet approachable Brown Ale that pairs well with mild to medium cigars.

Cigar City Brewing is one of the largest and more respected breweries out of the Southern United States. Their Jai Lai IPA is well-regarded and their Imperial Stout – Hunahpu’s Imperial Stout is such a big deal the brewery throws a huge party to celebrate its release, which happens to be the only place you can get the beer. While those two brews may get the flash, Maduro Brown is a tasty take on a classic style that deserves equal attention.

Brown ales are far from the sexiest style of beer on taps and shelves, but like Pilsners, the style – when done well like Maduro Brown – is the kind of “standard style” that many beer geeks and hop heads enjoy. I include myself.

In a shocking turn of events, the beer pours a deep brown out of the can. Almost a milk-chocolatey brown.

The smooth, easy drinking feel of the beer hit me first. Like the description suggests, there are very pleasing elements of chocolate and toffee sweetness. Chocolate is pretty common, especially in stouts, but what separates this brown ale is the lighter body and lowered roast components of the beer.

What makes this beer so good is just how elegant it is…it isn’t fancy, but it is quite delicious. Sure Cigar City makes some complex beers, but making a Brown Ale one of their flagship beers is a nice touch as the beer is very approachable, would likely pair well with many meals, or would be a great beer to enjoy on its own.

Like Happy Hour which I reviewed last week, Maduro Brown is a beer that is well balanced and deftly straddles the line between being a beer seasoned beer consumers can enjoy and a beer that is approachable for folks who don’t typically go for craft beer. This would be a great beer to bring to a party of a mixed crowd, in other words.

This beer proves that Brown Ales are good, far from boring, flavorful, and well worth trying.

Recommended, link to Untappd 4-star rating.

Beer Review: James E. Pepper 1776 Brown Ale aged in Rye Whiskey Barrels

Beer Review

Name: James E. Pepper 1776 Smoked American Brown Ale aged in Rye Whiskey Barrels
Brewing Company: Georgetown Trading Company / James E. Pepper Distilling & Beltway Brewing Co.
Location: Washington, D.C.
Style: Brown Ale Imperial / Double:
ABV: 10.4%

From the beer’s description about halfway down James E. Pepper’s Web site:

Like most whiskey aficionados, we also love a great beer. And in particular, we became very fond of barrel-aged beers, which from time to time had been aged in our whiskey barrels! So we decided to have some fun and make our own beer. We partnered with a great craft brewery (the Beltway Brewing Co. in Sterling, VA) and began working with their master brewer to create a beer that would age best in barrels that previously held our award winning James E. Pepper “1776” Rye Whiskey. No more than 30 days after our whiskey barrels are dumped in Kentucky, they are at the brewery being filled with beer. This ensures that every batch gets a rich Rye whiskey finish and notes of toffee, chocolate, oak and vanilla. Because we buy barrels from the cooper to age our whiskey, and then we monitor that maturation process over the years until we bottle our whiskey, we have complete control over the age and type of barrels we use. We think that is a big reason why this beer has come out with such uniquely rich flavor and taste. Cheers!

Brown Ales are a very old style and often overlooked. Just the style name tells you only about its color, but when brewed with ingenuity, like this Imperial Brown is, then something old really tastes like something new.

This one has the malty characteristics of a Brown Ale, with the enhancements of the rye barrel aging. The beer is a little bit boozy with wonderful hints of toffee and oak. The high alcohol from the barrels is definitely present, but it isn’t overpowering. Like many of the dark, high alcohol beers, the flavor profile becomes more pronounced and enjoyable as it warms up to room temperature after pouring.

This is the only beer took Georgetown Trading Company seems to brew and they’ve created something really nice. Every other brewery is aging their dark beers (mostly stouts) in bourbon barrels, so it is nice to take a classic style, employ a well-honed aging, but with a slightly different aging agent. In this case, the brown ale is aged in barrels from a classic brown alcohol – rye whiskey. Legend has it that the first Old Fashioned was invented in honor of James E. Pepper whose distillery dates back to 1780. Having enjoyed many bourbon-aged ales, it was a welcome taste variation on what I have come to expect.

The usual caveats apply here: let it warm before enjoying as the flavors really come out more strongly as the beer settles into the glass. Although I had a 12oz bottle, this beer also comes in a 22oz bottle. Drink it slowly or share it because the 10.4% ABV has the potential to knock you on your keester.

I see bottles of this one in most of the bottle shops I visit so, presumably, this one is fairly easy to find. At least in the Northeast. The bottle I enjoyed was bottled in February 2016 so this one aged even more for almost two years in the bottle before I consumed it. After having one that sat for so long (and that’s not a knock, because this is a great beer), I wonder how a more recently bottled version would taste . Another problem for me to solve, oh well.

Highly Recommended, link to Untappd 4.25-bottle cap rating.

Untapped badges earned with this beer

Sky’s the Limit (Level 19)