I Had A Pun Then Forgot It (Newcastle Brown Ale)

Member Name: jillmurphy

Product:	Newcastle Brown Ale
Date:	26/08/02 (1183 review reads)
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Sitting on a shelf in our wardrobe is a twenty-year-old bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale. When I catch sight of it I often wonder if this stuff goes bad. Will the bottle eventually explode all over my clothes perhaps? Will I awake one morning to an awful mess in there? Michael snorts and says not. It's a special edition bottle too, given to all British soldiers who went to the Falklands to fight for Mrs Thatcher those twenty years ago. Before he joined the ranks of the peaceniks and married me, Michael joined her Majesty's ranks (Elizabeth, not Margaret) and he spent his eighteenth birthday in the Falkland Islands, arriving after the fighting but in time for the horrendous job of finding and dealing with the dead and clearing the island of mines and boobytraps. I think he, and all his colleagues, earned his bottle of beer although I sincerely hope that the brewery didn't extend a similar kindness to THAT woman, Mrs Thatcher. Rumour has it that the contents of this bottle aren't the usual Newcastle Brown but some concoction of dandelion and burdock, but who knows? I don't suppose we'll be drinking it after all this time.

Elsewhere in the house you'll often find more bottles of Newcastle Brown. We don't drink it much but my father does and so when he's around we're likely to share a glass or two or three or four...

It's not really my kind of beer, Newcastle Brown, it's a dark beer and it has a very strong, well, beery aroma which reminds me rather of those evenings spent drinking (and spilling) far too much beer and being rowdy and much too drunk. It's a proper, old-fashioned ale made from barley soaked in water and then dried over heat to produce a strong malt. If you want to read all about it you can find a full explanation of the brewing process over at http://www.newcastlebrown.com but suffice it to say that the traditional English ways of brewing a good, strong ale are still largely adhe
red to. And I suppose yes, that's how it smells, traditional; all warm and moist and yeasty. And so I think it's best to drink Newcastle Brown not actually chilled, but fairly cool, lest that malty, hoppy aroma becomes sickly and overpowering. I'm not a beer expert by any means, preferring southern softie (gosh darned more expensive) light beers or lagers (Hoegaarden being my current favourite), or even darker, much sweeter stouts, but I never mind drinking some Newkie Brown with my daddy when he comes a-visiting. I suppose, taste-wise, it sits squarely in the middle: less gassy than most lagers and much, much more malty; less sweet than a yummy stout but sweeter than a run-of-the-mill bitter. I'd never choose it, but I always like it when it's in my glass.

And I do like consuming things with interesting histories, don't you? Newcastle Brown has been around since 1927, winning its first beery prize the following year in 1928 and that's when they added the blue star you'll find on the label. These days Newcastle Brown is the top selling bottled beer not only in the UK, but in the whole of Europe. It has all sorts of nicknames but Michael tells me the most popular one is "dog" and apparently they based a whole advertising campaign around that! I often wonder how many other special editions the brewery has produced, ones like Michael's Falklands bottle. I might not have approved of that war but I do like companies that show an interest occasionally in something other than their profits.

And we don't only keep Newcastle Brown to offer to visiting parents y'know. We cook with it too. A hater of both Oxo and Bisto, I'll do almost anything to make a gravy without those nasty, salty things. So, as ever, have a little Murphy recipe:

FOR BEEF AND ALE CASSEROLE YOU'LL NEED...

* 750g stewing steak trimmed and cut into chunks
* 1 large onion
* 3 large carrots peeled and cut
into rounds
* 3 sticks celery, destringed and chopped into chunks
* flour
* black pepper
* 2 dried bayleaves
* olive oil for frying
* half a bottle Newcastle Brown

Season a good handful of flour by popping it into a Tupperware box and grinding some nice black pepper into it. Chuck in the cubes of steak, put the lid on the box and shake it about so that the steak is covered. Then quickly brown the steak on all sides in a hot frying pan with a little olive oil and after that fry off the onions in the same pan, just for a minute or two. Now you can transfer the meat and onions together with all the other ingredients into a casserole dish, pour over the beer and shove into a low oven for a couple of hours, or use my preferred method and stick it all into a slow cooker and leave it all day. Whichever method you choose you'll end up with a delicious, very savoury but a-little-bit-sweet casserole in a beery gravy deliciously thickened up by the flour you used in the frying. I like my casserole with meat so tender it's best eaten with a spoon though, and that's why it's the slowcooker for me. The longer you cook this casserole the sweeter and more beery it will taste. Put a huge doorstep of fresh, crusty bread on each plate and ladle a good dollop of it on top. Yummy! And not an Oxo cube in sight.

It's a reasonably strong beer, Newcastle Brown, coming in at 4.7% ABV, stronger than most lagers you'll buy on tap but a bit less evilly alcoholic than some bottled lagers which can reach six or seven percent. You can buy it in cans or bottles but it's the tall brown bottles with that blue star that you'll recognise and the men in my family turn their noses up at the cans in any case. Beer snobbery eh? Amazing when you consider that this ale is generally regarded as the drink of a "working man". Oh well, I'm used to being a beery ignoramus and lightweight, so I just nod and smile. It used to be
a tall, brown pint bottle but now it's a tall, brown 550ml bottle which is not only as near to a pint as the eurocrats can get but also MUCH bigger than yer average lager portion. I think Newcastle Brown is rather a bargain at tesco.com's current rate of £1.47 for almost twice as much as you'd get in a bottle of Budweiser. I prefer to see a nice row of old fashioned beer bottles in my cupboard than a fourpack of cans with those nasty evil plastic ring things that are so dangerous to animals anyway. Recommended by me? Yes, for the occasional drink, and the regular making of Oxo-less casseroles!

Oh, and if you get time have a look at that website - http://www.newcastlebrown.com - it's really intended for the US market but it's got quite a lot of background information on the brewery and the beer and to the fabulous place that is Newcastle itself. You can play a couple of pub-style trivia games, or have a go at virtual darts, or even attend a Newkie Brown rave whatever one of those is. Deary me!

Bye now.

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