Brooklyn Brown Ale

Brooklyn Brewery was established in 1988 by a former banker and a former Middle Eastern correspondent. They have a number of different beers available, including core lines, seasonal, and brewmaster reserves which are only available locally on tap. The Booklyn Brown comes from their core line.

This was one of the two domestic beers we brought with us on the trip, the other being Dogfishhead's Punkin Ale. It's not that I don't like domestic beers, although some of them can be pretty awful, but the long standing traditions of European brewers have allowed them to develop well balanced and flavorful offerings over the years. Additionally, there's the cost factor for importing beers, so if the product isn't strong enough, it wouldn't sell well enough to offset the cost of importing.

That said, there are plenty of craft brewers and breweries in the United States that make a quaility product that blows the major beer distributors in the country out of the water. Brooklyn Brewery's Brown Ale is a great example of this fact.

The beer pours a deep brown with a tan head. It has good lacing on the glass, and mild head retention. The aroma is a combination of grassy hop scents, mixed with sweet malt.

The flavor of the beer is sweet and creamy, there isn't much bitterness at all. Typically with a darker beer you have the anticipation of bitterness, but I can see why the style is called Brown and Mild. There's a mixture of roasted barley flavor, with caramel, and general sweetness. Additionally this beer is incredibly smooth going down. It's not terribly high on carbonation, and it's somewhat dry, but fits quite well in the mouth. I can see this beer being great with a meal.

It's also incredibly drinkable. Not only does it have great taste that I can't see myself getting tired of, but because of the smoothness of it I feel like I could drink them non stop if I wanted to. But... I'll let this picture of Dan and myself tell the rest of the story.

-Adam