Knutsford Brown Ale

Andy and I both (separately) encountered Burton Bridge Brewery’s Staffordshire Knot Brown Ale recently, and it reminded us how much we like this little-loved British style. The Burton Bridge example was delicious – rich, sweet, fruity and smooth. Everything you want to warm you on these shorter days.

So we set about planning our own version. Initially I looked at Jamil Zainasheff’s recipes in Brewing Classic Styles. It’s interesting how our American Cousins like to categorise things. They have an organisation called the Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP), who seem to exist to categorise and sub-categorise beer. I thought brown ale was brown ale, but apparently there is Southern English Brown Ale and Northern English Brown Ale! The main difference is that Southern Browns have lower alcohol content and are significantly darker than Northern Browns. There are very few commercial examples of Southern Browns left – the only one I can find mention of is Mann’s Brown Ale. There are a fair few Northern Browns of course, such as Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown Ale, Newcastle Brown Ale and Wychwood Hobgoblin (although that last one surprised me). Incidentally the BJCP also classify Mild as a sub-category of Brown Ale.

Anyway, taxonomies apart, what are we going to brew? Well I toyed with the idea of brewing something close to Jamil’s Southern English Brown recipe, but annoyingly (maybe ironically) you can’t get all the malts needed for that recipe in the UK! In particular it uses a malt called “special roast”, which I cannot find in the UK – it seems to be made by one particular US maltster.

Then I found the basics of a recipe for the Burton Bridge Staffordshire Knot Brown Ale. It wasn’t all there, but there was enough to build our own version. And that’s what Andy and I brewed last night. We have high hopes that this will be a rich, malty and warming winter ale, and one that we can brew again and again.

Like the name, by the way?