Ales: Brown Ale

Brown ales are...well...brown. Okay, there's more to it than that, but the style is definitely named for the color of the beer, which is...brown! Generally brown ales are lightly hopped and have a slightly nutty flavor to them. The craft beer industry has gotten more creative in naming their beers the last few years, so you'll often see brown ales called something else, because "brown ale" just doesn't have the zip of "Mahogany Autumn Ale" or some such. Occassionally a brown ale will have coffee notes, or even have coffee or chocolate added. A prominant example of a brown ale is Newcastle, likely the best known and granddaddy of brown ales. Brown ales are usually light enough that they don't trigger the "I don't like dem dark beers" reaction, but with enough body and flavor to differentiate from the run of the mill lagers.

Ales: Pale Ale

After the "basic" ales mentioned in the last article, we have pale ales. A pale ale may or may not end up with a pale golden hue - the "pale" refers to the type of malt used. In general a pale ale refers to an ale that is more aggressively hopped than an amber, but not so much as an IPA. Pale Ales tend to be about 5% ABV, with some as high as 6%. Originally pale ales came about due to technology changes in the heating process in the 1800's. Previously the direct heat caused the malt to darken, producing the darker stouts and porters. The new direct heating method yielded a pale malt and thus a paler ale. (This is similar to the advent of Pilsners in Bohemia). In England, this style of beer was also called "bitter" interchangeably with "pale ale". American brewers shied away from the term "bitter". It wasn't until recent years that the term "bitter" shed its negative connotations in the U.S. In England, and eventually in America, there were subcategories of Bitter, such as Best Bitter, Extra Special Bitter (ESB). Pale Ale was for a while the most popular of the craft beer categories, but became overshadowed by IPA's, so much that what would have been called a pale ale might now be called a "Session IPA" or simply an IPA with a low IBU count.

Pale ale is often a good introduction to craft beer noobs since it looks like a light beer and doesn't set off dark beer alarm bells. I've occassionally seen people picking up a pale ale under the mistaken belief that it is "light".

Sam Adams Rebel Grapefruit IPA

The label says that it's brewed with real grapefruit, so I was expecting something like a radler or a shandy, but I was pleasantly surprised with the complexity of the latest offering in Sam Adams' Rebel series. You can taste the grapefruit, but at first it seems like it's a characteristic of the hops rather than added flavoring. Speaking of hops, the IBU level is 52, which is not super high on the hoppiness scale, but fairly bitter nonetheless. the beer warms up a little, I can detect some of the actual grapefruit in the mix - more like grapefruit peel than grapefruit juice though. Back to the hops - there is some grapefruitiness in the hop bill, but pine notes as well, making this an interesting brew to say the least. I'd recommend this as a summer ale and give it a 7.5 on the IGB scale of tastiness.