Beer - Brown Ale Day Beer Review: Big Brown Beaver

Today we have enjoyed many local brown ales for Brown Ale Day. It has been excellent drinking, proving the versatile variety of good brown ales from modern craft brewers. We have had typical Melbourne weather, four seasons in one day - sunny, warm, windy, cloudy, wet, cold, and more sun - and the brown ales have suited each weather situation so well. The brown ales have also matched beautifully with today's lunch, dinner and snacks. Brown ale win!

One of the best brown ales that I've tasted this year was the Big Brown Beaver from The Wig & Pen.

Richard Watkins, the brewer and heart & soul of Canberra's Wig & Pen, is a master brewer of the highest order. He is revered among the brewing community, an expert in science of cask conditioned real ales and the art of the Randall hop infuser.

We visited the Wig & Pen brewpub in April this year, on an Easter road-trip planned for for the specific purpose of drinking a Saturday night away at Wig & Pen. It was a brilliant night indeed. We were joined by Ian Morgan, the senior brewer from Holgate Brewhouse, and his brother-in-law, along with the best tasting paddle in Australia...

Now...tha'ts a generous tasting paddle of quality beer!

That night the Wig & Pen was also pouring a brown ale named Big Brown Beaver (Richard loves cheeky names for his beers!) through the NZ Hallertau hop filled Randall.

The brewer's tasting notes say of this 5.9% unfiltered brown ale: "Big Brown Beaver is a malt driven brown ale for the hop lover. Beaver has a strong malt flavour and leaves a satisfying bitterness on the back of the palate. As it is dry hopped through 'modus hoperandus' it has different aroma each week depending on the wims of the brewer, which creates an evolving and easily savourable ale."

It was a delightful drinking experience - full, balanced, long and complex. Caramel sweetness to start then a long hoppy finish of bitterness. This was one of those beers that could turn a non brown ale lover into a true brown ale believer!

When it comes to crafting beer, Richard Watkins is conventional yet punk. Brilliant browness.

Beer - It's all brown from here!

Brown Ale Day is ON!

Yes, we're deep in the brown now.

We are drinking and sharing brown ale beers to celebrate this frequently unpopular style. The talk of craft beer too often seems to be about IPAs and black variant beers. How about some love for the brown?!

Hope you can join us, here's why:

• Celebrate the Sedate – Brown Ale Day
• Get down with Brown on October 21

Beer runners we are, today started by completing a 10km fun run through the tough hills of a local town. Ouch. Thankfully, the reward of good beer was motivation again! As soon as we arrived home we cracked our first brown ale and consumed it with banana, peanut butter, choc-chip, brown ale muffins that Jenn baked yesterday.

Here is how Brown Ale Day has run visually for us so far...

BROWN ALE FACT: In the Top 100 beers of the Critic's Choice: Australia's Best Beers 2011, brown ale was the 5th top style in the list of 100 beers. That was an improvement of three spots after it was the 8th most occurring beer style in the 2010 list. The 2011 list included: 2brothers James Brown (#95), Murray's Angry Man Brown (#59) and Moon Dog's Henry Ford's Girthsome Fjord (#26).

Share your Brown Ale drinkings and love via #BrownAleDay

Beer - Get down with Brown on October 21

Tomorrow, Sunday 21st October, is Brown Ale Day! Join us in celebrating this too often underrated yet richly diverse category of beer style by simply drinking a brown ale.

Why is it Brown Ale Day tomorrow? Well, Jenn simply decided that it would be! It is nothing official or formal. There are no events, no website or statement of purpose and no organising committee. It is simply a random day that we've set aside for drinking just brown ales and calling for others to do the same, because this unjustly under-appreciated beer style needs more exposure and support.

Over the last few years there has been a growing number of celebrations for craft beer and beer styles, primarily driven online. Following IPA Day and International Stout Day...Jenn asked "why isn't there a brown ale day?". She loves the brown, more than anyone else I know. Brown ale is also the style she most commonly uses for cooking because of it's versitility in food.

So now we're extending the concept and declaring a day of brown beer for October 21, simply because the open forum of the internet allows us to do so.

For the full short-story of our Brown Ale Day's origin, read Jenn's post at Soaked in Beer: Celebrate the Sedate – Brown Ale Day

• As noted in Jenn's post, CraftBeer.com also recently posted an excellent article explaining why brown ale deserves more love and appreciation: Brown Ales: The Overlooked Spectrum of Beer

Tomorrow we encourage you to drink a brown ale - maybe one you've never tried before, maybe a local favourite - drink it and share something about it online.

We will be lining up a selection of brown craft beers from Australian brewers.

Local breweries that produce a brown ale are in the minority. There are certainly many more browns available now than there were two years ago, but that is primarily just a reflection of the recent growth in the craft beer industry. Nonetheless, the brown ales currently available on the market are all diverse and wonderfully drinkable.

We've done our best to track down every available packaged brown ale from Australia. The only browns we could not find at this time were the 2brothers James Brown, a strong Belgian brown ale made with banana lollies which is a very limited seasonal and it's the wrong time of year, as well as Murray's Angry Man Brown Ale which we haven't seen in Melbourne for a long time (about since the Murray's Pale Ale was rebranded with an Angry Man label as well).

Anyway, there is plenty here to fully brown up our day in different ways!

Social media will be the outlet of our brown celebrations. Find/follow/connect and all that at:

• Facebook : Beer Bar Band
• Instagram : @beerbarband , @veryphotojennic
• Twitter : James, Jenn
• Untappd : James, Jenn

Other online channels to share brown ale experiences tomorrow include posting pictures and words to the likes of Tumblr, Flickr or your blog. Go on, make a big brown blog!

To link in with our Brown Ale Day, use the hashtag of #BrownAleDay when posting your brown drinking thoughts and experience on Twitter or Instagram.

Oh...and there is so much more beyond the sad old Newcastle Brown Ale! Brown ales in the crafty 21st century is much more interesting...

...brown up!