Thursday, July 26, 2007

Really Old Brown Dog - First Edition

7/26/07 - Really Old Brown Dog - As many of you know by now, our friend Olive Francis, the Old Brown Dog, passed this winter. The original photo for our brown ale label was taken when Olive was quite young and so last fall Peter and Joanne had some new pictures commissioned. The photos were taken out on one of Olive's favorite beaches and with her favorite easy chair. The desire to use one of these images for a new Big Beer was the inspiration for our Really Old Brown Dog Ale. Usually the style of beer is decided before Joanne works on the label design, but in this case the tail was wagging the dog. Since the name was already decided we figured that something in the Old Ale / Double Brown Ale realm would be interesting. The one definite ingredient I wanted to play with was Brown Malt. I've always really liked the fudge brownie character derived from it. I feel we slightly overdid the addition, as that flavor tends to dominate the beer. For the most part though I was quite pleased with this beer as a nice tribute to our faithful friend and Head Squirrel Wrangler.

Malt:
Pilsner Malt
Pale Ale Malt
Crystal 60L
Brown Malt
Special B

OG - 18° p
TG - 4.5° p; ABV - 7.0%

Hops:
IBU 40

Bittering - Liberty
Flavoring & Aroma - Crystal

3 comments:

Anonymous said...

Really Old Brown Dog is one of my favorite beers of all time - Hits you smooth like a velvet hammer!

Any chance of another batch sometime in the future?

Anonymous said...

I only tried this beer once, about one year ago, when my wife and I went a bit upstate NY to some kind of Halloween festival.

Well the festival was horrible, and my wife got really sick from eating a bad German-type sausage that they were selling...

However, I had just tried a bottle of your Really Old Brown Dog Ale before we went inside, and it blew me away. While my sister-in-law and her boyfriend wandered through the Halloween festival, and while I sat in the car consoling my sick wife, I secretly thought about what a great beer I had just drank.

Unfortunately for me (and many of the other good beer loving locals), none of the Long Island beer retailers carried Really Old Brown Dog. That's why I only got to try it once, and why I've been eagerly anticipating the brew's next release.

Smuttynose, if you brewed this beer again I would definitely make sure that my local "good beer" beer retailers would carry it.

And please, even if you tweak the recipe a little, please leave the hops/hoppiness be. The extra push from the hops--as compared w/ ROBDA's more mild cousin--is really what brought everything together and made this such a unique and stand-out beer.

Thanks for being my favorite East coast brewery, and have a great holiday season.

Anonymous said...

As one of Smuttynose's most loyal fans and a dog lover with a middle-aged yellow dog, I appreciate the sentiment and the craftsmanship behind this beer a lot. Thanks for the good work and keep it up. I enjoyed a Really Old Brown Dog Ale tonight.

Russ