NEW YORK—Newcastle Brown Ale, the leading imported ale in the U.S., today announces that it is bringing back its popular Newcastle Werewolf limited edition brew just as the heat of summer fades to the cooler days of fall. On shelves from August through October, Werewolf is a dual-character, “blood red” ale that starts smooth and mellow and transforms suddenly to offer a bite of bitterness that is long and lingering.

“We are thrilled to bring back the popular Newcastle Werewolf, a proven favorite among consumers, 21 and older, retailers and on-premise operators,” said Brett Steen, Brand Manager for Newcastle, HEINEKEN USA. “During the 2012 fall season, Werewolf sales increased over 100% versus 2011 and outperformed other major seasonals during this key selling period[2]. This year, we have the incremental support in place to scare up even greater sales and profit for our trade partners.”

This fall, Newcastle is adding a dedicated Werewolf TV spot (national) to its arsenal of support to create even more interest and drive traffic to local retail and on-premise accounts. Local sampling (where legal) and Werewolf themed display and POS materials will be available to stop traffic and encourage patrons to experience the bite of a Werewolf for themselves.

Newcastle Werewolf is brewed with rye malts, making it naturally blood-red in color. It has an alcohol by volume (ABV) of 4.5 percent with 23.4 International Bittering Units (IBUs). Werewolf stays true to the characteristics of Newcastle Bown Ale but offers a seasonally advantageous palate – sweet berry fruit with roasted caramel notes up front followed by a bite of bitterness from the Fuggle and Golding hops at the finish.

“Werewolf’s creative label design leverages the brand’s intriguing personality,” added Steen. “What better way to toast the changing season than to offer your customers this formidable dual character brew.”

Newcastle Werewolf is available nationally from August 2013 through October 2013 in 6-packs and 12-packs priced comparably to Newcastle Brown Ale. Werewolf will also be available on draught at pubs in most major markets.

Brown Evolution

Brown ale as we know it today is a relatively modern creation, though brown beer has existed for several hundred years. Up through much of the 17th century, malted barley was dried primarily with direct heat, resulting in a harsh and smoky product. Some brews might have been lightened marginally with unmalted barley or other raw grains, as it was often noted in brewing literature of the day that the coarse character imparted by direct-heat drying was undesirable.

As brewing moved into large scale breweries early in the 18th century, coke became the preferred fuel, providing a cleaner burn and softer, less acerbic malt. Also, the degree to which it was kilned was easier to control and hence, malt could be segregated more easily by relative color from batch to batch.

Pale, amber, and brown malts, used alone or in any combination, were employed to produce the brews available in pubs. Successive worts made from a single mash would have produced several beers of different strengths. This combination of malt blends and wort gravity meant that there was a lot of variation. Add age to equation, and it gets even more diverse.

Most beers were in the amber to brown range, according to brewing documents. A nomenclature evolved to differentiate the brews, with stout, stock, stale, mild, pale, and brown among these terms. There may have been a fair number of designations, but to this point, styles were really not well-defined.

Segregation of beer into styles found a watershed in 1817, when Daniel Wheeler invented the drum kiln. It was the able to dry and toast malt without contact with the fuel, allowing the unencumbered flavor of the malt to come through. He produced roasted barley, dubbed black patent, that was added separately to a grist where desired. Modern stout and porter, containing these black malts, were born. Beers made with the patented malt were henceforth known as black beers and those without, brown. Brown ale would acquire its signature from this very movement with the development of lightly roasted and caramelized malts.

Though favored as a proletarian brew in much of England through a good portion of the 19th century, an overall lull in the demand for brown brews coincided with a movement towards pale beers, both ale and lager, into the 20th century. Brown ale was considered somewhat stodgy, but nevertheless held on just enough to keep in pubs throughout London and some other pockets of England as a session beer. Before long, one of today’s famous brewers would reintroduce the world to the pleasures of brown ale, and essentially define once and for all the modern style.

Prior to 1927, bottled versions of dark mild ale were marketed as brown ale. To capitalize on the demand for bottled beers, the brewmaster of Scottish and Newcastle, Jim Porter, was given the task of formulating a beer to fill that niche. His Newcastle Brown Ale, introduced in 1927, was designed to cater to the local working class, and was so superbly-crafted that it won a gold medal at the Brewers’ Exposition in London in 1928. The style moniker remains, the legacy of “Nookie Brown” secure since. Contemporary browns may be more aggressive in their character, but are no more drinkable than the tawny original. Nutty, with a delicate caramel background and dryish finish, no beer seems easier on the palate.

Scottish & Newcastle (S&N) is Britain’s biggest brewer and it’s the only one of the top four beer giants in the country that is still British controlled. Coors and Interbrew own the former Bass and Whitbread groups, with Carlsberg of Denmark occupying fourth spot and controlling the Tetley ale brand.

But S&N has international ambitions. It owns the French Kronenbourg breweries and dominates Russia through the Baltika consortium that it owns jointly with Carlsberg. S&N has been busily rationalizing its British operation in order to concentrate on promoting Kronenbourg, and its Russian and Baltic interests.

Earlier this year, it announced it would close its historic Fountainbridge Brewery in Edinburgh, the Scottish capital and seat of the country’s newly independent parliament. In a nice touch of irony, the new Scottish parliament building is being constructed on the site of another closed S&N plant.

Then in April, the group said it would also close its Newcastle brewery. Newcastle is a major English city and port on the River Tyne in the far northeast of the country, close to the Scottish border. One of Newcastle’s main claims to fame is Newcastle Brown Ale, a leading British brand and one that is widely exported. Americans can drink it on draft, a pleasure denied us Brits, as it’s available here only in bottled form.

S&N’s moves have created a storm of protest. In Scotland it has taken a 30 percent stake in Caledonian Brewery, a revered independent company in Edinburgh. S&N will brew its McEwan’s 80 Shilling Ale at Caledonian alongside such award-winning beers as Deuchar’s IPA, which won the Champion Beer of Britain competition in 2002, and Golden Promise, the country’s first organic beer.

While the Caledonian management will remain nominally in charge of the brewery, S&N’s track record of buying and closing breweries does not hold out much hope for the future independence of the company or its longevity. S&N is also likely to suggest to the Caledonian team that beers such as Deuchar’s, brewed from the finest Golden Promise malting barley and Fuggles and Goldings whole hops, are expensive to make. The advantages of using maize grits, torrefied wheat and hop oil, as used in McEwan’s 80 Shilling, will no doubt be stressed.

In Newcastle, S&N has run into criticism on two counts. It has bought a brewery in the town of Gateshead, on the other side of the Tyne, and will brew Newcastle Brown and other beers there. The Gateshead plant is known as the Federation Brewery and has been run since the end of World War I as a cooperative, owned by workingmen’s clubs. (Unlike a pub, you have to be a member to drink in a club.) There is considerable anger at S&N’s plans, which will end this rich slice of independent blue-collar enterprise.

And by moving from Newcastle to Gateshead, S&N will lose a protected status ordinance given by the European Union to Newcastle Brown. This prevents other brewers from producing beers with Newcastle in the title if they are not brewed in the city. The Campaign for Real Ale, which is keen to win similar protection for other British beer styles, has castigated S&N for its ham-fisted loss of European authorization. The company says it will hold talks with the EU with a view to keeping the ordinance, but somehow I can’t see a beer called Gateshead Brown Ale having quite the same ring to it.

While the brewing giants in Britain close plants and concentrate on international lager brands, there are powerful signs of a major revival of ale brewing among the country’s regional and micro breweries. In May I visited the county of Cumbria, in England’s northwest, which includes the beautiful Lake District made famous by William Wordsworth and other poets. Twenty years ago there were just two breweries in Cumbria. Today there are 14 and similar signs of revival can be found throughout the country.

In spite of the best efforts of the giants, British ale is back on the agenda.

The Roots

Until about 300 years ago, most English beer was dark, murky, and often dubiously fermented with wild yeast. It had some smoky character, as malt was dried over wood or coal fires. Often, the malt was referred to as “brown malt.” At a time when a single malt was used to make beer, it is easy to see why the beers had the character that they did.

Multiple batch brewing was common in the Middle Ages. Successive worts were drawn from the mash via saturation and draining of the grist. Each batch produced a lower-strength wort and was designated stout, strong brown, common brown, and intire, in decreasing order of strength. Common brown is an approximation of today’s brown ale, but was significantly stronger.

Eventually, malting skills progressed to the point where some specific types of malt were produced. These ran the gamut from pale through amber, brown, and even dark brown. These malts were mixed in different ratios, or used alone, to produce a rainbow of ales, including porter, brown ale, stout, mild, and pale ales, with porter often being the dominant brew. Sometimes, finished beers—some aged, some new—were blended.

By the early 19th century, newly developed pale malts spawned something of a revolution in brewing. Pale ales were brewed extensively in central England, but brown ales held fort in other areas of England as a distinctive alternative, especially in London and later in the northeast. Brown ales were further distilled as a style with the London brewers favoring a darker, sweeter, low-strength beer, while those in the northeast made theirs stronger, crisper, and lighter in color. These two delineations still exist.

The advent of homebrewing and microbrewing in America had yet another profound effect on brown ale formulations. As they were not necessarily beholden to traditional parameters, these experimental brewers played with the ingredients enough to warrant recognition of a neo-brown style. They preserved color and malt character but pushed the hop envelope significantly by using generous amounts for both bittering and aroma. They also brewed to a higher gravity. Brown ale is now a popular brew all across America.