London Brown Ale

This article originally appeared in the September/October 2009 issue of Zymurgy Magazine

By Antony Hayes

In many ways, London Brown Ale (known in the BJCP guidelines as Southern English Brown) begins and
ends with Mann’s. Mann’s Brown Ale was the first and is now one of only three remaining, enjoying some 85-percent market share (of a much reduced market). Visiting the UK today, it is difficult to believe that London Brown Ale was a major beer style as recently as the 1950s. Together with Mild Ale, it has been the major casualty of the last 50 years, and hearing someone order a Brown & Mild is now as likely as encountering a vinyl record.

The irony is that London Brown Ale was a beer born of new technology, and is one of the younger British beer styles. Mann’s Brown Ale was released in 1902 by Mann, Crossman & Paulin. The beer was invented by managing director Thomas Wells Thorpe, and first brewed at the Albion Brewery on Whitechapel Road, not far from where Jack the Ripper was active in the late 1880s. The beer was released in bottles…