The Fast Rise and Slow Death of Pete's Wicked Ale

Imagine the world of American brewing in 1980 like you would a new continent. The first pioneers had landed, set up a beachhead, and were prepared to fan out and stake their claims. At that moment, none of them knew much about the continent, nor which places would later be considered prime real estate. Like little kings, they began planting flags: Fritz Maytag on the state called "steam beer," Ken Grossman in "Pale Aleland." I remember these early days clearly, as skirmishes broke out in the Northwest. Amber ales (Portland Brewing's MacTarnahan's v. Full Sail Amber) and hefeweizens (Pyramid v. Widmer) were hot properties. In Bend, Gary Fish wondered if he could build an empire on some scraggly brush land no one seemed to highly regard: Porterlandia.

Nationally, one of the most successful companies was Pete's Wicked, which from shortly after its founding until the "great shakeout" of the late 90s was the country's second largest craft brewery. It's sort of wild to imagine, but the flagship brand was Wicked Ale, a brown. I was put in mind of this as I perused this question of "foundational" beers. Back in about 1995, you could have been forgiven for thinking that the future of craft brewing was going to be brown ales and Vienna lagers. Instead, earlier this year, Jay Brooks broke the news that the brand would end production in May. Gambrinus (of the Shiner, BridgePort, Trumer Gambrinuses) bought Pete's out in 1998, just at the moment its star began to dim.

The story of Pete's is an interesting case study in brewing failures of the 90s, but it's too often told as a business story. What fascinates me is the failure of the style to take hold. In that great land grab, founder Pete Slosberg went all-in on browns, and for a decade it looked like Shangri-la. But then something happened; tastes changed, the market evolved, and now you can't give browns away. So what happened?

In my "foundational beer" post, I posited that one beer's success can help define tastes that create a market for beers of that type. Whether that's true or not, it's obvious some styles do gather momentum, while others lose it--sometimes completely. I posit no theories here, but I'd be interested in hearing if you have some. Such as:

• In the 1990s, lots and lots of people drank and enjoyed brown ales. What happened?
  
• What causes styles to wax and wane in popularity?
• Are there current styles that sell very well that we may regard, from 2025, as bizarre anomalies, like the browns of 1995?
  

I mean really, brown ales. What the ... ?

The Brown Beers of Spring

Charting the currents of beer trends leads you into strange waters. How, for instance, did brown ale become the beer of spring? I waited for well over a decade to see a decent brown hit the commercial market, and when it finally did--I'm thinking of Buzzsaw here--it was quickly followed up by another, Beer Town from BridgePort. And just yesterday, I discovered the current Full Sail Brewmaster Reserve--a Nut Brown. From nowhere to official Spring beer in a couple years--who'dda thunk?

It's a good style for Oregon Spring. Breweries used to release lighter, sunnier brews that didn't match the chilly, slate-colored reality. They were overly optimistic. Browns are lighter than winter styles, but hearty and warming, befitting a climate that can deliver drizzly, mid-50s weather through May.

About Browns
Brown ales are the forgotten stepchild in American brewing. Whenever they are taken up, it seems like an afterthought to fill out a line between pales and stouts. But brown ales should be something more than a pale with chocolate malt.

In England, the venerable Newcastle brewery actually introduced its beer as a rival to pale ales in 1927. That beer is light and bright, with toffee and banana notes. Other browns can have a richer, winier quality while others are nutty.

Full Sail Nut Brown
Of the three bottle browns now available, Full Sail's pushes further out into the hearty and robust than Beer Town and Buzzsaw. It pours out almost porter-dark, but light does refract through, revealing a bright, deep brown. The aroma is floral/citrusy, lifted up by nutty malt. It is sweet on the front of the palate, but slightly earthy and rooty. In fact, it even has a root beer quality. The malt is quite nutty, tending toward astringent in the manner of almonds or walnuts. Browns should be creamy, and this one is--almost frothily so. I tend to like browns with a little more oomph, and I enjoyed the depth and richness here.

Stats
Hops/Malt: Unknown
Alcohol By Volume: 6%
Original Gravity: Unknown
BUs: 31
Available: Until June, in 22 ounce bottles
Rating: B+

BridgePort's Beertown Brown

Brown ales are having their moment. Last year, Deschutes released Buzzsaw Brown and this year BridgePort has introduced Beertown Brown. Even the New York Times is hip to the trend. Browns are a worthy and neglected style, one of the only traditional English ales that hasn't made a dent in American brewing. But why now?

In the Jan 22 New Yorker, Eric Konigsberg describes the trend in colors, and maybe there's a hint here. Colors, as you know, follow the mood of the age (you do know that, don't you?): flamboyant and pschedelic in the drug-washed 70s, metalic and gray in the techno-greedy 80s. The aughts, it appears, are gloomy:

"I see an influence from the military situation, and I think it's going to be with us for a while," [pigment specialist Catherin Wunch] said. "I kind of see colors for 2008 as being grayed." Wunch, who has short hair in a square a businesslike cut, passed around a handful of color chips, in gray blues, gray browns, and a grayish pink....

Jill Liebson, a designer for a fabric-printing company in Florida, seemed to agree. "I think we're going to go much deeper than before, because we aren't living in optimistic times," she said. "And in the home people want deep safety."

So, brown ales. Safe and comforting, a touch sweet but not overwhelmingly so--Ovaltine for the soul. This appears to be what BridgePort had in mind with Beertown Brown, which the brewery describes as "an easygoing, drinkable beer." It's not designed to challenge, but to soothe.

Tasting Notes
I love browns, if such a thing can be said about this modest style. They are comforting and, when they're well-brewed, can be a symphony of minor notes. It's not a style that will knock your socks off, but you can be quietly impressed.

Such, sadly, is not the case with Beertown. With mild styles, the line between good and insipid isn't wide, and I'm sad to say that it is on the wrong side. In every way, it fails to measure up: the color is faded, the head fizzy and weak; it is thin of body, and the malt notes are hollow; the hopping is far too mild to provide any interest. It's a watery beer without a distinguishing character. It is not an impressive beer.

But don't take my word for it. The Denver Post gave the beer a mini-review, and they were underwhelmed, as well:

"Beertown is a bit thinner on flavor than its British forebears, with a good malt aroma but not much behind. True to the style, there's just a hint of hops in the finish. It has 5.2 percent alcohol (by volume)."

(You know a beer is timid by Northwest standards when it is regarded as a lightweight in Colorado.)

There may be reason to hope for improvement, though. I got wind of a rumor that BridgePort
may be tinkering with the recipe. Let's hope so--with some more body and 50% more hops, Beertown could easily cross back over the line into subtle excellence. And, if I'm going to manage in the face of all this gloom, I'll need the extra body and hops in my comforting brown.

Stats
Malts: Unknown
Hops: Unknown
Alcohol by volume: 5.2%
Original Gravity: 13.2° Plato
Bitterness Units: 20

Rating
Average.

On Brown Ales

The New York Times, bless their hearts, have done another beer tasting. This time brown ales:

Perhaps it’s left to us, the Dining section’s tasting panel, to rescue brown ales from marketing torpidity and reveal the vitality within, for these beers are anything but dull. Yes, they are quiet, subtle and even self-effacing. More important, they are delicious, and they especially shine with food....

As with great character actors who are so easy to take for granted, you have to pay close attention to brown ales to appreciate their virtue. They have roles to play — quenching thirst, facilitating conversation, sharpening the appetite — and they do it well. If by chance you notice the fine, almost sweet maltiness of the aroma, and the brisk, dry, mineral quality of the flavors, even better. More likely, it’s the absence of these qualities in a poor example that stands out, conveying the sense of something missing.

Eric Asimov, the Times' beer guy, knows how to write. If only he knew beer. I don't mind so much that of the 18 beers he assembled, only one is from the West Coast, or that it finished a tepid tenth in the taste-off. I don't even mind that he included, strangely, altbiers in the tasting. What I really mind is the overall failure to offer any kind of context for these decisions or the ultimate preferences. As a reader, how is anyone supposed to evaluate the difference between Avery's Ellie's Brown ("Brisk, with rich malt aromas. Fruit, mineral and bitter hop flavors") and Sam Smith's Nut Brown ("Strong malty aroma, with dry, brisk flavors that linger"). Both are brisk and richly/strongly malty.

I might not have bothered mentioning all of this, but I have a bottle of the Beertown Brown, BridgePort's latest, in the fridge awaiting review. I'll try to do better in my review than "brisk."

Deschutes Buzzsaw Brown

Deschutes has a couple of new beers on the shelf, news definitely worth noting. I'll review the replacement for the woeful Quail Springs IPA tomorrow. Tonight it's Buzzsaw Brown.

Brown ales are the forgotten stepchild in American brewing. Whenever they are taken up, it seems like an afterthought to fill out a line between pales and stouts. But brown ales should be something more than a pale with chocolate malt.

In England, the venerable Newcastle brewery actually introduced its beer as a rival to pale ales in 1927. That beer is light and bright, with toffee and banana notes. Other browns can have a richer, winier quality while others are nutty. The best beer I ever brewed was a brown, which was the result of a brewing error: we forgot the finishing hops and so decided to dump them in the carboy with the wort. Thus did we invent (hundreds of years after the fact) dryhopping.

Tasting notes
Despite the name, Buzzsaw is a deep, bright red (which is actually appropriate to style). The nose is malty and has a fresh bakery characteristic--scone? Having poked my own nose into many a Black Butte, I found a lot about the beer that was familiar--like many great breweries, Deschutes has developed a house aroma.

The palate is also familiar--sweet and light, also akin to Black Butte. There are a few hops, enough to give the beer additional interest and balance. It's essentially a session ale, so it's not bursting with intensity. Yet it's that kind of beer that immediately has a comfortable, recognizeable quality, like you've been tippling pints for decades.

Deschutes is recognizeably one of Oregon's world-class breweries, and turning out beers like this is why.

Stats
Hops: Unknown
Alcohol By Volume: 4.8%
Original Gravity: Unknown
BUs: 30

Rating
Excellent