Smuttynose Brewing Company - Old Brown Dog Ale

You’ve gonna love this beer as much as we love its name! Old Brown Dog is brewed with a combination of 2-row domestic Pale, Munich, Caramel, and Chocolate malts. Smuttynose hops it up with three different hops including Galena bittering, Cascade aroma, and Willamette aroma. This particular Brown Ale, first brewed in 1988 at the Northampton Brewery was one of the first "American Style Brown Ales" ever brewed and it took the Silver at the GABF it’s first year out! The dog on the label is Peter’s 9-year-old half Weimaraner half Brittany Spaniel, Olive. Note a malty nose with some fruity undertones in this filtered, medium-to-full-bodied dark amber ale. It’s definitely got more body and a bigger hop character than a traditional English Brown Ale. We found it very well balanced and offering a clean Cascade hoppy finish. Overall, well deserving of its many accolades. We loved it!

Peter Egelston, the owner and founder of Smuttynose is quite well known in the New England brewing community. Not only did he start one of the original New England brewpubs, but also has succeeded in opening a second brewpub, a brewery, and one of the most well attended beer festivals in the Northeast. You could say…he’s kinda into beer.

His beer career started in 1986 when his sister Janet and her boyfriend Mark convinced Peter to quite his teaching job in Brooklyn, New York and move to Massachusetts to open a brewpub. Why they had to convince him is beyond us! Peter stayed in Massachusetts until 1991, at which point he opened New Hampshire’s first brewpub, the Portsmouth Brewery. With two successful brewpubs under his belt, Peter was ready open his first brewery.

In 1994 Peter opened Smuttynose Brewing, which is also located in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. The brewery was built on the ruins of the Frank Jones Brewing Company, a brewery that opened in 1992 and went out of business a year later.

Peter chose to name the brewery after Smuttynose Island, one of the isles of Shoals, which lie nine miles off the coast of New Hampshire and Maine. Legend has it that mariners in the 1600s named the island for the dark seaweed-covered rock ledge that juts out from one end of the island. For over three centuries, poets, pirates and fishermen have called the Isles of Shoals home.

For more information about the brewery and scheduled tours, call (603) 436-4026 or check out their web site at www.smuttynose.com.