The life and times of the North East’s favourite tipple

IT is almost 90 years ago to the day the region’s favourite beverage was first launched. Newcastle Brown Ale was launched after three years of development under lead brewer Colonel Jim Porter on April 25, 1927.

Rumour has it a day after it went on sale, police requested the drink’s strength be lowered with so many drinkers spending the night in their cells.

The blue star which is now synonymous with the tipple was introduced a year later – the five points representing each of the five founding Tyneside breweries.

Interestingly, the launch of the famous beer came just weeks before Newcastle United won their last league title.

The drink’s launch was Newcastle Breweries’ response to a rise in the demand for bottled beer in the wake of the First World War, and it won several prizes at the International Brewers’ Exposition in London in 1928.

Demand for ‘The Brown Dog’ grew from the onset of the Second World War and by the 1960s the beer had come to symbolise the North East.

By the late 1990s, it was the most widely distributed alcoholic product in the UK which could count Hollywood star Clint Eastwood as one of its many fans across the pond.

But sadly while the legendary taste remains the same, the regional links for Newcastle Brown Ale now exist in name alone.

The manufacture of Brown Ale was moved from its Newcastle home to the Federation Brewery in Gateshead in 1999, before controversially being taken out of the North East in 2010 to its current home in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire.

British troops guarding a six-foot bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale, in front of a tank

Newcastle United manager and England World Cup winner, Jackie Charlton, clowns around with an oversized bottle of Newcastle Brown Ale, to the amusement of players before the team picture is taken, in 1984