Drinking the brown stuff has fallen from grace over the past two decades, especially among the youth, but for those of us unmoved by fashion two items of good news have been delivered recently.  The first, that Newcastle Brown Ale is now available in draught form in the Toon, and secondly that the Mackems’ own fantastic brew Double Maxim is about to make a comeback after the heartbreaking closure of Vaux Breweries last year.  The more choice the better, I say.

I realise the vast majority of women have no interest in brown ale and neither do youth in general, because if it doesn’t come in a small bottle with a branded name on the front and costing at least at £2 a shot they simply aren’t interested.  It shows how much drinking habits have changed over the last 20 years, when lager – a “woman’s drink” back in my youth – is now the most popular alcoholic beverage in the country, and even more so among the under 25s.

Their wonderful flavours aside, sadly, the darker brews in the past were very much linked to areas of heavy industry and the “macho” image of men (the theory being the more you could drink the more of a man you were.  The biggest insult was being called a “half-pint Harry”).  Indeed, my first pub visit – when I was 13 – involved my brother Les and his mates taking me to the Gosforth Hotel for a quick drink before a visit to The Royalty cinema opposite.  I was told to sit in the corner of the lounge and not to speak.  A half-pint of lager and lime was put in front of me while he and his mates drank scotch.  The implication being it was one thing taking me into a pub to drink but I wasn’t yet a man.  Which was true.  When I wiped away the lager froth from my mouth I smudged the boot polish I’d so painstakingly put on my pre-pubescent moustache and ended up looking like I’d just done a shift down a mine.

Between then and my 18^th birthday, when my father took me to Coxlodge Club to enrol as a member, I sampled the lot, cider, Watney’s Red Barrel. Norseman Lager, homebrew, sherry, port and lemon – everything, even Federation Special.  But everytime it was brown ale I came back to.  Even on foreign holidays, after two days of gassy lager, I can be found scouring supermarkets looking for exported Broon.

Like most things, alcoholic drinks are a fashion accessory.  The Eighties and Nineties saw some strange and wonderful concoctions like alcopops, ice lager (drunk through a straw) and draughflow beers, but with fashion most things come around – Hell, kids are wearing flares again. We could now be entering a new but modified dawn for brown ales in sense that the brew is savoured rather than merely thrown down the neck as quickly as possible for effect.  Perhaps to accommodate this new trend I’ll have to drink it out of a litre bottle with a little bit of lemon wedged into the top.  Perhaps not.  I’ll just stick to a schooner glass and leave it to southerners to use a pint glass and call it Newky Brown.

It’s Double Maxim’s reappearance that particularly pleases me, though.  The guys who have stuck their necks on the line to give it a new lease of life are the ones to be with on a Friday night.  Imagine it.  The time is 11.30pm and you’re looking for somewhere to go when the pub closes.  Mere mortals go back to friends’ houses.  These people can take you back to a brewery.