King Crown Brown Ale

Formerly brewed at King Brewing Company
Style: Brown Ale
Pontiac, Michigan USA

Bottle from Belo Vino. Poured a clear dark brown color with a moderate frothy off-white head that was mostly lasting with good lacing. Medium sweet toasted malty aroma. Medium body. Medium bittersweet flavor with a medium sweet finish of moderate duration. Drinkable brew.

12oz bottle, no date. Clear brownish ruby with a tiny bubbly beige ring. Upon cracking the bottle, I took a quick whiff and got the unmistakable aroma of beef jerky. Nosing the glass, it’s still there, but not as up front. Besides the salted meat, some light roasted and toasted malts and brown sugar round out the aroma. No smoked meat or jerky in the flavor, but there is still the salty characteristic. The roast comes off as a little ashy, unfortunately, and there isn’t any brown sugar to be found. The fact that there is almost no carbonation at all makes the body seem much heavier than it is. Not too bad despite a few shortcomings.

Medium brown with no head from tap at brew pub. Medium body. Can taste the roasted nutty flavor. Nothing extreme. Good Session beer.

This bottled brew from a bottle shop poured almost no head with just a few medium sized clear colored bubbles that were quickly diminishing and left behind a transparent almost uncarbonated brown colored body and thin oily lacing. The aroma was malty with mild brown malt and sweet notes. The semi-flat mouth feel was weakly tingly at the start and mediumly tingly at the finish. The flavor contained notes of sweet malt sweet and brown malt. Not one that I would likely buy again.

Bottle. Very small tan head that mostly diminished, no lacing, visible carbonation, transparent, and a reddish brown hue. Nose was malty, chocolate, nutty, and mildly roasty. Flavor was malty, chocolate, roasty, semi-sweet and thin. Tingly, thin mouthfeel. Light body. Very quaffable, almost too easy to drink. Decent, but most probably will not seek out again as there are better ones out there of this style.

Almost opaque, dark brown with ruby highlights and a thin, tan head. Toasty, nutty aroma with some milk and dark fruit as well. Lightly, toasty sweet, some caramel malt character that is balanced nicely by acidity and fruity esters. The only downer is a subtle rubbery flavor in the finish. This is actually the first beer from King that did not taste like it was made with unfiltered, highly chlorinated water.

I messed up and poured this out with an entire glass full of foam. Bottle is from Jim (walleye) Thanks! Pours dark brown, with a giant head (probably due to me not letting it settle out after shipping). Smells malty, rich, fruity. Taste is sweet and has a sort of metallic aftertaste that is not unpleasant, but not really desired either. Its sweet and pleasing to drink, as most brown ales are. This could easily be a session beer. Not bad at all.

(12 oz bottle: Obtained 06-Mar-06 in trade with Sully, thanks Mike!) While I’m not wild about the way this beer smells, the flavor isn’t bad. Chocolaty, lightly roasty, and only mildly sweet and bitter, the beer has a pleasant flavor but isn’t especially generous with sharing it. These elements are also present in the nose, but there is a bit of "stinky feet" that’s distracting me. Pretty decent mouthfeel for a brown ale: medium bodied from start to finish, average carbonation, maybe even a slight creaminess in the finish. Dark ruddy-brown in color, a bit darker than mahogany, with only slight transparency. The light-tan head is slow to form on the pour, lazily building to a quarter inch, and then fully dissipating after awhile. Nothing spectacular here, even within the brown ale category, and it’s quite uneventful, but the chocolate flavor is pleasant enough.