Newcastle Brown Ale to be Brewed in Yorkshire? Noooooooooo!

Now I'm sorry to shatter your illusions, but The Yorkshire Foodie didn't grow up in Yorkshire. I spent my youth in the next county up, County Durham, in a town which then became part of Tyne & Wear in the local government reorganisation of the mid-seventies.

So I am well familiar with the lethal soup of the devil that is Newcastle Brown Ale. It is a north-east institution, like stotty cake, The Likely Lads, whippets and the fog on the tyne. Every red-blooded male who has grown up in the north east will have had a Brown Ale epiphany. They will either have been weaned on it like mother's milk, and find its gaseous bitterness a warming comfort on a cold winter night, or, like me, they will have puked up half a gallon of it down a back alley at 15 years old and sworn never to drink the stuff again as long as they lived.

Against that background, today's report that the loopy juice is now to be brewed in Yorkshire, is hard to comprehend. I've been looking into the background to the news.

Newcastle Brown Ale was first produced in the 1920s by Newcastle Breweries. It is said that the police requested a reduction in its strength after cells immediately became full of marauding drunks. If you go down the Bigg Market on Saturday night you'll see that nothing much has changed.

In 1960 following a merger, Brown Ale came under the wing of Scottish and Newcastle (S & N)Breweries. So when I was growing up, most of the pubs in the north east carried either the familiar blue star of S & N, or the red and gold livery of the now sadly defunct Vaux Brewery, from Sunderland. Alongside these was the network of affiliated Working Mens Clubs, serviced by the then independent Federation Brewery, on the south bank of the Tyne at Dunston, birthplace of Paul Gascoigne and my Mam's best friend Marjorie. The cry "Fower Feds Shirley Pet" would ring out every night over many a club bar across the north east's coaly wastes.

Following a decline in the popularity of the club culture, S & N bought the Federation brewery in 2004, and production of Dog* was transferred there the following year. Whilst brewing has continued there since, bottling of Newky Brown was actually moved to the John Smith's Brewery in Tadcaster, North Yorkshire in 2007.

Yesterday's announcement that S & N planned to move the actual brewing of jurneyintospayus* to Tadcaster, however, very much represents the end of an 85 year era. S & N cite falling beer sales and rising costs forcing them to close the Dunston plant next year.

Geordies are already reportedly vowing to boycott Broon when production moves south. It remains to be seen whether this will have any effect on what is another sad example of big business economics taking priority over fine British traditions.

*Newcastle Brown Ale is often known locally as 'Dog', from the euphemism "I'm going to walk the dog" - meaning "I'm going to the pub". jurneyintospayus - Journey Into Space - is another local nickname, for obvious reasons.