Strange, There's no mention at all of Duff or Fudd the premium beer Springfield offers.D-OH!!!

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By ERIC ASIMOV Published: January 24, 2007 BROWN is not exactly the color of excitement. To achieve a hint of glamour, brown must adopt more seductive aliases, like chestnut, cocoa or cafe au lait. Unaltered, brown might as well be plain vanilla, the blah-est of moods, the Charlie Brownest of the ordinary. “Brown shoes don’t make it,” Frank Zappa sang in a more cutting assessment of this most defenseless of colors.

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Multimedia Interactive Feature Wines of The Times: Altbiers and Other Brown Ales Related Pairings : Deep Brown, Sweet and Rich, Onion Soup Provides Perfect Harmony (January 24, 2007) So how is one to talk up what the British for centuries have so doggedly called brown ale, except when they were using the alternate, equally soporific mild ale? The Germans haven’t done much better. Their own version of brown ale, long the signature beer of the Düsseldorf region in northwestern Germany, is called altbier, literally old beer.

Ever creative and unbeholden to tradition, American craft brewers have made the brown-ale style their own. The name, alas, remains brown.

Perhaps it’s left to us, the Dining section’s tasting panel, to rescue brown ales from marketing torpidity and reveal the vitality within, for these beers are anything but dull. Yes, they are quiet, subtle and even self-effacing. More important, they are delicious, and they especially shine with food. For the tasting, Florence Fabricant and I were joined by two guests, Richard Scholz, an owner of Bierkraft in Park Slope, Brooklyn, and Lew Bryson, a beer writer and managing editor of Malt Advocate magazine.

As with great character actors who are so easy to take for granted, you have to pay close attention to brown ales to appreciate their virtue. They have roles to play — quenching thirst, facilitating conversation, sharpening the appetite — and they do it well. If by chance you notice the fine, almost sweet maltiness of the aroma, and the brisk, dry, mineral quality of the flavors, even better. More likely, it’s the absence of these qualities in a poor example that stands out, conveying the sense of something missing.

Brown ales come in more than one flavor. The British offer two styles, the crisper northern brown ale and the softer, sweeter southern ale. German altbiers tend to be earthier and fruitier, with a refreshingly bitter aftertaste. And the American brown ales; well, if it is possible to turn up the volume on this sedate style, American craft brewers will find a way, often by adding the citrus and pine aromas of American hops.

The result is a stylistic hodgepodge of beers bound primarily by their color, and even that is a stretch. For while all the beers were indeed brown, they represented every shade of brown, from copper, tawny and brick to mahogany bordering on black.

“It’s such a stylistic spectrum,” Mr. Scholz said, “that you have to evaluate them by asking what is good to drink.”

By that criterion, the very best was Ellie’s Brown Ale from the Avery Brewing Company in Boulder, Colo., which had such a beautiful malt aroma that sniffing it seemed like pleasure enough. But drinking it was awfully good, too, with its interwoven flavors of smoke, fruit and minerals.

Our No. 2 beer, Goose Island Nut Brown Ale from Chicago, had a roasted malt aroma and flavors that were elegant, deep and balanced. Like the best of these ales, it made you want to keep drinking it, not much of a problem since the alcohol levels generally hover around a low 5 percent.

Goose Island was one of three beers with the enticing moniker Nut Brown, fittingly evocative of old England as it was derived from Samuel Smith’s Nut Brown Ale, a classic of the northern English style. Smith’s, a no-nonsense brew, has long been one of my favorites, offering earthy, dry flavors and a refreshing balance between malts and hops.

While our top two beers were both American, our No. 3, the Long Trail Double Bag Ale from Vermont, was the first to epitomize a distinctly American style, with aromas from American hops. Should you wonder about the origin of the name Double Bag, the label’s image of a well-endowed cow will resolve the issue.

Domestic beers dominated our selection, with 18 American brown ales against four from Germany, two from England and one from the Netherlands, and they accounted for eight of our top 10 brews.

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