Newcastle Brown Ale: Two Mr Browns help in search for bottles

Newcastle Brown Ale has had many special editions over the years. Labels marking this event or that celebrity have kept collectors busy. But one man from Tyneside believes he is close to getting all of them, with a little help from two men called Brown.

Michael Hewitt has a lot of bottles of Brown Ale.

"Too many, my wife would say," he admits - during a conversation about how many more he wants to collect - so she may have to be "very understanding" a while longer.

"I moved up to Scotland for her so I think it's almost my way of holding on to my roots. She does get it, but I don't know how impressed she is about having the front room of the house covered in bottles and various Newcastle memorabilia."

The 42-year-old company finance director, from Whickham in Gateshead but now living in Motherwell, keeps track of the bottles he needs with a spreadsheet and a virtual "detective's wall" of pictures.

The problem is official records of what was made are sparse. As Brown Ale's current owner - Heineken - discovered when Michael went to them for help, no-one was really taking notes when most of these bottles were produced.

"Label design was a lot more off-the-cuff back then," the company said.

"Someone on site would just quickly mock up a design, send it off to the label supplier and there would probably be a short run of less than an hour's production. It's a real shame, because I guess back then nobody really considered this would be something that, in the future, people would be clamouring for and collecting."

In 2021, Michael told the BBC he had about 110 bottles. Now he has nearly 200 but, the more he finds, the more he discovers there are.

"I've probably unearthed about 20 in the last two years that other collectors didn't know existed," he says.

"It's part of the fun I suppose."

One bottle poses a problem. The "build a break" campaign offered a free snooker cue in return for peeled-off labels, leaving an entire run likely to be missing the one thing Michael wants. He said he hadn't even found a picture of this elusive edition.

Others on his wish-list feature Intercity trains, the Blaydon Races and an offer for a Swiss watch - presumably less popular than the snooker cue since bottles with labels intact do still exist, Michael says. He is also searching for versions celebrating a tabloid photographer, a newspaper editor and a footballer.

The brewers of Newcastle Brown in the '80s and '90s clearly liked a pun.

The beer's nickname, Brown Dog - arising from the old "walking the dog" euphemism for a trip to the pub - led to an advertising campaign showing bottles herding sheep, casting canine shadows or being snarled at by cats. The Lunar New Year of the Dog in 1994 was clearly a gift, though that is another one missing from Michael's collection.

So it is not surprising that, among the many household names immortalised further by an appearance on the front of a bottle, were two politicians with the surname Brown: Newcastle East MP Nick Brown and former prime minister and chancellor Gordon Brown.

Two versions were made. One was a "surprise giveaway" at a fundraising social in Newcastle and the second batch was handed out as souvenirs at an event just before the 2010 General Election, Nick Brown says.

One set has the customary blue star, one comes without and, raising the desirability stakes even higher, there are signed bottles too.

Both Mr Browns have offered to give Michael one of their personalised bottles. Wishing him well in completing his collection, Nick Brown nevertheless said he thought it was "quite a task to collect every version that S&N ever produced".

As well as special editions for events and celebrities, Newcastle's mayor would get souvenir bottles every year "essentially celebrating" the connection between the company and the city, the local MP said. He added it had been a "great honour" to be acknowledged by the company which "back in the day was very proactive in public life in Newcastle-upon-Tyne".

Brown Ale has had four homes and three owners since its inception at the Tyne Brewery in 1927. One merger, a handful of takeovers and couple of relocations later, the beer is now made in both North Yorkshire and the Netherlands, about an hour away from Heineken's headquarters.

What little archive that remains is scattered and, with it, any hope of compiling a definitive list of special edition bottles. But Michael's search continues, with trips to the Isle of Wight, Shropshire and back home to pick up the latest find.

Some cost him more than others, with £150 the most he has spent on one bottle, but his collection is worth much less than people might speculate, he says.

"It's hard to put a value on bottles because sometimes people think they're worth more because of sentimental value and sometimes people think they're worth nothing because they're sitting gathering dust in a loft or shed," he says.

Some bottles - made collectable by the addition of a signature rather than a label - are slightly outside Michael's remit.

In 1991, to raise funds for famine relief in Africa, 50 celebrities - stars such as Clint Eastwood and Sean Connery and local heroes like Mark Knopfler, Gazza and Sting - were persuaded by Scottish & Newcastle to sign a bottle each.

Dustin Hoffman's and Omar Shariff's bottles went for £360 at auction last year.

Michael said he was very keen to track down some of the other 48, "although my wife might have a different opinion".

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