For Chris Donald, Newcastle Brown Ale is more than simply the best grog on the Tyne - it's part of his home town's identity.
As you drive into Newcastle from the southwest, a broad new thoroughfare sweeps up from the Redheugh Bridge towards the temple of St James' Park. St James' Boulevard is the Geordie equivalent of Wembley Way and at its apex stands a gigantic symbol of local pride. No, not the football ground. Obscuring that is a towering edifice, a Sixties office obelisk topped with a blue neon star. For me, this is the real Angel of the North. This is the hq of Newcastle Breweries, the home of Brown Ale.
'Newkie Broon' was never my tipple. Locally, it enjoys a certain, perhaps unjustified reputation for its corrosive powers. Its nickname, 'dog', is supposed to derive from the euphemism 'walk the dog', meaning to nip out for a quick pint. But I suspect it has a lot more to do with its bite.
It also had a name for being an old man's drink. This year, in an attempt to broaden the market, the brewery is launching a draught version in the uk. Not that it's short of sales - 1.5 million pints of the stuff leave the brewery every week. More than half is exported, to markets as far afield as Ecuador, Siberia and the us. Despite their reluctance to be seen drinking it from a pint bottle (they prefer it in halves), the Americans have taken to 'Broon' in a big way. Perhaps that's because, like two of their own leading exports (Kentucky Fried Chicken and, to a lesser extent, Elvis), Newcastle Brown was the creation of a colonel. While his face may not be as familiar as that of kfc's Colonel Sanders, Colonel James Herbert Porter's secret recipe has earned him a place in Tyneside folklore.
Porter was not a Geordie. He was a posh bloke from Burton on Trent who commanded the 6th Battalion of the North Staffordshire Regiment in the first world war. His father was a master brewer and, after leaving the army, Porter went to work at the Newcastle Breweries where, in 1924, he set about creating a brand new bottled ale.
It took Porter and the company's chief chemist, Archie Jones, three years to perfect their new brew, which was launched in April 1927 - an event marked by a notice in the local paper. "You have tasted nothing quite the same as this before..." the ad boldly announced. "Let your own good judgement tell you how excellent Newcastle Brown Ale really is." In the same week, Newcastle United were crowned champions of the football league and, while Tynesiders toasted their success with a bottle of the new beer, in the sky above them a spectacular landmark was taking shape - the new Tyne Bridge. All in all, 1927 was a good year for Geordies.
The following year at the International Brewers' Exhibition in London, the new ale won the prestigious Brewers' Exhibition Challenge Cup for best bottled beer, plus first prize for the best brown ale in a bottle. The label design was hastily changed to incorporate the winning medals, and they've been there ever since.
More than three decades later, in 1962, Colonel Porter was the chairman of the company, a Howard Hughes-like figure ensconced in a grand office high above the brewery. "Colonel Porter was God," says Reg Evans, a brewer for almost 40 years. "Everyone talked about him, but you never saw him." Reg was working on the distribution side of the business when he helped foil a beer theft. Shortly afterwards, he was summoned upstairs to meet the colonel. "Someone told me I might get a £25 reward," Reg recalls. "But instead the colonel offered me a new job. The company was introducing shift brewers and he asked me if I fancied giving it a try." Instead of a £25 reward, Reg left the colonel's office with his salary increased from £495 to more than £1,000.
"There were a lot of manual skills involved in brewing in those days. You had to gauge the temperature in the mash-mixer - half a degree out and it would affect the beer's quality. And there were huge wheels that you had to turn to add the malts and water to the mix. You had to get the balance just right. It was a bit like driving a car - hard at first, but after ten minutes you soon got the hang of it."
Reg hung up his dipstick in 1996 and now works as a guide at the brewery. I'd hoped he could show me a few people shovelling malt, flocculating wort, sparging grist or perhaps lautering trub. (I don't know a thing about brewing, but I'm a big fan of the vocabulary.) Alas, I might just as well have visited a nuclear power station. The console from which operations are controlled resembles the bridge of the Starship Enterprise. In the new £10-million computerised brewhouse, the coppers are indistinguishable from the cookers and the mixers merge with maturation vessels. They're all big stainless-steel things with pipes coming out of the top. I reach for my notebook and pray that the conversation doesn't get too technical.
Is there a secret recipe or a special ingredient that distinguishes Newcastle Brown Ale from other beers? "It's not the brewing," says Reg modestly. "It's the treatment the barley gets beforehand at the maltings that gives a beer its distinctive taste. There'll be three, four or five different malts that go into a beer, in different quantities. Of course, we never tell anyone what goes into ours. That's the secret."
That might explain the taste, but not the awesome reputation. For me, the real secret of Newcastle Brown is geographical - the brewery's physical presence at the heart of the city. Geordies are proud of their beer. They take it with them everywhere they go. The warship HMS Newcastle hands out crates of the stuff to civic dignitaries at every foreign port of call. The unique bond between the Geordie people and their product has resulted in Newcastle Brown being awarded European Union Protected Geographical Indication (PGI) status. Under a new scheme designed to help protect and promote regional food heritage, PGI status is available only to products produced within a specific geographical area that have a reputation, features or qualities attributable to that area.
I briefly contemplate raising the topic of EU food legislation with Reg, but decide to talk about football instead. Until recently, Alan Shearer and Co wore the Newcastle Brown label on their chests. Sales of replica United shirts soared because Geordie fans were just as proud of their beer as they were of their team. I ask Reg about historical ties between the brewery and the football club, and it turns out that for the last hour I've been talking to one.
"I used to play over there," he says, aiming a casual nod in the direction of St James' Park. "Only a handful of games, mind." Sure enough, later when I get home, there he is staring out at me from my Who's Who of Newcastle United. "Reginald Evans. Outside left, 1956-1959. Debut: September 1958 against Wolverhampton Wanderers..." Now there's a Geordie who isn't short of a few stories to tell his grandchildren.