Tap Lines: Surprise, brown ales don’t have to be boring Photo by Lucy Henson One of my favorite things about drinking beer is being surprised. Often those surprises come when brewers re-interpret historical styles, riding a line between tradition and the creation of something entirely new. In recent years, I’ve been particularly struck by adaptations of old British styles by breweries known for their aggressively hopped IPAs. I think of Old Man, an Extra Special Bitter from Massachusetts’s Tree House. Or Quid, an English Bitter, a recent one-off collaboration between Goodfire and Oxbow. Or Nice One Sonny, an ESB from Bissell Brothers – and tribute to the brilliant soccer star Son Heung-min – from a couple years back. So when I recently came across Bissell’s Bravura, a brown ale first released in November, I was curious, but not necessarily optimistic. Modern brewery plus older style? Check. But surely there are inherent limitations to what a brewer could do with the beer style equivalent to cuffed and pleated khakis.