Brown ale breweries, such as Whitbread, introduced a second weaker and cheaper brown ale that was sometimes just a sweetened version of dark Mild. These beers had an original gravity of around 1.037. After World War II, most breweries stopped producing these stronger brown ales, with the exception of some breweries in the northeast of England. The majority had an OG in the range 1.030–1.035, or around 3% ABV, much like Manns Brown Ale today. North American brown ales trace their heritage to American home brewing adaptations of certain northern English beers, and the English influence on American Colonial Ales. English brown
Old ale of winter warmer, similarly strong in alcohol content and usually spiced. The United Kingdom is most commonly associated with the term, winter warmer, where the United States mostly refers to them as a Christmas or Holiday beer. Some brewers will make a strong old ale for bottling. Some of these can mature for several years after bottling, and may or may not be bottle-conditioned. The "October" keeping ales are thought to have formed the basis for India pale ales shipped by the British East India Company. Another historic version was so-called "majority ale", a strong ale brewed on or around