Hello friends! Happy Thursday! We’ve had a great week at Trek. Saturday was the Tasty Buns and Craft Beer festival at the Newark Mannerchor. We LOVED getting to meet so many of you there. We debuted the Red Ale at the festival and had lots of good feedback about it, and we’re excited to put it on tap at Trek soon. Saturday night was awesome, we had a full crowd again and everyone enjoyed Poppy’s Roadside Diner so much that we decided to bring him back on Friday! That’s right– FRIDAY! We’ll be open from 5-9 on BOTH Friday AND Saturday this week. Friday we’ll have Poppy’s outside, and Saturday we’ll be joined by Smitty’s Real Pit BBQ. We’re excited to expand our hours a little bit, and we’re looking forward to extending them more!

It’s been awhile since we did a style spotlight. In our March post about what is in our fermenters, we mentioned that we have a hoppy brown ale in the works. So why not take a moment to talk about brown ales?

The craft beer industry spends a lot of time focused on the “ends” of the spectrum of beer- we’ve got the IPA’s which are super hoppy, all the way to the Stouts- which are overly malty. As an industry, we don’t spend a whole lot of time looking at the middle, and the middle is where the brown ale resides.

Much like the Red Ale that we’ve talked a lot about, the Brown Ale is a very balanced beer. It gets it’s name (shockingly) from it’s color. There are a couple of recognized styles of Brown Ales.

English Style Brown Ale

The English-style brown ale ranges from dry nutty maltiness to sweet chocolate maltiness depending on the region. English Browns are not bitter, in fact, they have very little hop flavor or aroma. It is low in alcohol and it is extremely sessionable. It pairs well with several different types of food.

The American Brown Ale

The American Brown Ale has caramel and chocolate like characteristics, evident in both the aroma and the taste. The American-style brown ales also have much more evidence of hops than their English counterparts. While they aren’t overly hoppy, the consumer should be able to note the hop flavor and aroma, as well as the bitterness.

Trek’s Brown Ale is a hop forward American Brown. It’s all kinds of deliciousness wrapped up in one beer. Our Brown Ale has rich chocolate malt character, with a big hit of hops to balance it all out. We love this beer, and it’s easy to pair with just about any food that you’re thinking about. We plan to have it on tap soon (maybe even this weekend) and we predict it will become one of our taproom staples.

We’re looking forward to another great weekend, and we hope to see you at the brewery on Friday and/or Saturday from 5-9!

Cheers friends!