I’ve been writing beer articles for The Bulletin for five years now and somehow I hadn’t gotten around to writing about brown ale—until this week. My latest article is about the brown ale style with a focus on Wild Ride Brewing’s new Barracuda Brown Ale:

Wild Ride Brewing Company recently released Barracuda Brown Ale, highlighting a style that doesn’t receive much attention these days. Because American craft beer tastes trend toward stronger, highly hopped ales, brown ales tend to be drowned out. But a good brown ale is delicious and versatile, and a welcome change of pace.

Wild Ride head brewer Mike White’s approach to brewing a brown starts, unsurprisingly, with developing the malt flavor.

“It can be nutty, sweet and caramel or toffee-like,” he said via email. “Roast flavors can dominate like light coffee or dark chocolate. Then depending on that decision it will determine how to complement the hop balance.”

“For Barracuda Brown the roast, chocolate and bready malt flavors is what we wanted to take the focus,” said White. “We then used the hops to create a somewhat herbal-like balance, yet used bitterness to offset any sweetness.”

It’s a good beer—find out more when you read the article!