The Smooth Brown: Long Trail Brewing's "Hit the Trail Ale"Jun 26 '03 Write an essay on this topic.
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The Bottom Line Long Trail’s Hit the Trail Ale lacks a bit of the grandness and the roasted nuttiness of its English forebearers but it is especially drinkable. A good quaffable brown ale.
The Long Trail Brewing Company in Bridgewater Corners, Vermont is one of those microbrewers that a lot of beer drinkers overlook. In fact, they’re kind of taken for granted by a lot of us here in the northern East Coast/New England area where their distribution is centered. Long Trail Ale is the beer you pick up without a second thought a lot of the time. It’s a basic, humble beer, and a beer that is ”quaffable” as Beerfly would say. And Long Trail is that kind of brewer. Since their founding in 1989, they have continued to produce an assortment of basic, tasty, and solid brews that most people generally like. They are the number one beer in Vermont and Long Trail Ale remains a staple in a lot of dedicated beer fridges across the Northeast. Admittedly, I never gave them a second thought and then I found some Hit the Trail Ale in my “Long Trail Summer Survival” sampler pack (the pack also includes their Long Trail Ale, IPA, and Blackbeary Wheat). Hit the Trail Ale is a brown ale, another style of ale that is somewhat overlooked here in the US, but still popular in the United Kingdom. Long Trail states that their brown ale is based on the ”northern English style brown ale and features 3 malted barleys” and features the addition of ”dark brown sugar” in the brewing process. Hit the Trail Ale pours to a tawny brown color with an immediate frothy head and a blast of fragrance. There’s a definite hop kick hiding in here somewhere and the immediate taste of sweetness, even caramel, is soon balanced out by drier tones coming in at the finish. The sweetness is prevalent, of course, but a dry fruitiness mixes in well beneath, and the beer finishes with a satisfying kick. There is a bit of the brown ale nuttiness here that so many enjoy but it’s quite subdued. Still, it’s very easy to quaff the night away with a few of these. This is an especially good session beer in my estimation. Long Trail describes it as “smooth brown, smooth down,” and it lives up to that billing. I really enjoyed this one (four stars). Some reviewers will find that Hit the Trail Ale detracts a bit from the agreed upon style but beer reviewers do tend to quibble about standards and such. Other notable brown ales include Brooklyn Brown Ale, Pete’s Wicked Ale, Smutty Nose’s Old Brown Dog, Shipyard’s Brown Ale and, of course, the granddaddies of Newcastle Brown Ale, and Samuel Smith’s Brown Ale. Would I have another? Even though Long Trail’s Hit the Trail Ale lacks a bit of the grandness and the roasted nuttiness of its English forebearers, it does compare favorably with its American counterparts. It is especially drinkable and one brown ale that I will enjoy again. Price Note: I have not seen Hit the Trail Ale in six-packs in my area, but the sampler 12-pack retailed for $12.99 in Connecticut and I've noted that their six packs are in the $6.50-7.50 range.  |
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