Santa Fe Brewing Company - Nut Brown Ale

An excellent session beer, this brown ale offers up big caramel aromas, joined by nuttiness and some hints of both maple syrup and apple, and lightly spicy hops. Less sweet on the palate than the aroma might suggest, the caramel malt notes are still front and center but balanced a bit by some light hop bitterness. We found a very noticeable apple-raisin character that fore-runs the nutty, toasty finish. For a quick pairing, nutty cheeses like Asiago or Colby work well. For something more adventurous, try sautéed duck accompanied by a pan sauce (deglaze with a Belgian witbier, a little bit of triple sec, and a few pinches of cardamom) and caramelized onions. Cheers!

Santa Fe Brewing Company can trace its spiritual lineage as far back as the year 1892, when a brewery by that name was first incorporated. Back then, refrigeration technology was not always reliable, and transportation was not always rapid, so perishable products like beer didn’t typically travel far from their points of origin. Consequently, there were a large number of breweries throughout the United States (somewhere in the ballpark of 4,000) dedicated to serving their own local communities. Santa Fe was certainly no exception. An impressive variety of beer styles were produced in this era of American brewing, not unlike today’s vast numbers of great microbrews. Sadly, most of our country’s breweries had no choice but to close down due to Prohibition, which threw our beer culture into a sort of “dark age” from which we are only recently recovering. By 1983, there were only 80 breweries operating in the U.S., but thankfully, those days are long gone. According to the Brewers Association, over 1700 breweries were in business by 2010.

The current Santa Fe Brewing Company was founded in 1988 – still relatively early on in the U.S.’s craft brewing revolution. Like a number of other brewers, Santa Fe has embraced an environmentally-friendly culture for their business: vegetable oil powers all of their delivery trucks, their packaging is sourced from 100% recycled materials, and they capture the CO2 released during fermentation to help grow algae for bio-fuel. And, being the oldest microbrewery in New Mexico has given them plenty of time to perfect their brewing skills. Their solid lineup includes around a dozen year-round and seasonal brews, made with pride from specialty malts imported from Britain and hops shipped direct from growers in Washington State. For info on brewery tours and their two Santa Fe tasting room locations, visit them at www.santafebrewing.com or call 505-424-3333.