USA, NY: Runaway Blue Brewing Company becomes Newark’s first brewery

Save for a clock museum sure to fire up any aspiring horologist, the village of Newark has few attractions to draw in visitors, the Rochester City Newspaper reported.

Brian Bremer hopes to change that with Runaway Blue, the first brewery to open its doors in Newark. The quaint operation, which launched Saturday, November 12 in a former office space on South Main Street, pumps out two-barrel batches of impeccably made beers. The brewery is the second to open in Wayne County, following the opening of Macedon’s DisBatch Brewing Company last year.

“Beer is something that people travel for,” Bremer said. “Hopefully, we can bring some extra tourism into town. That’s the cool thing about beer.”

Bremer, a Newark native, began tooling with the idea of launching a brewery with his wife, Maria, back in January. He’s since jumped knee-deep into the brewery project, which is his full-time gig. Maria has a day job working for the Newark Central School District, but she helps with the brewery in her off hours.

Bremer cut his teeth as a brewer for Young Lion Brewing Company in Canandaigua. He said that from the outset, the people at Young Lion have supported his vision of opening a nano-brewery.

The skills Bremer learned at the brewery about 45 times the size of his own shine in Runaway Blue’s first offerings.The vanilla blonde ale is rich with melted ice cream character thanks to the use of vanilla extract and Bourbon Madagascar vanilla in the brew. The West Coast IPA, with its hefty dose of bittering hops, is a throwback to the era of minimalist IPAs. The Process, a Buffalo Bills-themed light lager, is crisp, clean, and endlessly chuggable.

But the standout of Runaway Blue’s initial offerings is Hi-Fi, its debut double IPA. It is hazy and juicy, brimming with strong tropical fruit and citrus notes which play well with a pronounced malt sweetness, trailing off into a final, robust bitter bite provided in part by the liberal use of Mosaic and Chinook hops. It’s what a good hazy IPA should be.

Runaway Blue also offers two seltzer offerings, also available as slushies. All of the beverages have been brewed competently and they’re attentively crafted down to the smallest details, something that is not always true of brand new breweries.

Bremer credits both his brewing career and the time he’s had to play with Runaway Blue’s system for the polished first products.

“A lot of the time, new breweries are still learning their equipment,” Bremer said. “We’re pretty lucky, we were able to learn on our system pretty fast.” /

Runaway Blue is open on Friday 2 p.m. to 9 p.m., Saturday noon to 9 p.m., and Sunday noon to 8 p.m.

16 November, 2022