The Blog

Time flies when you’re drinking pale ale. Our 10-year-old flagship Pale Ale is entering a shiny new era. Shedding its brown tones for rays of yellow and gold, Day Tripper looks brighter than ever and, complete with a newly tweaked recipe, it tastes better, too. Day Tripper first released on tap in 2012 and has undergone two rebrands (in 2015 and 2017) since its first can release in 2013.

“The current Day Tripper packaging contains a lot of brown, which we think is much too dark for the liquid inside,” says Director of Experience Ryan Bandy. “Chuck U’s art—as well as the name, which we’re lucky to have—is timeless and we wanted to modernize the perspective while staying true to the design. It still is unmistakably Day Tripper.”

In 2021, the Day Tripper recipe was updated to extend its shelf life and make it taste even better. Originally, there was a sizable amount of hops that needed to go in the boil to give the beer its signature bitterness. While the hops give the alpha-acids needed to produce this bitterness, the rest of the vegetable matter from the plant is waste and increases the amount of proteins and polyphenols in the kettle. Indeed switched from pelletized hops to a hop CO2 extract, which allows the beer to get the same bitterness but with much less plant matter. Dropping over 30 pounds of plant matter helps increase the baseline clarity, keep more aromatic compounds in solution, inhibit unwanted polyphenol flavor contributions, and increase the shelf life.

“As with all of our beers, we are constantly tweaking the process, procedure, and ingredients to perfect the drinking experience. We started doing that with Day Tripper fairly quickly after we opened and have been methodically improving the liquid without losing the essence of Day Tripper,” says Bandy. “At its core, it is a bright citrusy and piney beer with a polite bitterness to finish. If you haven’t had a Day Tripper in a couple years, it’s worth revisiting.”