Prost Profiles: Alex Franko/Bright Path Brewing, Jim Thorpe, Penn.

Two-year-old Pennsylvania brewery is focused on sessionable and traditional beers. Will pour at this year's Rochester Real Beer Expo.

Bright Path Brewing is one of those happy accidents, signs of serendipity, for the Rochester Real Beer Expo.

The two-year-old brewery from Jim Thorpe, Penn., wasn’t on my radar at all when I started planning for the 2024 edition of the festival back in late 2023. I made a list of places we featured last year and wanted to re-invite for this latest Expo edition.

Places like Cinderlands Beer and Old Thunder Brewing, both from the Pittsburgh area, were huge hits in 2023. Inviting them again this year was a true no-brainer. But like last year’s fest, I wanted to showcase small breweries and wanted some of those potential participants to be brand new to this region.

So I’ll admit, Bright Path, a brewery entirely focused on lagers and session ales, wasn’t on my radar when I made my initial wish list. When I saw the Instagram post for a dark lager event at Old Thunder with a number of guest breweries, I had a goofy idea: Why not reach out to these places and gauge any potential interest in the Expo? I reached out to all of them and heard back from Bright Path almost immediately.

After a phone call where we talked about the aim of the Expo, Bright Path was on board. And here we are now with a brewery that has never poured in New York state.

Photo: Bright Path co-founders Dillon Smith, left, and Alex Franko.

And if we’re being completely honest, I still haven’t had a beer from Bright Path. But the brewery has a co-sign from Old Thunder, one of my favorite breweries anywhere,. So I have no concerns and am only filled with excitement. Bright Path will be one of my first stops on Expo day. I am particularly jazzed because the brewery is bringing two lagers that’ll be poured via traditional German gravity casks (or stichfass). As I just shared on social media, we’re gonna have at least three gravity kegs and not a single ice cream or slushie machine at this year’s Expo. That’s pretty wild.

To get you even more amped for the 2024 Rochester Real Beer Expo, which will take place on Saturday, June 8, at Innovative Field in downtown Rochester, I am again sharing some interviews to introduce attendees to festival newcomers. Bright Path co-founder Alex Franko carved out a few minutes to chat with me. Here’s an intro to Bright Path and why the brewery is excited to visit Rochester.

Bright Path is among that group. In total, we’re gonna have more than 75 breweries, some really lovely non-alcoholic options, three cideries, and even a local coffee roaster with some cold brew.

VIP tickets are nearly sold out. (At the time of this publication, there are less than 15 remaining.) I am also particularly proud of the fact that the ticket prices haven’t increased at all this year. More details here: https://www.ticketreturn.com/prod2new/BuyNew.asp?EventID=343454.

(Alex was exceedingly patient as we were chasing the surly 2-year-old roommate around a Durand Eastman Park playground. We appreciate that.)

Cleveland: Can you share a little bit of your history in beer?

Franko: I started, jeeze, I am trying to count the years here, I started brewing 12 or 13 years ago. That’s when I got my first job in the beer industry and it has just progressed since then. I worked at numerous different breweries, from large ones to smaller ones to middle-sized ones. I’ve done pretty much everything. I’ve brewed. I’ve cellared. I’ve done operational things in breweries. That’s more of my role here, the operations side of it.

Cleveland: How did Bright Path get its start?

Franko: So we started this, mostly because (brewery co-founder) Dillon (Smith) and I and the other owners (family members) are from Jim Thorpe, born and raised. There wasn’t a brewery here. We thought it was a good idea to open one.

(Reading break: I encourage you to learn more about the weirdly wonderful place of Jim Thorpe, Penn., through this awesome Mo Rocca story from CBS News.)

Franko (continued): There’s a huge tourism aspect to Jim Thorpe. We wanted to capitalize on that. We’re born and raised here, we know a lot of people. That really benefits us as well.

Cleveland: Where did the brewery name come from?

Franko: Bright Path is actually Jim Thorpe’s native name. If you take his native name, Wa-Tho-Huk, it translates in English to ‘Bright Path.’ That’s where the name came from. Not just that aspect, we think it ties really well into the natural beauty of the area. That’s what draws people in. We’re surrounded by mountains. Some people call it the ‘Switzerland of America.’ It sits along a river. The town is divided by the river. There’s downtown and then there’s the east side of town where we are. It’s a little more residential. That Bright Path, really outdoors theme, it resonates through our branding and our beers.

Cleveland: I think the first time we talked, you said the brewery hasn’t made a beer above 6 percent alcohol since it opened.

Franko: I think we’ve hit 5.5 percent and that’s been the highest. It wasn’t by plan. We do all session beers, so we like to keep everything under 5.5 percent. That’s pretty much our thing. We mostly make lagerbier. We like to say we make lagerbier and session ale. We do German and Czech-style beers. We do some English ales. We have a beer engine, so we keep a cask on at all times. We obviously have newer styles like IPAs and stuff like that. But we don’t have six of them. We sometimes have one, maybe two.

Cleveland: Can you guys open a branch up here? I just want to drink lager and session beers. Why has that been the focus on the brewery — make the decision to keep things light and sessionable?

Franko: Mostly because that’s just how we enjoy beer. That’s really the future, I think. People want to be able to enjoy themselves and not be completely intoxicated all the time. People are becoming more aware of alcohol. So there’s a little more responsibility than there was in the past.

Cleveland: I think people, too, at least if I’m tracking my own craft beer evolution, are more appreciative and more accepting and more educated about styles and looking for nuance and balance and drinkability. I think there is a great appreciation of traditional styles.

Franko: I definitely agree with that. What we brew is time tested. We make a Helles lager year-round, we make a Vienna. Even in terms of American styles, American lagers and adjunct lagers have been around for a hundred years now and they sometimes get a bad rap because of some of the bigger brands. But I think there is a lot to be said about a really good adjunct American lager.

Cleveland: Genesee is from here, so there’s no shortage of American adjunct lager and cream ale. We can appreciate that.

Franko: We do a year-round cream ale. It’s one of our top three selling beers. It’s a little more flavorful than a Genny. We actually dry hop it slightly. I think of a cream ale as like an American Kolsch. I treat it like a lager. It’s fermented cold and we actually lager (age) it for quite a bit of time. I think people are no longer associating flavor with alcohol content. I think a lot of people really appreciate that we keep the alcohol content low and still have a ton of flavor.