Craft beers need to distinguish themselves from the mass produced lagers and there are only so many things they can change, such as color, alcohol content, carbonation level, and hops. As a result it seems most American craft beers are hop-bombs - not my taste, so I brew my own. Making beer is fun, easy, and cheap, and you can custom design the beer to your tastes.
Hops contribute bitterness, taste, and aroma, and the amount of each depends on how much and what kind of hops you add, and when. Hops added at the beginning of the boil contribute bitterness. Those added about 30-40 minutes in to the boil add taste, while hops added in the last 10 minutes of boil or later (during cool down or fermentation) add aroma. Most people like some bitterness to balanced the malt, but the hops taste and aroma is over the top for me in US IPAs. So I brew British style ales with more malt character, less hops, and less carbonation, everything from pale ales to cream stouts. My ales taste much more like what you get from the tap in an English or Irish pub and in my opinion better than anything I can buy here.
Bitterness is measured in IBUs (International Bitterness Units) and a typical British dark ale will usually be in the 20s, and pales ales might be in the 30s. American IPAs are more like 60 to 100+ IBUs, and are overloaded in hops taste and aroma as well. To me these high levels are more like hop cocktails than beer.
There are many recipes available on beer websites for all kinds of styles, including Newcastle Brown Ale. You can get all of the equipment needed for brewing (in a mesh bag) for about $100 or so (assuming you already have an 8-10 gallon stock pot) and thereafter the ingredients for a five gallon batch cost about $30 and yields two cases. You can also do three gallon batches in a standard 5 gallon stock pot. Takes about four hours on brew day, and another two hours for bottling three weeks later.
