Many of you probably know we released Scratch #31 last week, the Citra of Brotherly Love IPA, for last week’s Philly Beer Week (PBW). Loaded with Citra hops, which are new to us, this beer is like a tropical hop explosion. If you like a hop barrage, you’re going to like this one. It’s currently on tap at the brewery, but due to limited production, we only have six-packs of the Citra for sale. We also oak-aged a few barrels of this brew for Philly Beer Week firkins, which I can personally attest were terrific as well. I read that there were 1000 events for PBW this year, and it seemed like we filled firkins for most of them! We could’ve done even more, but if you viewed the barrel geyser video earlier, you know the beer gods giveth but they also taketh away. Anway, the oak brought on vanilla, coconut, and oak (duh!) flavors, enhancing the “IPA of the tropics” feel of the beer, and showing off just what fresh oak can do to a 7.5% hop monster. (read more…)
June 17, 2010
March 24, 2010
Troggen Roggen
Hey, Scratch #28 is currently on tap at the brewery! As Tim mentioned the other day in his blog post, #28 is a Roggenbier, a pretty uncommon beer style commercially produced by only a handful of breweries. It’s essentially a German wheat beer made with a portion of rye malt, which gives the beer a nice spicy dimension. If you’re familiar with the Scratch beers, you know we can’t get enough rye, so this style was a natural for us.
For our interpretation, we took our Dreamweaver base recipe and substituted about half of the wheat with rye, added a bunch of Munich and Vienna malt, tossed in some spicy and citrusy German and American hops, and fermented it with the Andechs weizen yeast strain. The result is a really flavorful, yet dangerously drinkable German ale that offers a fresh take on the traditional Hefeweizen. (read more…)
March 13, 2010
(Don’t Call It A) Belgian Pale Ale
Don’t know about you, but this recent run of nice weather has me in the mood for a nice, lighter, hoppy beer. No, I’m not talking about Sunshine Pils in this particular case, although I have to say the early-season Pils we brewed for the World Beer Cup is in fine mid-season form. I’ve missed that beer, and I think it’s gonna be a great addition to the Troegs Anthology summer variety pack. Mmm Pils…
Anyway, the pale hoppy beer I’m talking about will be another in our experimental Scratch line-up, this time combining a pale base beer, a healthy amount of earthy/floral hops, an abbey yeast strain, and Pennsylvania oak. Oh, and it’s going to be bottle-conditioned (like most brewers I heart bottle-conditioned Belgian-style ales). Hopefully that’s enough interesting components to whet your beer appetites. I know it’s got me psyched. (read more…)
February 4, 2010
Cacaoabunga!
A cool recent development around the brewery is that John (the guy with his name on the bottle) has offered to allow us hop monkeys (aka the Troegs brewing team) the chance to create upcoming beers in our Scratch Beer line. For brewers, this is the fun part. The only catch is that John reserved final veto power over any recipe, which is good and bad. Because of that, the world will never see my Imperial Rauch Pumpkin Bock, alas… But we will otherwise be unleashing our creative talents on an unsuspecting public, or at least everyone who finds their way into the tasting room.
January 25, 2010
Taking A Dump
So the point of our Scratch Beer series is to experiment with new styles, techniques, and ingredients, throw some stuff against the wall and see what sticks. Sometimes the beers turn out just like we hoped, like Scratch #4, which became Flying Mouflan (don’t worry, it will be seen again, sometime after we brew a whole lot more Nugget Nectar this year…). And sometimes, as in the case of Scratch #26, it doesn’t quite come out the way we wanted. (read more…)
December 24, 2009
Scratch 26 Update
We’ve racked a portion of the fermented beer in to some new toasted oak barrels, where we’ll allow it to mature and extract some great flavor from the barrels. I’m hoping for vanilla, coconut, and other oak flavors. In a few weeks, we’ll blend the two portions back together and ready it for packaging. Tentatively we have a mid-January release date in mind for the Wee Heavy, and given that the winter has been pretty chilly so far, it should be the perfect thing to keep you warm. Hope you stop by the brewery to try this one while it’s still here!
December 12, 2009
Scratch 26
One of my favorite things about brewing is to look back on historical recipes and methods used by brewers in the past. People have been brewing beer for thousands of years, and it’s always fascinating to learn how brewers did it back in the old days, and to compare their techniques to modern ones. Usually the older techniques are very time and/or labor-intensive, but were necessary to create desired flavors before the advent of modern malts and brewing equipment. (read more…)
