Tröegs Scratch #400 & Beyond

Tröegs Scratch Beer #400 Releases January 16, 2020!

If you are familiar with Tröegs Independent Brewing Company located in Hershey, PA, then you already know they offer a solid lineup of year-round offerings, seasonal beers (who hasn’t had Mad Elf or Nugget Nectar by now!?), Splinter Series Beers (foeder/barrel aged beers) and the more recent Hop Cycle series. And, they also offer more experimental and often one-off Scratch Series Beers that are only on tap for a short period of time at the brewery.

We recently sat down with owners John and Chris Trogner as well as Brewing Manager, Tim Mayhew to talk about the upcoming milestone release of Tröegs Scratch Beer #400 and the role that the Scratch Series plays at the brewery. We also got a sneak peak at their latest construction project – the Scratch Lab. Of course, we snagged Scratch Beer #397 while at the brewery. #BeerCurious Always!

Tröegs Scratch Series History

The Tröegs Scratch Series started in 2007 when John and Chris brewed the first 4 Scratch beers for their 10 Year Anniversary celebration which were:

Scratch #1 – California Common

(the Trogner brothers brewed this beer often as homebrewers in Colorado before starting the brewery.)

(the Trogner brothers brewed this beer often as homebrewers in Colorado before starting the brewery.) Scratch #2 – Porter

(became Dead Reckoning Porter)

(became Dead Reckoning Porter) Scratch #3 – Triple

(became LaGrave Triple Golden Ale)

(became LaGrave Triple Golden Ale) Scratch #4 – Barleywine

(became Flying Mouflan)

The goal of the experimental brewing series is to explore new techniques and interesting, sometimes non-traditional ingredients. On occasion, a Scratch Beer or a combination of Scratch Beers experiments can blossom into a year round or seasonal selection. Tröegs maintains a list on their website of all Scratch Beers ever created.

(scroll to the bottom of the their webpage to see full list)

How A Tröegs Scratch Beer Evolves

The core, 8-person Tröegs Scratch Beer team collaborate together in a room to ‘scratch’ down their ideas for the beer on a notepad. In fact, this is partially where the name ‘Scratch Series’ originated from. Plus, Chris explained “it’s also just starting from ‘scratch.’ And thinking about how the beer was going to taste and then figuring out the ingredients to get there. It was intended to kind of be a brewers’s kitchen – like a chef would do – just trial and error with techniques and ingredients.”

It’s All About Experimentation

John noted how they’re rarely targeting a finalized recipe when they brew a scratch beer. These beers are more about testing components or variables such as different malt combinations, hop combinations, yeast strains, fermentation temperatures, etc.

“I’d say the most important part that it serves is we learn a lot from all the recipes that then drives the final recipe that we can name and put out in the world. So that’s how Perpetual IPA was born. That’s how all the Hop Cycle beers were born. That’s how really any beer since we moved here [Hershey, PA] has grown up through this program,” says John.

Honest Feedback Is Important

Once a Tröegs Scratch Beer has been brewed, the team will often look to their extended brewing team for honest feedback on the beers. They are sent home with crowlers and a 10 question survey which they are asked to fill out while they are actually drinking the beer. John stated that they usually don’t give many details to the expanded group of tasters. For instance, they don’t explain what the team was trying to learn from or aim for with the beer. This is done to help prevent any bias during their evaluation. The focus is not so much on whether they like or dislike the beer, but rather what they are or are not tasting in the finished beer.

The core Tröegs Scratch Beer team then reviews the completed surveys and then uses that info to further develop future beers or to see if they met their goal for the current beer. Both Tim and John pointed out that the extended brewing team will often be very honest (sometimes brutally honest) with their feedback. Everyone obviously has a vested interest in putting out beers that they feel people will enjoy.

Brewers’ Favorites

When we asked whether there have been any favorite or standout Tröegs Scratch Beers over the years, John, Chris and Tim immediately agreed that the beer which eventually became Nimble Giant (Scratch Beers 195 & 229) was one that stood out. Initially brewed for Rochester Beer Week, the guys knew they were onto something with the hop combination used for this beer.

John also told a story of how he was shopping at Wegmans while Scratch Beer #195 was in stores. The person working at the butcher counter made a point of telling John how awesome he thought the beer was. Personal interactions like this remind John that it’s more meaningful to hear praise from beer drinkers than just what he thinks is good. Considering the fact that they are normally not targeting a final recipe, John finds it “pretty wild” that he sometimes gets these kinds of reactions from the public.

Although Tim has definitely had some favorites, he mentioned that it is sometimes new processes they experiment with that are more memorable for him. He gave a specific example of a beer they brewed while still in their Harrisburg, PA location which included a 12-hour boil. And he noted the Kräusening process used for their lager beers which is a process they are still fine tuning today.

DID YOU KNOW?

Tröegs produces 50-70 Scratch Beers per year.

Scratch Beer #400

This Thursday, January 16, Tröegs will reach a milestone in the Scratch Series with the release of Scratch Beer #400. It’s described as a “Munich Dunkel, pre-Prohibition, open fermented, Kräusened lager.” And, the release of this beer purposefully coincides with the start of Prohibition in 1919.

The beer is a culmination of many different experiments done with their lager beers over the years – many of which were part of the Tröegs Scratch Series.

It is a result of working with many different lager beers, testing different techniques and different ingredients (including various yeast strains). John described it as “trying to think through how they could make really interesting, different beers in a subtle way.”

Scratch #400 Brewers’ Vision

One of the objectives for Scratch Beer #400 brewed with Pennsylvania blue corn was to bring through some of the maltiness of the grains without the final beer being too sweet (a result of testing different lager yeast strains).

The brewers also wanted to manage the esters in the beer by using of a “healthy dose of corn malt from Deer Creek Malthouse in Glen Mills, PA,” utilizing open fermentation to reduce stress on the yeast, and Kräusening the beer (all of which add very subtle flavors).

John explained “for the group that sits around and geeks about recipes all day long,” brewing a lager for Scratch Beer #400 made the most sense to them. For the brewers, the science side and subtlety is what gets them most excited about creating lager beers.

Tröegs Scratch Beer #400 will be available as a brewery-only release.

Tröegs Scratch Lab

Coming Soon at Tröegs

If you’ve followed the Tröegs self-guided tour path through the brewery lately, you may have noticed a new addition in progress – the Scratch Lab. The new room is surrounded by glass walls and contains a shiny, custom-built 3 BBL BrauKon nano-brew system.

John jokingly referred to it as the “fish bowl” due to the glass walls and the fact that thousands of people each year will be walking by and gazing in at the brewer(s). Chelsie and I think it would be fun if they added a “Please do not tap on the glass” sign! Ha ha!!!

Shaun Glaser (Brewing Project Manager), Tim Mayhew (Brewing Manager) & John Trogner (Co-Owner & Brewer)

Greater Flexibility to Experiment

“It [the Tröegs Scratch Lab] started with the concept of taking one brew from our current scratch brewhouse and being able to separate it into multiple fermentation tanks,” explains John. This will allow them to test multiple variables (yeast strains, dry hop combinations, fermentation temperatures, fruit additions, etc.) in parallel instead of sequentially like they do with the current 15 BBL Scratch brewhouse. They then took the concept a step further and added the 3 BBL brewhouse which will give them even greater flexibility to tap into their creative side.

Speeds Up Experimentation

“It speeds up in the regard that we’ll be able to do 5 different things with 5 different brews. We’ll be able to taste them side by side,” noted Tim when asked whether this will speed up their beer development process. He also explained how in some ways it will reduce the pressure on the team creating the recipes due to the much smaller volume of beer being brewed.

Although the current Scratch system may seem small sitting beside the 100 BBL system, 15 BBLs of beer is still a lot. It will not be quite as painful dumping 3 BBLs of beer if things do not go as planned. And yes – they have had to occasionally dump beers over the years which is to be expected when you have brewed several hundred different recipes. Cheers to Troegs for drain pouring beers they feel are not good enough to sell. We applaud breweries who are dedicated to quality!

Designed to Mirror Their Brewhouse

When complete, the room will contain 8 – 3 BBL fermenters and a small centrifuge in addition to the brewhouse itself. The system was designed with the same types of features that exist on their larger systems. Things such as the heating system in the boil kettle, the mixing system in the mash tun, and being able to control both pressure and convection in the fermenters were all designed to mimic the larger systems as much as possible. This will help ensure that they get similar results when they decide to scale one of the 3 BBL recipes up to 15/100 BBLs.

The Tröegs Scratch Lab is slated to be up and running late January 2020. “Our Quality team already has the system booked through May. The number of yeasts and hops we’re trialing in just the first few months is staggering,” says John. “We’ll be able to learn more in three months than we could learn in a year before.”

This week Tröegs posted on Instagram that the 8 fermenters have arrived and are being installed. Cheers to Tröegs during the final touches of their Scratch Lab build out. We can’t wait to taste the beers the Scratch Brewer Team dreams up next!