Harrisburg Beer Week: 717 Collaboration Beer Homebrew Recipe

It’s hard to believe that another Harrisburg Beer Week (#HBGBeerWeek) is just around the corner!

Harrisburg Beer Week is a 10-day, multi-venue series showcasing breweries, restaurants, pubs and more through craft beer-centric events, demonstrations and education throughout the greater Harrisburg, PA area. The initiative is now in its 5th year and kicks off on April 26, 2019 – raising money for Harrisburg River Rescue & Emergency Services.

One of the many things people look forward to during HBGBeerWeek is the release of 717 Collaboration Beer. Each year a group of local breweries team up to brew a collaboration beer which is served at the participating breweries and select locations throughout the Harrisburg area. The breweries for this year’s collaboration are Tröegs Independent Brewing, Appalachian Brewing Company, ZeroDay Brewing Company and Boneshire Brew Works.

The beer being brewed this year is a Helles Bock and was brewed at Tröegs on March 11, 2019. Since my wife, Chelsie, is one of the founders of Harrisburg Beer Week, I was able to tag along for the brew day.

During my visit, I talked with both John Trogner (Tröegs Brewmaster/co-owner) and Tim Mayhew (Tröegs Brewing Manager) about creating a homebrew version of the recipe. 717 Collaboration Beer Recipe posted below.

John Straitiff (Appalachian Brewing Co.) & John Trogner (Troegs Independent Brewing)

They were kind enough to scale down the recipe and provide me with details about how the beer was going to be brewed, fermented and carbonated. I then made some minor tweaks to the recipe/process to try to simplify it for us homebrewers.

Let’s Brew Our Own 717 Collaboration Beer!

I plan to brew a batch of this beer over the weekend so I will see how that goes. Then I’ll make any necessary adjustments to the recipe or process. If you brew the beer, please leave a comment and let us know how it turns out. If you are in the Harrisburg, PA area, maybe a group of us can get together and compare our results to the real thing when it is released during Harrisburg Beer Week – April 26 – May 5.

Cheers!

*** UPDATE ***

I brewed a batch of the 717 Collaboration Beer on March 16 using this recipe. Everything went pretty smooth. I used 100% reverse osmosis water and added the gypsum, calcium chloride and canning salt additions from the recipe. My mash pH came in at 5.23 (checked 10 minutes into the mash) and my original gravity was 1.065.

On March 20 the gravity was at 1.037 and on March 23 it was at 1.019. The beer has a very pleasant malt flavor at this point. On March 24 I plan to transfer the beer to my dry hop keg and add a spunding valve to the keg to capture some natural carbonation. I received the spunding valve as a gift for Christmas and I have not had a chance to use it yet. My plan is to start spunding with about 4 points left before terminal gravity is reached. This will basically be an experiment for me since I have not used this yeast strain before and I have not used the spunding valve yet.

Here are some photos from my brew day: