TROEGS – A REGIONAL POWERHOUSE THAT KEEPS ITS SENSE OF HUMOR

troeegs of Hershey, Pa.

We’re featuring Tröegs Brewery this week both for the beers they brew and the impressive visitors’ experience at the brewery.  We’ll feature a different Tröegs beer each day of the week in our Beer of the Day column. All seven beers ranked well into the top half of the more than 1,000 beers we’ve tasted in the last year.

Tröegs Brewery in Hershey Pennsylvania likes to have fun – even the name is something of a jest: the umlaut means that it is spelled Troeegs, but it derives from the Trogner brothers who have neither umlaut nor extra e in their name.   It’s pronounced with a long O by everyone except an occasional misinformed German.

There have always been breweries that had a sense of humor about themselves and their beer.   Olde Frothingslosh, the “Stale Pale Ale with the Foam on the Bottom” was one classic example.

Troegs Mad Elf– Whimsy in the label, but Mad Elf is serious beer.

Tröegs plays with some of its labels – Mad Elf, for example, but channels some of its most creative brewing ideas for its dullest label.   The Scratch label changes only minimally – just a line or two of text—but the beer changes dramatically.

Tröegs started out as a small brewery in Harrisburg in 1997, often in the shadow of the established Appalachian Brewing Company no far away. Very small breweries almost always have fun—at least on days the bills aren’t coming due.  The move to Hershey has made Tröegs a regional powerhouse, ranking in the top 50 of the nation’s 5,000 plus craft breweries.  A trip to Hershey explains quickly how it sustains those numbers, but also shows the ways that Tröegs has maintained its sense of adventure and sense of fun.

Troegs tasting room from the brew deck

An overwhelming number of craft breweries give serious thought about their tasting room when they open a brewery.   Estimates of direct brewery to consumer sales in tap rooms reach 20% of craft beer sales.  Stone, Green Flash, and Sierra Nevada gave at least as much attention to visitors facilities as they did to their new East Coast breweries.  Guinness is touting its new facility in Baltimore County as much as a beer tourist destination as the innovative brewery that it is intended to be.

Tröegs anticipated the trend and designed the new Hershey brewery to be visitor friendly.   A series of walkways winds its way through the heart of the brewery and offers spectacular views of every stage of the brewing process.   Other breweries of this size show as much on their tour, but few have a facility that is so perfectly created for tours.  The tour will set you back a few bucks, but you get some beer and the time spent with a very informative guide is well worth the money.  A self-guided tour shows you less, but it’s free and quick.  Scroll to the end of this post for some of the highlights of the paid tour.

Even walking up to the brewery is an experience.  You’re greeted by the sight of enormous foeders that dwarf the huge vats that made Rodenbach famous.  A glass wall lets the foeders impress during the day and stun after dark.  A small tasting room at the start of the tour lets you get a head start on the day’s drinking and a small art gallery allows you to entertain yourself while you finish your beer.

Repeat visitors to the brewery – and there are many—gather in the large tasting room.   The brewery’s kettles overlook the room and you can experience the sounds and smells of brewing while you drink.   Food isn’t cheap, but it is inventive, far surpassing usual brewpub fare.  “Pickled eggs,” for example, are part un-beeted pickled egg and part deviled eggs with, we think, some mustard in the mix.  Topped with brilliantly appropriate chorizo bits and a couple of redundant pickle slices on the side, they come three halves to an order.   We’ve learned to just spend the money on multiple orders.

A gift shop features logoed items that boggle the imagination from playing cards to toddlers’ T shirts with a wicked grinning Mad Elf.  Good thing our daughter is 30.  You can pick up one off scratch beers as well as their regular issues in singles, sixes, or cases.  Prices are a bit higher than the Weiss Markets in the area.  Someone has to pay for this playground after all.    (Post 027, 20170207)

Here are a few sights from the brewery tour.

Start by picking up a draft beer in the foeder room.

Start the tour in the foeder room — with a beer.

The tour starts in the art gallery — finish your beer here.

The formal tour begins in an art gallery featuring unusual art crafted from logoed Tröegs brewerania.

A path through the brewery gets you close, but keeps you safe –a neat trick.

An elevated walkway takes you through the fermentation room

The hop room includes bales of whole hops — no more ‘hop pockets”.

Tröegs whole hops are on display

The size of Tröegs’s barrel program is staggering.   This is only one of the walls of barrels.

Tröegs barrel aging program really is “huge!”

You can walk around in the main brew house which overlooks the tasting room.

Tröegs main brew house

A smaller pilot system allows Tröegs to be inventive and adventurous.

A smaller, but still impressive brew house sits next to the bigger one that has allowed Tröegs to become one of the 50 largest of America’s 5000+ craft breweries.

Service is quite good in a tasting room that always seems to have a good crowd.

Tröegs tasting room is a great place to keep up with the Scratch series — though bottles are usually available in the gift shop.

Check our “Beer of the Day” feature this week for tasting notes on a half dozen exceptionally good Tröegs beers.   We’ll review Tröegs Sunshine Pilsner as part of our minor league baseball post later in the spring.