What was once a sketch on a napkin has grown into a 105,000-sq. ft. brewery. As our co-founding brother and brewmaster John Trogner once said, “We’re always in a state of perpetual motion here at Tröegs.” With so much going on here at our brewery in Hershey, PA, we thought we would put together a handy little compendium of useful terms about the who, what, where, when, and why of our brewery. For those of you who want to take a deep dive into the way we do things at Tröegs, this one’s for you. Cheers!

Ale
Ale is one of the two main styles of beer (the other being lager). Ales are brewed using a warm fermentation method. At Tröegs, we brew a wide range of ales, from lighter ales like DreamWeaver Wheat to Belgian styles such as LaGrave Triple Golden Ale and Jovial Dubbel Ale. Of course, we brew many hoppy beers too, like Perpetual, Graffiti Highway, and many others that all fall under the ale umbrella.

Art of Tröegs
Since our humble beginnings, art has been a huge part of the Tröegs ethos. From our vibrant packaging and merchandise to the whimsical mural that adorns our brewery, we love to let our creative juices flow. That’s where our annual Art of Tröegs comes in. For two decades, we’ve invited our fans to create an original piece of art inspired by our brewery. The contest originally challenged our fans to create artwork using only our bottlecaps. Over the years, it evolved to include our packaging materials, our label art – and even the brewery itself. Want to get in on the Art of Tröegs? Visit troegs.com/art and get working on your own masterpiece!

Barrel-aging
All of the foeders and barrels populating our brewery contain potential future batches of Splinter beer releases. Our Splinter Series focuses on special limited batches that have been matured in various wooden barrels before being packaged and released to the public. Some of these releases are also bottle-conditioned. Please be patient; just like children, it takes a long time for the beer to fully mature.

Blended Ales
To be honest, we’re not exactly sure when we started blending beers here at Tröegs. Some say it first happened many moons ago at a rowdy pub in a central Pennsylvania river town. Others say it started right at the bar of the original Tröegs brewery in Harrisburg. Wherever it was, someone decided to mix Mad Elf with DreamWeaver Wheat… and people loved it! Thus, Mad Dreams was born. We’ve since started dabbling in other concoctions, like Chocolate Elf, a 50/50 blend of Mad Elf and our Grand Cacao Chocolate Stout. You can find both blended holiday ales exclusively in our Most Wonderful Beer of the Year variety pack.

Bottle Conditioning
Bottle conditioning involves adding sugar and yeast before bottling to trigger a refermentation that produces natural carbonation with a delicate texture. We use this process for LaGrave and Jovial, our two effervescent Belgian-style ales.

Brew Deck
The brew deck is at the epicenter of our day-to-day operations here at Tröegs and houses our 100-barrel brewhouse. Book a Guided Production Tour and get an up-close-and-personal view of the entire brewing process. Our brew deck includes the following equipment:

Brew Kettle: Our Brew Kettle is equipped to boil in 90 seconds! This tank is where wort is boiled for about 90 minutes, where it condenses sugars, sterilizes the wort, balances the flavor thanks to the addition of hops.

FUN FACT: This process utilizes an energy-efficient steam recapture system. Instead of letting the steam evaporate, we capture it and turn it into hot water!

Centrifuge
A centrifuge is a piece of equipment that speeds up the settling process. In a settling tank, gravity pulls materials of different densities apart, with yeast particles and hop sludge collecting at the bottom. There are two ways to make that work faster: apply more gravity or make the tank shallower. A beer centrifuge does both.

Cork & Cage
“Putting beer in cork and cage bottles helps give it that extra special touch,” says Tröegs co-founding brother Chris Trogner. “The corks are great at keeping pressure in and oxygen out.” This is a big plus for fans who like to cellar beers like Mad Elf Grand Cru, Triple Nator, and our barrel-aged Splinter Series beers.

Crowler / Growler
Crowlers are recyclable 32-oz. aluminum vessels filled with beer and sold to-go in our Tasting Room and General Store.Growlers are typically 64-oz. glass vessels, which we also fill at the brewery with your favorite beer!

Decoction
Used predominantly in lagers, this traditional brewing technique involves boiling a portion of the mash and then mixing it back into the main mash to impart a bright, dry and complex malt character.

Draft-only
A beer or other beverage served exclusively at the brewery on tap and not available in cans or bottles to-go.

Dry-hopping
Dry-hopping is a brewing technique of adding hops after fermentation to enhance beer’s aroma and flavor without adding bitterness. Hops added during the boil contribute bitterness, but the delicate aroma oils are lost when boiled. Dry-hopping preserves these volatile oils, resulting in a variety of aromas and flavors – everything from fruity to floral to piney to earthy.

Foeder
At the heart of our Splinter Cellar are three 20-foot-tall oak foeders built by Giobatta & Piero Garbellotto, a 200-year-old Italian barrel manufacturer. Each foeder – a Dutch word for large oak tank – is made of dozens of staves of Italian, Hungarian and French oak that have been air dried for three years to mellow any harsh flavors.

In addition to adding unique flavor profiles, foeders play a very special role in our barrel aging program. They also provide a happy home for what we call our “house culture.” Our house culture is a mix of wild yeast and bacteria that we’ve been cultivating since our first foray into wild-fermented beers, back in 2007. The slightly porous wood allows a steady creep of oxygen that keeps the microflora hard at work. Secondary fermentation with brettanomyces, pediococcus and lactobacillus gives wild ales their sour, funky, acidic flavors.

Fermentation
Fermentation is the process whereby sugars are converted by yeast to alcohol. After the “hot side” of brewing – where our brewers make the sweet, malty beer starter called wort – the tanks will be home to the “cold side,” where yeast eats the sugars of the wort, converting them into alcohol and carbon dioxide and creating beer as we know (and love) it. Take a stroll down our self-guided tour path at the brewery to get a glimpse of our fermentation hall, where the magic of brewing takes place on a daily basis. And see those huge exterior tanks at the back of the brewery? Each of those fermenters holds 1,000 barrels of beer. Now that’s a lot of Tröegs!

Freaky Squeeze
Freaky Squeeze is our line of alcoholic beverages made with real fruit. To date, we have five different flavors available: Black Cherry Limeade, Peach Orangeade, Mango Pineapple, Tangerine, and Lemonade. Black Cherry Limeade, Peach Orangeade and Mango Pineapple are available in standalone 6-packs, while Tangerine and Lemonade are limited releases found exclusively in our Spiked Variety Packs.

Freshest By:
We stamp a ‘freshest by’ date on each bottle, can, and exterior package we produce. Most of our beers are recommended to be enjoyed within 4 to 6 months of packaging. A few exceptions apply for our higher alcohol beers, which may develop with age, and our hard fruit juices.

‘Freshest By’ Packaged Dates:
4 months – Perpetual IPA, Graffiti Highway IPA and DIPA, Haze Charmer Pale Ale, Sunshine Pilsner, LolliHop DIPA, DreamWeaver Wheat, Nugget Nectar Imperial Amber Ale, Double Nugget Double Imperial Amber Ale, Daylight Chaser Dark IPA, Field Study Summer IPA, Sunshine Salt + Lime Lager, Nimble Giant DIPA, Leaf Seeker West Coast-Style IPA, Oktoberfest Lager, Double Perpetual DIPA, Blizzard of Hops Winter IPA, Double Blizzard DIPA, Scratch Series
6 months – Troegenator Double Bock Lager & Night Gazer Extra Stout
9 months – Master of Pumpkins
12 months – Mad Elf, Mad Elf Grand Cru, LaGrave, Jovial, Freaky Squeeze varieties

General Store
Our expansive retail store features a wide variety of Tröegs beverages and logo merchandise. Stock up on your favorites, including brewery-fresh 6-packs, 12-packs, cases, single serve cans, growlers and crowlers. We’ve also got an amazing selection of T-shirts, outerwear, hats, glassware, accessories, items for kids and pets, and much more. You can even shop online from the comfort of your own home!

HopBack

This unique piece of equipment guarantees consistent, efficient extraction of valuable oils and aromas from cone hops on the “hot side” of the brewing process. The HopBack can be used during the wort boiling process, as well as between the whirlpool and wort cooling processes. Our hopback vessel can hold up to 150 pounds of whole flower hops! The internal piping ensures that the wort makes contact with the hop cones, which helps to maximize the aroma we can get from them. Our old-school Tröegs classic, HopBack Amber, was named after this unique piece of equipment we’ve employed since our days in Harrisburg.

Hop Dosers: These vessels allow for precisely timed hop-dosing of our beers, which guarantees a consistent aroma profile. With beers like Perpetual IPA and Nugget Nectar, you simply can’t leave something like this to chance!

Hop Selection

Each year, we send a team of brewers to the Pacific Northwest for one of the most critical steps in the brewing process: hop selection. Keeping a beer like Perpetual IPA consistent and nailing next year’s batches of Nugget Nectar, Blizzard of Hops, Nimble Giant and other hoppy favorites all start in the hop fields.

“We go to the Yakima Valley every year to make sure we get the right hops,” says brewmaster John Trogner. “To me, it’s the most important ingredient selection we do. We have so many hop-forward beers, so the stakes are high.”

Hop Water

Hop Water is essentially carbonated water infused with hop oils. Our Sidekick Sparking Hop Water is our first venture into non-alcoholic beverages. It’s a clean, thirst-quenching, and bubbly refresher infused with Mosaic hop oil to deliver a tropical, hoppy, finish. Best of all, it’s 100% gluten-free with zero calories and zero sugar!

Krausening

Krausening is a German term for the addition of actively fermenting wort to induce fermentation in a different batch of wort or beer.

Keg / Sixtel

A keg, or half-barrel, is the most common vessel for storing beer that we serve on tap here at Tröegs and at bars and restaurants across our distribution footprint. Each half-barrel (or 1/2bbl) is equivalent to 15.5 gallons. The sixtel is a smaller variation of the 1/2bbl that’s also referred to as 1/6bbl. Each sixtel holds approximately 5.14 gallons of beer.

Want to continue your exploration of Tröegs? Check out Part 2.