Troegs The Continuing Saga of Scratch #34 – Future Scratch Beer?
Story by:
MyBeer Buzz
From Troegs:
Remember the story of Scratch #34; the Dubbel that refused to referment in the bottle leaving us with 150-or-so cases of flat beer that we lovingly interred in wine barrels and set aside in hopes of future resurection? Well, it’s just entered its final (hopefully) chapter: bottle conditioning.
Scratch #34 was a Belgian-style dubbel brewed in July of 2010. Besides being a fan of the style, my interest in brewing it was to be able to sidestream 5 bbls of wort to a “funk” tank and ferment it with a blend of yeasts (ale, sherry, 2 strains of brett.) and bacteria (lactobacillus and pediococcus) and then age it in oak. Our Splinter program was still in the early stages; Splinter Blue had only recently been bottled, but earlier tastes from the barrels had us anxious to take a maltier beer down the sour path.
The wort not sidestreamed for funk was fermented with a classic Belgian yeast and the small amount that was kegged was quite good. We attempted to bottle condition for carbonation of the bottles, something we had only tried once before, and it didn’t work out.
Fast forward to earlier this year: samples from various barrels revealed that Scratch 34 had developed a really nice brett. character, but had only achieved a mild tartness. We also found several barrels of a different beer that were wonderfully sour, but with no brett. character at all. An hour or so of blending and tasting later and we arrived at we what we think is a pretty damn good beer.
So, while Scratch 34 has been officially laid to rest, it lives in this yet to be named, hopefully carbonating addition to the Splinter beer series. Keep your fingers crossed, it’s all up to the yeast now…
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