WILK Friday Beerbuzz – 7 May 2010 (Troegs Hopback Amber Ale)

There is a fine line between excitement and terror, and with today being my very first LIVE radio show, I suspect I flirted with both emotions.  Today marked the premier episode of the “Friday Beerbuzz with Bil from mybeerbuzz.com” (that’s me) on the Webster and Nancy show on WILK News Radio. 

First off a huge thank you to Nancy Kman, John Webster, Sue Henry, Joe Thomas and the others at WILK for making my first show so much fun.  Our segment went very quickly and I suspect that’s a measure of just how much fun I was having and how good they all are at what they do.

There are beers that unite and beers that divide.  My beer-loving friends and I taste dividing beers that polarize our opinions. Some love it some hate it.  My non-beer-loving friends taste dividing beers and exclaim that “beer shouldn’t contain nuts or chocolate.”  So today I chose to feature a beer that unites….Troegs Hopback Amber Ale.  Hopback Amber is a beer that long time craft beer lovers enjoy and a beer that beginning craft-beer lovers also seem to enjoy.  It’s a beer we can all share and all enjoy.
Today we talked a lot about Hopback Amber and the Troegs brewery in Harrisburg, PA.  Hopback Amber is this little brother of Troeg’s wildly popular Nugget Nectar seasonal and a wonderful beer that I think flies under the beer-lover’s radar.  Hopback Amber gets it’s name from the brewing device used at the brewery to impart additional hop flavor.  The brewers at Troegs fill a large stainless steel device called, ironically enough, a “Hopback” with hop cones.  As the beer is brewed and the wort comes out of the kettle, it is forced slowly through the hopback on the way to the fermenters.  This process imparts some wonderful hop flavors into the beer, without it becoming a higher IBU (international bittering unit) Imperial Amber Ale or India Pale Ale.  The combination works wonderfully for Hopback Amber and it’s a beverage I recommend you try…and yes as the photo shows our Hopback were “protected” from aliens by their little tin-foil hats.  From left to Right it’s (Princess Leia, the devil, the scorpion, the flying nun, lightning bolt and space helmet hats).

I have a few goals for the future of the Friday Beerbuzz show.  First and foremost I don’t want it to suck, and I’m confident it won’t.  I’d like to create a show that welcomes not only craft-beer lovers, but also people new to craft and micro-brewed beer.  I want to responsibly promote the growth of the craft beer community in Northeastern PA and perhaps most importantly, I want people to laugh and simply have fun.  If we can accomplish this, then I suspect you will enjoy the show as much as I did today.

So let us know what you think.  e-Mail me, Nancy, or John and give us your comments and opinions.  Suggest beers for the show or topics for future shows.  We have a lot of ideas, but we want to create a show that you look forward to hearing every week, and hopefully get some of you to try some of the beers we taste each week.

Thank you all for listening and reading…. 
Bringing Good Beers and Good People Together…

To view the video on WILK click HERE!