Troegs Scratch Update

From the Troegs Blog:

Quick update on Scratch #x:

After just over a week of us being forced to draw almost daily samples and (gasp) drink them, we’ve decided the beer is ready to rack.  So far, we have a gold/light-amber pale ale base with nice hop bitterness, spicy-fruit yeast character, and the barrel-aging coming through as oak, hints of vanilla, toast, and tea.

We brewed this with a generous amount of  aroma hops, but noticed that the oak has buried them.  An IPA has to have hops, right?  Even a (not-belgian) IPA.  So, we pulled some flowers out of the cooler, more beer out of the barrels, and spent some time with our noses in both of them.  Going in to it, we thought Hersbrucker might be a good choice, and we were right; the slightly-sweet, grassy (hay?) aroma played nicely with the fruit from the yeast and was a nice contrast to the sharpness of the oak.  We also went with a bit of Willamette, which is often described as herbal and earthy.  We got that, but we also got a bit of lemon that complimented the vanilla from the barrels.

So, long story short, we’re one step closer to getting this beer out the door.  Like Tice said, it’s going to be bottle-conditioned.  So, even though this will probably be bottled in the next week or two, it could still be a month or more of us drinking random bottles to assess the bubbles before it gets to you.  We won’t leave you hanging though.  Look for a Roggenbier in the very near future.  More on that later…