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Tröegs Brewery

At One Block West, even though we sell primarily wine, we love good beer. We stock Tröegs Pale Ale, Rugged Trail Nut Brown Ale, and Chef Ed’s favorite, HopBack Amber Ale. Each 6-pack displays the tagline “Brewed by Two Brothers™.” We decided to track down these two brothers and learn their story.

In 1996, brothers Chris and John Trogner formed Tröegs Brewing Co. in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. In the division of labor in their marriage to a brewery, John is the chief brewer and Chris handles the marketing and sales. Before Harrisburg, the Pennsylvania natives spent time learning the ropes in Boulder, Colorado. After college, John moved to Boulder and apprenticed at the Oasis Brewery for three years.

Meanwhile, Chris was studying Small Business and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado and the brothers were getting more and more serious about their own brewery. Accordingly, Chris focused his class work on the beer industry, doing market research analysis on craft breweries and drafting [or is that draughting?] a business plan for a brewpub.

With brewing classes at The Siebel Institute, U.C. Davis, and in England, along with some home brewing practice, the stage was set for Tröegs. The brewpub idea discarded to focus only on beer, the guys set off for Harrisburg and the rest is history.

Currently, five beers are bottled all year: Pale Ale, HopBack Amber Ale, Rugged Trail Nut Brown Ale, DreamWeaver Whteat, and Troegenator Double Bock. And they brew several seasonal beers including: Nugget Nectar, Sunshine Pils, Dead Reckoning Porter, and Mad Elf Holiday Ale. Moreover, John and Chris are naturally creative guys and they produce small batches of test beers that are sometimes available in their tasting room.

Q & A

Chris was kind enough to take time out of his hectic schedule for an interview with Chef Ed.

Ed: Looking back on starting a craft brewery in deepest Pennsylvania 7 or 8 years ago, how crazy was that?

Chris: At times Pennsylvania can be slower to react, so 7 years ago while the rest of the country was at its peak, Pennsylvania’s craft beer scene was just starting to really take off.

Ed: Boulder, the Pearl Street Mall, the whole scene out there is pretty alluring. Why come back to PA?

Chris: There’s no question about it, Boulder was and is a great place to learn, dream, and play. My brother John was an apprentice at the Oasis Brewery while I was finishing up Small Business and Entrepreneurship at the University of Colorado. We had discussed opening a small brewery somewhere in Colorado, but the more we analyzed the ‘craft beer’ scene we realized that Colorado was a mature beer market with dozens of great breweries within a short driving distance. Pennsylvania wasn’t quite there so we thought it would be easier to bring back what learned in Colorado to Harrisburg and start our own small brewery.

Ed: For all those readers who dream of starting their own business, what can you tell them?

Chris: Go for it! And know that it will be the most satisfying experience. John and I both love what do and have turned making beer into a ‘life style’ decision. Oh yeah, and remove the words vacation and weekends from your vocabulary.

Ed: OK, who bungled the German? ;) Not that Tröegs is a German word, but it would be either Trögs or Troegs without the Umlaut. Ve vant to know who kommitted this barbarous sin against zee German language!

Chris: It’s actually not German, more of a Flemish bungle. While I was at Colorado I wrote a business plan for a ‘Belgian’ themed brewpub called Brouwen Kroeg, which means Brewpub. Combing our family nickname ‘Trogs’ with Kroeg we came up with Tröegs. We wanted something original, one syllable, and had a connection to our family.

Ed: We have crazy ABC laws here in Virginia, but I think Pennsylvania is worse. What kind of regulatory hoops did you have to jump through to get started?

Chris: PA historically has been pro manufacturing, so as long as you are following the Liquor Control Board’s format it’s not that difficult. It just takes time and $$. Selling beer in the state is another story. Beer can only be sold in ‘Beer Distributors’- not grocery stores and [only] in case quantities (24 bottles). I think somehow the logic is ‘we want you to drink less so we’ll make you buy more’…….hmmm. If we could sell 6 packs in PA at distributors I think people would be more apt to try a beer they haven’t tasted. This is where the small brewer is at a huge disadvantage.

Ed: A bunch of us have brewed a few gallons of beer for personal consumption. Is it fair to say that this qualifies us to be professional brewers about as much as home cooks are ready to be professional chefs? What are the biggest differences between homebrewing and for real brewing?

Chris: There are many people who can brew a good tasting beer in their home. But running a production/ packaging brewery is entirely different, even from a brewpub. There are many things that a home brewer wouldn’t necessarily have to worry about, consistency, airs, wort production, on-premise microbiologists to monitor yeast growth……etc. John and I are constantly taking courses and looking for ways to improve and make our brewery more efficient.

Ed: I’ve tasted a lot of beer—I majored in beer in college—especially local craft brews. Your beers are consistently good and consistently better, which is why we have them as our flagship beers at the restaurant. To what do you attribute this?

Chris: John’s anal retentiveness to quality and determination to build a better beer. He spends all his free time researching equipment and talking to other brewers and suppliers.

Ed: Chris, your preference(s) in beer? John?

Chris: I tend to lean more towards maltier and sweeter beers, while John likes big, bold, and hoppy. Our HopBack Amber is our meeting ground. A maltier amber ale that has a big hoppy nose.

Ed: In the dark ages of beers when Budmiller was king, we could go to Boston Brewing near Copley Square and get a reasonable pint of Sam Adams. Now it’s contract brewed and still a good mass-market product, but the soul is gone. Where do you see your beers going?

Chris: We’ll always produce our beers in house so we can monitor our own quality. We can’t put that trust on an older and in some cases outdated regional brewery. Our long-term goal has always been to brew our own beer and keep distribution close to our brewery. Today you’ll primarily find Tröegs within 3 hours driving radius of the brewery.

Ed: Run us through the process of playing with a new beer. I see that HopBack was one of your playtoys, a single batch, that is, once upon a time. Now it’s a mainstay and is our best seller by far. How does a new beer get created?

Chris: We’re always talking about new beers or how to improve existing ones. The HopBack scenario dates back to a beer we used to brew, Tröegs ESB. John and I were never really happy about the style name that we chose for that beer, ESB. It’s just a style name and didn’t really give the beer any personality. And at that time we were trying new ways to improve our hop flavor and aroma. John designed and had built a hopback vessel for our brewhouse. It really had a major impact on the hop aroma for the ESB, so we figured it was time to re-invent the beer and name it after the hopback vessel. This was by far the best move we ever made.

Our ‘single batch’ beers are really test batches of beer. We run 40 kegs through a few beer bars and ask for feedback on the beer and the name/logos. They usually start while we’re enjoying a few beers in our tasting room. We want to continue turning out 2-3 new and interesting beers each year (draft only). If something sticks we’ll consider adding it in bottles.

Ed: Your graphics and packaging are great! Do you spend a lot of time on this or do you have an agency? How important is packaging in the battle for shelf space?

Chris: Coming up with the beers and packaging is what John and I enjoy. We try to do everything in house. We’ll develop the concepts, jot them on paper then we have a friend of ours work it up on a computer. We spend hours and hours trying to come up with new images.

Ed: What seasonal brews are coming up? Anything special in the works?

Chris: Tröegs Oatmeal Stout is just now coming out for the fall/ winter season. It’s dark and robust, brewed with 10% oats to help ‘round out’ and create a nice creamy texture. We start bottling it in early Sept. and run it right through Feb. Nov. 1st will be the first release of Mad Elf bottles with draft shortly following for the holidays.

Ed: How can our readers learn more?

Chris: Stop in for a brewery tour. Every Saturday we have an open house: you can come into our tasting room/gift shop try a few samples and at 2 pm we’ll walk you through the whole brewery. You’ll see our raw ingredients, brewhouse production, fermentation and packaging. You can find directions on our website, www.troegs.com.

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