Tröegs Independent Brewing has recently released Scratch #500, Double Perpetual IPA, a huge milestone in its Scratch Series of beers.
Back in 2020, we wrote about the brewery hitting #400, when they brewed a pre-Prohibition lager.
This limited offering commemorates the milestone of five hundred beers released through the brewery’s Scratch Series, which allows Tröegs to experiment with new brewing techniques and ingredient combinations.
Scratch #500 takes cues from Perpetual IPA, the best-selling craft beer in Pennsylvania, according to data compiled by Circana, the leading advisor on the complexity of consumer behavior.
Cycling through copious amounts of Cascade, Chinook, Nugget, and Citra hops, this bigger, bolder version of Perpetual IPA boasts sticky notes of citrus fruit and pine.
“One of the ways we share our creative process is through our Scratch Series,” says Tröegs brewmaster and co-founding brother John Trogner.
“It’s hard to imagine Tröegs without Perpetual, but there was a time when we didn’t brew an IPA. Then, Citra hops came along, so we said, ‘Why not?’”
The Scratch Series
The Scratch Series launched in 2007 to coincide with the 10th anniversary of the family-owned, independent brewery. Over the years, it has served as the springboard for potential seasonal and year-round releases, one of the first being Perpetual IPA.
After half a dozen Scratch batches, Trogner and his brewing team finally landed on the recipe that would become Perpetual IPA, one of Tröegs’ most recognizable and popular beers.
The Scratch Series expanded when Tröegs moved its operations from Harrisburg to Hershey with the installation of a 15-barrel brewhouse designed to facilitate smaller batches of beer. It got even more granular in 2020 with the installation of the Scratch Lab, a 3-barrel nano-brewery designed to replicate the temperature controls, pressure, and geometry of Tröegs’ 100-barrel production brewhouse.
“With the Scratch Lab, we can break up 15-barrel brews into nano batches,” says Tröegs Brewing Manager Tim Mayhew. “That allows us to test things like dry-hop combinations and yeast strains side-by-side.”
The brewery will have limited draft and 16-oz cans starting Thursday, October 19th at 11:30 a.m.
That’s not all! Joining this milestone beer is the draft-only Scratch #501 Triple Perpetual IPA! This beer has “copious amounts of Cascade, Chinook, Nugget, and Citra hops for the biggest OMG factor”.
