Hershey

This weekend we went to Hershey for a night with some really good friends.  The main purpose of the trip was to go to Troeg's Brewery.  Dave and I went there in November of last year and we really like the scratch beers, which are only available at the brewery.

We went up Saturday and headed straight to the brewery.  They had two scratch beers (info from their web site):
SCRATCH 57-2012 – WEIZENBOCK  RELEASE DATE: 2/7/12

Scratch #57 is brewed with two cocoa powder varieties and two kinds of berries to create a tart twist on a classic German style. Unfiltered and carbonated to a near-champagne finish, the beer is 7.9% ABV. 

Fermented in our open-top fermentation room, the yeast gives hints of pepper and clove designed to complement the fruit flavors.  The cocoa powders add bitterness and some mouthfeel; the boysenberries and raspberries provide a tart, dry finish and the vanilla yields a subtle, sweet finish to the beer.

TRIPLE MANGO IPA RELEASE DATE: 2/23/12 

Scratch #58 is collaboration between Tröegs brewers along with Troy Gadbury and Brad Moyer, winners of a homebrew contest sponsored by Al’s of Hampden. This Triple Mango IPA is bold, brazen and over-the-top.

Unfiltered and highly-carbonated (for killer hop burps), Scratch 58 measures in at 125 IBU’s and 10.8% ABV. With a spicy mango nose and an intense overripe grapefruit flavor, we recommend this beer as the grand finale to your day as it overwhelms even the most-hoppy beers.

BARLEY:Maris Otter, Crystal, Carafoam Maris Otter provides an earthy flavor with strong hints of biscuit and is the predominant barley taste in this beer.

HOPS BOIL: Columbus, Simcoe, Nugget, Cascade?HOPBACK: Simcoe, Columbus

DRY HOP: Columbus, Cascade Columbus dry-hopping creates a strong herbaceous flavor, while the entire hop blend screams grapefruit with pine and floral accents.

YEAST:House Ale Yeast 

JUJU:Wildflower Honey, Cane Sugar, Alphonso Mangoes Alphonso Mangoes create a luscious aroma and spicy complement to Columbus and Simcoe hops. Honey and cane sugar provide additional fermentable sugar for this high ABV brew.

I'm not crazy about chocolate in beers- it tends to taste a little like coffee to me.  So the Weizenbock was ok but not fabulous.  I did like the Triple Mango IPA but it wasn't available for growler fills.  And it was pretty high in alcoholic content.

They also had Nugget Nectar, which was one of the main reasons Dave wanted to go there.  Unfortunately, they were already sold out of bottles but we can also buy that in the Pittsburgh area (although I think it can be hard to get).

After Troeg's we headed to the outlets and did some shopping.  

After checking into our hotel we went to Bricker's, a pizza place.  I ate Old World Pizza, which I'd never heard of, and thought was really good!  They flip the sauce and cheese (so the cheese is on the crust and then sauce on top) and used provolone instead of mozzerella cheese.  We weren't ready to crash yet so we headed to the bar at What If after that.  I was pretty impressed with the bartender- he remembered all of our names and seemed to know what he was doing.  We joked we were going to switch around so he'd forget who was who, and when we paid the bill he said our names, pointing out of order, and got it right.  Guess we wouldn't have fooled him by changing seats!

Our biggest takeaway from the trip, though?  We brought a bunch of empty growlers and were planning on bringing back some good beer to Pittsburgh.  But none of us checked the hours for the tasting room and didn't realize it doesn't open on Sundays until we were sitting outside the brewery on Sunday.  Oops!  We were disappointed, but it's not really that long of a trip from Pittsburgh so we'll just have to go back.