Troon Brewing

For not liking Nelson hops, what made you purchase a triple IPA featuring Nelson hops?

 

Does it change your mind with trying Nelson again with someone else? Or confirm that other breweries don't handle Nelson as well as Troon did?

 

Simple question for this thread, yes I'll be that guy, but what is Troon's operating procedure if you wanted to stop by and get beer to go? Growlers and crowlers? Dedicated can or bottle releases? Looking to make a trip over in mid September, thanks in advance.

 

Quick glance at their site looks like they are transitioning to crowlers so that's cool. Looks like a cozy spot.

 

The brewery, as of the last few weeks, is now seemingly 100% crowler. Except for a minor hiccup on his first batch of crowlers, he seems to be comfortable with this new process.

While you didn't ask, the restaurant Brick Farm Tavern, which is independent from the brewery but on the same property, serves all Troon beers for on site consumption during normal business hours.

 

Thanks! Is there a dedicated day for crowler releases?

 

He hasn't really been able to stick to a hard and fast schedule as he is still ironing out the kinks. hopefully by mid-September he will be more consistent. I think he aims for Friday at 5PM, but last week he didn't finish crowlers until Saturday at 3PM and opened up immediately afterwards for business . . . before promptly selling out early on Sunday.

The Troon Instagram account seems to be the best source of up-to-date info. There's typically a Friday afternoon update which either describes the current offering or apologizing for forcing us to drink shelf beers. *GASP*!

 

Do any of you guys make the trip between Conclave, Troon, and the Referend? Thinking of making it more of a beer route than just a stop at a single spot.

 

absolutly.. it makes for a great day... Brick Farm tavern opens pretty early on a Saturday so you can start there.. think Conclave is 12 or 1 and think referend is 2?

Also, if you like Wine.. Unionville winery is very close and has some excellent offerings... it's not unheard of either to take a trip east towards Kane.. however if you are doing that I'd start my day at Kane then work back towards Troon/Conclave/Referend... makes for an excellent day

 

and all that being said . . . don't come this weekend.

It appears the 'header' on the Troon Instagram page was updated to state they will be closed this weekend, presumably to brew more of his magical elixir. (didn't post new image/message)

 

Happy for Alex that Troon is doing so well. But man, he's gotta scale up soon. Clearly demand is outstripping his ability to keep up. It's crazy that just 2 or 3 months ago you could walk in 10 minutes after opening to no line and 3-4 beers on tap. Now he's closed every other weekend and only opening for shortened hours when he's open.

This little brewery is going places...I for one hope Alex gets there sooner rather than later so I can have more of his delicious brews!

 

he has to keep the brickfarm in stock of beer so while the demand is high causing him to close, it's not like all the beer has been consumed. I'm sure if he sold everything to go he would still sell all the beer quicker then he can make it but that isn't the model he has going on right now

if the person is available to go and brickfarm still has on all the beer def still go, just because you can't bring any home with you doesn't mean you shouldn't go if you were planning on going to try the beers

I'm sure he is working on expanding... how quick do you guys think that stuff happens? Even when some of the larger spots expand... who have already done one expansion... it can take those guys with lots of capital and space a decent amount of time. Troon is very small... not a lot of people... i'm sure expansion will happen

 

I toured the back part of the shed/building Troon brews in. I'm guessing you could squeeze a few more tanks there, but there's not too much more space, from what I can tell. I'm not sure if they would ever build an extension onto the existing building or what.

 

I don't think he needs expansion, I think he needs to scale back from crowlers, and go back to growlers until he can figure this out. Three uneven weekends in a row aren't a good look. Luckily, his beer is good enough that he can survive that.

 

Yeah I would still head out there to try them on tap since we are also hitting up other places. It makes it difficult to plan these trips though with these smaller spots.

 

Less than a month ago you could walk in 10 minutes after opening and have beer with little to no line. It really wasn't until the debut of crowlers that all this mess with lines and beer running out has become the norm.

I can only think of maybe two instances over the past 8 months that they ran out of beer before a new batch was ready to go. Now with crowlers it's happened twice in 3 weeks.

The shame of it is Troon had a nice flow going. Beers would typically last two weekends, sometimes three. This allowed time for new options to pop up, and usually at least one new thing did every weekend or so. And if there was nothing new, no big deal. There was usually still something.

 

Wow they really are that small huh, reminds me of Hidden River and Hollow Earth over here. Hidden River has built up a nice stockpile of at least having 6-8 things on tap but they only do crowlers of generally one beer a weekend and it's 1pp so it keeps the beer around. If Troon is anywhere near as good, and the reviews say they are then I'm excited to visit for something haha.

 

A word from Alex about the goings on at Troon:

AUGUST IN REVIEW


Yo! Everything at the brewery has been moving at such a frantic pace the last few weeks that I haven’t had a second for reflection/ appraisal but being closed this weekend has afforded me that opportunity so here comes a classic tome of a Troon post.

To preface this, and for the benefit of those of you who just found out about our brewery, let me reiterate that Troon is solely a production brewery. Unlike nearly every other brewery in this state we do not provide samples, pours, or regularly scheduled tours at our facility. All of our kegged beer is sent to the Brick Farm Tavern and is available anytime they are open, regardless of whether we are too. If you think of it that way we are also “open” more than almost any other brewery in the state too. I understand that it’s frustrating for new visitors to find a closed brewery after seeing our listed Google hours, but we can’t change them every week… Instagram and our website are the best solution we can think of for now.

With that out of the way I want to start by addressing all the speculation out there about the motivation behind our switch to cans, and also the impact it’s had on our operating hours, because I never got a chance to explain our decision fully and I think I owe our longtime fans that much.

Since December Tom and I have spent three days a week filling growlers and we loved the fact that the slow fill times allowed for us to chat with all of you wonderful people throughout the weekend. However, it also meant that we were unable to brew during those three days and as demand grew it became increasingly crippling to our production schedule to have half the week blacked out. Besides that, wait times for growlers were creeping up, lines were growing longer, and even with the two of us filling constantly throughout the day we started to see the writing on the wall in terms of the long-term feasibility of growler filling with a two-man team.

Up until now we have been allocating exactly the same quantity of beer for cans as we did for growler fills, even instituting strict limits, but that amount simply isn't sufficient anymore which brings us back to the fact that focusing on increased production is paramount. Having more free days in August has allowed us to start double-batching (the first one will be available this coming weekend with nearly double the quantity of cans that we've had previously) and to run the retail side of things with a single person so that one of us can brew at the same time, something that was never possible before.

On a related note, we really do try our best to release a new beer every week but that is a pretty difficult undertaking and sometimes it isn’t possible. When we brew multiple beers over 9% abv in a row it just takes longer for the beer to finish, and that metric, not the artificial constraint of a deadline that doesn’t represent anything other than a vague goal, will always dictate when we start packaging. It isn’t the most convenient solution for us or for you, but when we make an effort to constantly experiment with recipes and techniques in the pursuit of constant improvement it makes the process more fraught and unpredictable than if we brewed the same four beers on a consistent basis.

As to lines, I think the apocalyptic prophesies after our first ,admittedly disastrous, release were unwarranted. We haven’t had wait times over ten minutes since then and growler fills, not cans, were the root of the problem during the aforementioned release. Some of you have suggested pulling back from cans partially to also be able to fill growlers but that would effectively double the required labor and negate the positives that cans bring, all without increasing quantity.

I truly want what’s best for every one of you, and for you all to have the best possible experience when you take time out of your day to come visit us. The contact page on this website has been active since Day 1 so if you have concerns, rebuttals, or even agree with anything that I wrote above you can feel free to get in touch and let me know what you think. Hope you enjoyed the eclipse without major vision loss! -Alex

 

So it's mostly an overhead issue.

Makes it a little more transparent as to why he went from growlers to crowlers. With this post, it makes sense, just that the transition didn't go as seamless as he'd expect and he probably didn't account for people who crawled out of the woodworks once aluminum was involved.