According to the 2015 Beer Judge Certification Program (BJCP) there are 34 “styles” of beer with numerous subcategories within those styles, and all of those beers are made with just four base ingredients: Malted Grain, Water, Hops and Yeast. What a brewer does with those ingredients defines that brewery.

Bog Turtle Brewery is a small, owner operated, and managed facility in our hometown of Oxford, PA. The only people who work here are the six guys who own it. We invest our time in every batch of beer to make sure it achieves the standards that we all agree our beer will meet. This time investment means re-circulating the hot liquor through the mash a little longer to capture as much of the sugars as we can. It means letting the wort boil a little longer so that it reduces down and concentrates the malts and sugars creating a massive buffet for the waiting yeast. It means clarifying the beer with a secondary conditioning stage in our brite tanks to help our beer achieve that crisp clear finish.

And it isn’t always about what we put into the beer; it can be more about what we take out. Spending the time to boil the wort longer means a more concentrated solution for the yeast; more malt and sugars and less water means more flavor. (Chris, our chemistry guy can give you a longer lecture on solutions and concentrates.) The long and the short of it is: We add flavor (and ABV) by subtracting excess water before we pitch the yeast. A little addition by subtraction!