Tamaqua brewer’s Belgian ale wins at Pennsylvania Farm Show – Yahoo! Voices
Jan. 9—TAMAQUA — Brewmaster Doug Drost beams with pride as he taps a glass of his award-winning Belgian ale in Stoker’s Brewery and Biergraten.
He had good reason to be proud.
Stoker’s Divine Belgian Strong Golden Ale has taken first place in the Belgian style category in the craft brewing competition at the Pennsylvania Farm Show.
Brianna Boyce, a friend, accepted the award Saturday evening during ceremonies at the farm show. Drost was unable to attend because the craft brewery in Tamaqua is open Saturday nights.
Drost, 58, who’s been brewing for about 25 years, said he uses traditional ingredients, including Belgian candi sugar, in brewing the golden ale.
“It has a golden effervescent appearance and rises to a mountainous rocky white head,” he said, placing a freshly drawn glass on the bar. “Its aroma has a soft, perfume-like character with fruity esters reminiscent of apples and pears.”
The award-winning ale, one of 21 beers crafted at Stoker’s, is available year-around at the brewery, 36 Mauch Chunk St.
Lani Tovitch and Hazleton area friends, Izzy Williams and Jessica Boyle, are big fans of craft breweries.
“We’ve been to craft breweries from upstate New York to Virginia,” Tovitch said on a recent Friday at Stoker’s. “And Stoker’s is the only one we come back to on a regular basis.”
Partial to Stoker’s Peppermint Chocolate Porter, Tovitch praised Drost for his dedication.
“He’s always here, and he’s good at what he does,” she said. “He has 21 beers on tap, and there’s not a bad one among them.”
Williams favors Stoker’s New England Hazy and Juicy IPA, while Boyle is partial to the Blood Orange Hefeweizen, a German wheat beer.
“He knocks the others out of the water,” said Boyle, a McAdoo accountant.
Drost first entered the farm show competition last year, when his Kindling Kwad, a Belgian dark ale, took third place in its category.
Judging is based on guidelines provided by the Brewers Association, a trade group of small and independent craft breweries.
A Hazleton native, Drost brewed his first beer with a kit that had been a gift to his father from a relative. He graduated from the Siebel Institute of Technology in 1998, and lives in Breinigsville, Lehigh County.
In 2017, he bought a former dry cleaners in Tamaqua and, after renovations, opened Stoker’s a year later.
One of his brews, Plzensky Drozd Czech Pilsner, is dedicated to grandparents who emigrated from Czechoslovakia to work in the mines around …….