Dogfish and Trillium unveil Tru Action

The stories of Dogfish Head brewery in Milton and Trillium Brewing Company in Boston have followed similar trajectories.

In both, a husband-and-wife team weathered the slings and arrows of building a brewery from scratch to become a success. But that’s only part of the saga of how the two breweries came together to unveil a collaborative beer, Tru Action, a New England-style India Pale Ale. A release event was held at Dogfish Head’s Milton brewery Nov. 6, where the brewers discussed the beer’s origins and how they came together.

Dogfish founder Sam Calagione said he first heard of Trillium, which was founded in 2013, when he was invited to speak at a beer ingredient class held at the old Trillium brewery in Boston. According to Trillium founders JC and Esther Tetreault, that facility was small and in less-than-ideal shape for what they wanted to do, although they used more colorful language to describe it.

“The shi**iest building in the neighborhood by a mile,” Esther said. 

The Tetreaults got interested in opening a brewery after having their wedding at a vineyard.

“We were like, ‘I don’t want to wait 30 to 40 years and maybe miss it. We could die and never have the opportunity to do something we love,’” Esther said.

She said the first few years of Trillium were difficult, as the couple were raising two kids and trying to get an underfunded brewery off the ground. They had to work second jobs just to make ends meet. Esther recalled how when JC started homebrewing, she had to wash their son in the sink because the bathtub would be full of beer. 

“We were just trying to not miss out,” she said. “It was a real challenge.”

Regardless, both Sam Calagione and his wife Mariah found kindred spirits with the Tetreaults.

Sam said, “I remember being in the back and drinking off the tanks, and calling Mariah and saying, ‘There’s this mom-and-pop brewery in Massachusetts that reminds me of us when we were starting out.’ Their equipment was used, jalopy and repurposed dairy stuff. Super-cheap and DIY. I thought it would be really cool to do a collaboration.” 

After the couples met and hit it off, they did their first collaboration, when craft beer pioneers Sierra Nevada put together teams of East Coast brewers to work together to make a beer. Sam was chosen as the captain of the Northeast team, and he brought Trillium onto the squad.

JC said after that experience, he wanted to work with Dogfish again, and after building his brewery up to have its own farmhouse operation in Camden, Mass. and growing to an enterprise of 300 employees, he worked up the nerve to ask. 

The result is Tru Action, which plays off a notable moment in Dogfish lore: when Sam rigged an electric football machine to continuously add hops to what became 90-Minute IPA. Typically in beer brewing, hot water is mixed with malted barley, and that creates what is known as wort. The wort is moved to a kettle where it is boiled. During this process, hops are added to the wort to help provide the resulting beer with distinct aromas and flavors.

Generally, hops are added at intervals during the boil, but Dogfish’s innovation was to continuously add hops throughout the process, which resulted first in 90 Minute IPA and later in 60 Minute IPA, so named because of the amount of time the hops are added.

With Tru Action – which is also the name of a vintage electric football game – Dogfish and Trillium take a different approach by continuously dry-hopping, meaning the hops are added near the end of the fermentation process, when beer is cooled and yeast is added to convert sugar into alcohol, rather than during the boil. 

To pay tribute to the origins of Dogfish’s continuous hopping, Tru Action’s label features an electric football player running with the ball. The beer is hazy in color – a feature of the New England IPA style – but crisp in character. 

Sam said the collaborative process is always fun for him, because he gets to learn how other brewers do their thing while also traveling and experiencing other places.

Mariah said, “It’s always fun to connect with other folks in the same world. Everyone has a different filter they see the world through. They’re always fun; you always learn things and you learn new ideas.”

Tru Action can be found at Dogfish Head’s Milton brewery and Rehoboth Beach brewpub while supplies last.