CARLISLE, PENN. - The GIANT Company has partnered with Caputo Brother Creamery, Spring Grove, Penn., and Tröegs Independent Brewing, Hershey, Penn., to roll out Perpetual Beer Cheese, which is made solely with milk from farms in Pennsylvania.
"In a time when a lot of us are feeling helpless, we asked ourselves what we can do to make a difference," said Rynn Caputo, president of Caputo. "This partnership with GIANT and Tröegs has already helped keep two dairy farms running, and as it grows, we have the potential to save even more farms. This is our opportunity to make a small but important difference in the world, to keep more Pennsylvania farms sustainably operating. If enough people focus on one thing they can do to make this situation better, we can come back even stronger."
With the closures of restaurants, schools and hotels, many dairy farmers are struggling to make ends meet, and the state of Pennsylvania already lost 370 dairy farms in 2018, according to the US Department of Agriculture.
The new cheese is a sweet and creamy beer cheese with notes of citrus from the addition of Citra hops, a flower that is a key component in the best-selling Tröegs beer Perpetual IPA. To make the cheese, the Pennsylvania milk is run warm through sacks full of whole-flour Citra hops before pressing into forms. The cheese is then bathed in a saltwater and Perpetual IPA brine, and then receives a daily misting of Perpetual in Caputo’s aging cave that gives the rind the beer’s aroma and a golden hue.
“The GIANT Company is passionate when it comes to sourcing locally grown and produced products and we’re incredibly proud of our ongoing Caputo Brothers and Tröegs collaboration and the positive impact it is having on our local agriculture industry,” said John Ruane, chief merchandising officer of The GIANT Company. “Our customers loved the first variety (Troegenator Beer Cheese) we launched last year, and we’re thrilled to introduce this latest flavor, which does good in driving more business for our local small food companies and to our dairy farmers.”
The beer cheese in now available at all GIANT, MARTIN’s and GIANT Heirloom Market locations and is available for purchase on the company’s online grocery pickup and delivery service.