As it turns out, I’ve been “splatch” brewing for years. I just didn’t know there was a cool portmanteau for it until I heard from Tim Brown recently.
Brown is the owner and head brewer of Tannery Run Brew Works in Ambler, Pennsylvania. We were exchanging emails about something else when he mentioned that his regular method for brewing was to split batches—i.e., use the same wort to make at least two different beers. He calls it splatch brewing.
“It’s kind of contradicting itself,” Brown says. “I took the words ‘split batch’ and smashed them together.” He says he’s even trying to get it trademarked. “It certainly means something different when you look it up on Urban Dictionary.” (Sorry. You’ll have to do that yourselves.)