Beer Review: Harrishire (Boneshire Brew Works)

This was meant to be written and to go up last night, but after being up at 5AM and then working, and going to a carnival, and all that involves with that (grumble grumble kids, grumble grumble), its only getting written now. Sorry, but deal with it.

So you’re getting the review now, which I could have written up Friday night, but didn’t, and could have written last night – but didn’t, but hey, at least you’re getting it. (I will go into more detail about the other blog posts that are getting shuffled all around and why this got pushed back a bit, at the end, so as not to bore people who don’t really care.)

Some basic information on this beer and the breweries before delving into the actual beer itself.

Harris Family Brewing Company
While technically not open yet, they are planning to open (soon-ish) in Allison Hill in Harrisburg (PA). They will be Central PA (and possibly all of Pennsylvania’s) very first fully owned black brewery. They have done a few fests and brewfests and such, but I have unfortunately not gotten to try any of their straight up self-made beers yet (outside of this, Harrishire, collaboration). Their Untappd page, as of 8.18.19 looks as such:

Write-up: Central Pennsylvania’s first Black-owned Brewery! Harris Family brewery is your Urban Craft Brewery! One step into our taproom and you will be immersed in hip hop culture in an experience unlike any other craft brewery in Pennsylvania. Our brews pack a punch and taste great, and every sip will remind you of every step we took to get it into the bottle or can that is in your hand. We started brewing small batches in the kitchen right here in Harrisburg, inside the city…..in the hood. Friends would come and see what we were doing and say “Yall jokers crazy black people don’t make beer”. Yeah we was crazy alright, crazy about doing something new, something different something that would pop off and set us apart from the rest of the hustlers and entrepreneurs in our neighborhood. See we would go to craft breweries locally and feel out of place, and we liked craft beer. It just seemed like it wasn’t for us until we started making our own. After a couple of batches that came out stinky or sour we finally figured out how to make the whole thing work, and at a backyard cookout in 2014 we finally heard those words “Yo you made this? In your Kitchen? Yo pour up another one” and another one and another one until every time I made a batch it was gone before I could even enjoy it. That’s when we knew we had to get on the stage and share our style with everyone. Cheers to the hustlers…..welcome to Harris Family Brewery.

Link: https://untappd.com/HarrisFamilyBrewery

Beers: 7 unique self-made beers, with a global average rating of 3.62 (out of 39 ratings). Their beers currently made are: Street Dreams (Pale Ale), Smoke’em if you got’em (Smoked beer, similar to the Harrishire), Cupid Must Die (stout), I Left My Wallet in El Segunda (Farmhouse Saison), Forumula 58 (wheat beer), HF Lager (Lager), Bando Black (Pale Ale), they have also done two collaborations – Its Poppin (with Zeroday Brewing Company), and the Harrishire (with Boneshire Brew Works).

They also have Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, and their own website, they can be found here:
Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/HARRISFAMILYBREWERY/
Twitter: https://twitter.com/harrisfamilybrewery
Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/harrisfamilybrewery/
(I would suggest not clicking on the “website” link on their brewery page at Untappd as it leads to a porn page, unless… you know….. you want that….)

Boneshire Brew Works, as most of you are probably well aware of, is a brewery from Rutherford / Harrisburg area, located on Derry Street near the Rutter’s and next to the 7-1-7 Armory. We have done several beer reviews from them on here (Sunburst, Dillston, Caucus-Race 6.0, Road Less Traveled , Good Walk Spoiled , and I’m sure we’ll be doing plenty more in the future.)

So needless to say, I think if you’ve been a faithful reader of this blog/page, you’ve seen much about Boneshire, the brewery, the venue, and of course their beer. But if you are wanting more information, you can leave a comment and we’ll discuss with you, or you can click their Untappd brewery page link here: Boneshire Brew Works.

Ok, I think we’re finally caught up enough to get into the beer Harrishire, so lets do it.

Friday night (8.16.19) was their big release of this in the midstate area (at the Boneshire Brewery), and it even showed Shawn Grant bringing back the Nomad BBQ for a one-night special (hope you all grabbed some because it was delicious!) to go along with this great release.

Needless to say, the brewery was packed from start to finish, and a large reason for that was how delicious and well made this beer was. Its a smoked beer, which can be a bit heavy in the summer, but this wasn’t, and complimented Shawn’s BBQ wonderfully, and just made for a perfect sipping beer listening to music and the huge amount of chatter that was going on in the brewery.

Beer: Harrishire
Brewery: Boneshire Bew Works (with collaboration from Harris Family Brewing Company)
Style: Smoked Beer
ABV: 7.3%
IBU: N/A
Untappd Write-Up: Collaboration with Harris Family Brewery. Brewed with 7 different malts, which creates a roasted, sweet, almost bacon-like character. It has a moderate amount of bitterness and it screams SMOKE. We used a hefty amount of smoked apple wood malt.

The beer is a beautiful dark black with a nice brownish foamy head. Not jet – fuel – black like an Aslin stout, but a dark brown into black that is opaque and perfect for its style. The head is brown and malty looking with nice bubbles on the surface. Head retention stays and its well carb’ed.

Aroma is sweet malts, dark grains, earthy, and smokey. There is a subtle hint of apple and wood, but you get much more smoke and earth from the aroma. There is a slight sweet caramel and caramelization smell to it like bacon on a fryer or something smoked and sauteed.

The taste is spot-on smokey. Its definitely a sipper not a gulper or easy to down one of these bad boys in a minute. Its a sweet smokey, and not an overpowering or ‘wham’ smokeyness. There is the subtle underflowing taste of apple, sweet malts, caramelization, and a bit of earthyness to it. You get the wood on the back of your tongue and it all kind of mixes together before you finish the beer into a very fine mixture and beer.

If you’re looking to grab some of this, I’d be quick on it, as I’m not expecting it to last long in house, and it is definitely one you are going to want to try at least one, two, maybe even more drafts of, or even grab a growler fill of it to go and sit outside by a bonfire with this.

My Untappd Rating: ****.25
Global Untappd Rating: 4.14 (as of 8.18.19)

Ok, time for some boring post-blog stuff to write about, about other blog posts.

Firstly, the Caucus-Race 6.0 beer review ha been updated to show a Global Untappd rating now. (And its looking to stay consistent with the other Caucus-Race beers in the series.)

Friday was my last day of vacation, and it was a ‘long day’. Starting at 930AM I was at Tattered Flag helping them do a double-can run, which ran into problems on the second run, and so we only did one beer canning, and I left there at 1:45 and got home around 2PM.

Then did some of my hop harvest with the kiddos, but didn’t get that completed either due to a rolling thunderstorm that came into the area.

In the night was the Harrishire (as you see here) beer release, so I attended that.

There will be a post about the canning day, and about the hop harvest, and yes, I still promise the Moo-Funk Homebrew event and Ffej of July will both get posted. As well as the trip recaps and brewery visits I did on our Western PA tour.

Likewise there will be beer reviews from my beer mail package that came with Southern Prohibition, Parish, and Natchez Brewing.

I really wanted to get a post done a day on my vacation, but that obviously didn’t happen, (nor did my reading a book a day, and many other things on my vacation), but then again, I know this going in, and I know it never works the way I want/plan it to anyway. Just got to go with the flow.

So until next time, keep doing what you do everyone.

-B. Kline