Nugget Nectar by Troegs Independent Brewing is an Imperial Amber Ale

Unveiling the Spectrum: Amber Ale vs. Red Ale – Exploring the Fine Line of Craft Beer

Craft beer aficionados often find themselves enchanted by the diverse palette of flavors and aromas offered by different beer styles. Among these, Amber Ale and Red Ale stand out as two closely related yet distinct brews, each with its own unique characteristics. In this exploration, we embark on a journey to unravel the nuances that differentiate these beloved styles, delving into their histories, brewing techniques, flavor profiles, and more.

In the vibrant world of craft beer, the quest for the perfect pint can lead down many a hop-lined path. Among the myriad of styles that populate this effervescent landscape, Amber and Red Ales stand out for their rich colors, complex flavors, and the sometimes blurry line that divides them. This article will delve into the depths of these beloved brews, exploring their histories, characteristics, and what sets them apart in the eyes of brewers and beer aficionados alike.

A Colorful Beginning: The Origins of Amber and Red Ales

Amber and Red Ales share a common ancestry, rooted in the British brewing tradition. These beers originally evolved from the pale ales of England, gaining their distinctive colors and flavors from the use of caramel and roasted malts. As these styles crossed the Atlantic, American craft brewers embraced and adapted them, incorporating local ingredients and brewing techniques. This transatlantic journey gave rise to the distinct versions of Amber and Red Ales enjoyed today.

Both Amber Ale and Red Ale trace their origins back to the rich tapestry of brewing traditions, with roots entrenched in European heritage. Amber Ale finds its inspiration from English Bitter Ales, with a nod to American innovation in craft brewing. Red Ale, on the other hand, draws influence from Irish and Scottish brewing traditions, renowned for their malt-forward styles.

Amber Ales: A Study in Balance

Nugget Nectar by Troegs Independent Brewing is an Imperial Amber Ale

Amber Ales are celebrated for their equilibrium. Straddling the line between malt sweetness and hop bitterness, these ales showcase a medium body with a color that can range from light copper to a rich amber hue. The malt profile tends to offer flavors of biscuit, caramel, and toasty notes, balanced by a subtle hop presence that can range from earthy and floral to citrusy, depending on the hop varieties used.

American Amber Ales, in particular, are known for a more pronounced hop character, reflecting the American craft brewers’ penchant for hops. This style remains approachable, however, making it a favorite among craft beer newbies and connoisseurs alike.

On the East Coast, Nugget Nectar (and also Double Nugget Nectar) by Troegs Independent Brewing are possibly the best known examples of the Amber Ale style. The Untappd description for Nugget Nectar reads: “Squeeze those hops for all they’re worth and prepare to pucker up: Nugget Nectar Ale, will take hopheads to nirvana with a heady collection of Nugget, Warrior and Tomahawk hops. Starting with the same base ingredients of our flagship HopBack Amber Ale, Nugget Nectar intensifies the malt and hop flavors to create an explosive hop experience.”

And the Double Nugget Nectar Untappd description reads: “Let’s take Nugget and double it. Well, it wasn’t quite that easy, but it sure was a fun balancing act. To start, we boosted the Simcoe, and this complex hop’s notes of apricot, peach rings and bright citrus are the star of the show. Azacca enters the picture to add hints of juicy orchard fruit, and Munich malt brings a bready sweetness. To strike a balancing note, Columbus joins Nugget hops, grounding this limited release with a layer of dank pine.”

You can find our beer review of the Double Nugget Nectar here: Beer Review – Double Nugget Nectar (by Troegs Independent Brewing).

Red Ales: The Bold and the Beautiful

A homebrewed Irish Red Ale.

Red Ales, particularly the American versions, dial up the intensity with a bolder hop profile and a deeper red hue. The color of a Red Ale can vary from a deep amber to a rich ruby, a characteristic achieved through the use of specialty malts that also impart a more pronounced caramel sweetness and, sometimes, hints of dark fruits.

American Red Ales often feature a significant hop bitterness, with aromatic notes that can include pine, grapefruit, and tropical fruits. This style tends to be more robust and assertive than its Amber counterpart, offering a hearty malt foundation laced with a potent hop punch.

AleCraft Brewing out of Bel Air Maryland (and Railroad Pennsylvania) have a wonderful Red Ale, called: Ned Flanders Red Ale. “Red Diddly-Ho” Ale. You can read our beer review on it here: Beer Review – Ned Flanders Red Ale (AleCraft Brewing Company).

The Untappd description for the beer reads: “A tart and malty Flanders Red Ale brewed with Roeselare bacteria and Hallertau hops.”

The Fine Line: Differentiating Amber from Red

While Amber and Red Ales share a common lineage and overlapping flavor profiles, the distinction often boils down to intensity. Red Ales generally present a more vigorous hop bitterness and a deeper malt complexity than Amber Ales. Additionally, the visual difference is notable, with Red Ales displaying a more pronounced red or ruby color compared to the lighter, coppery tones of Amber Ales.

The boundary between these styles can be fluid, with some beers blurring the lines and sparking debate among enthusiasts. Ultimately, the distinction may hinge on the brewer’s intention and the sensory experience they aim to evoke.

The key differentiator between these two styles lies in their malt and grain bill. Amber Ale typically features a balanced blend of malt varieties, including pale, caramel, and sometimes a touch of roasted malt. This combination contributes to its amber hue and provides a nuanced sweetness with hints of biscuit and caramel.

Conversely, Red Ale places a greater emphasis on roasted malts, often incorporating specialty grains such as crystal or roasted barley. These malts impart a deeper reddish hue to the beer and lend it a richer, more pronounced caramel and toffee sweetness, with subtle notes of nuttiness or toastiness.

Hops and Bitterness

While both styles showcase malt-forward profiles, they diverge in their approach to hops and bitterness. Amber Ales typically exhibit a moderate hop presence, contributing to a well-balanced profile where malt sweetness is complemented by floral or earthy hop notes. This balance allows the malt character to shine while providing a refreshing bitterness to the finish.

In contrast, Red Ales tend to showcase a restrained hop profile, with bitterness taking a back seat to the malt complexity. The focus here is on highlighting the interplay between the rich malt sweetness and the subtle hop character, resulting in a smooth, approachable brew with a gentle bitterness that enhances rather than dominates the flavor experience.

Flavor Profile and Aromatics

When it comes to flavor and aroma, both styles offer a delightful array of sensory experiences. Amber Ales boast a malt-forward profile with caramel, toffee, and biscuit notes dominating the palate. Aromas of bread crust and toasted grains often accompany the sip, evoking images of freshly baked bread and cozy fireside evenings.

Red Ales, on the other hand, present a deeper, more intense flavor profile, with pronounced caramel and toffee sweetness intermingling with hints of dark fruit, roasted nuts, or chocolate. Aromatics may include notes of dried fruit, such as raisins or plums, along with a subtle earthiness or nuttiness that adds layers of complexity to the brew.

Food Pairings

Both Amber Ale and Red Ale lend themselves well to a wide range of culinary pairings, thanks to their versatile flavor profiles. Amber Ales are well-suited to classic pub fare such as burgers, BBQ ribs, or hearty stews, where their malt sweetness can complement the savory flavors of grilled meats or slow-cooked dishes.

Red Ales, with their richer malt profile and subtle complexities, pair beautifully with roasted meats, caramelized vegetables, or aged cheeses. The sweetness of the malt can offset the saltiness of cured meats or cheeses, while the nutty or toasty notes can enhance the flavors of roasted vegetables or hearty soups.

Tasting the Spectrum: A Craft Beer Adventure

Exploring the range between Amber and Red Ales offers a delicious journey through the craft beer spectrum. From the balanced, easy-drinking nature of Amber Ales to the bold, hop-forward character of Red Ales, there is a world of flavor to discover. Beer lovers are encouraged to taste these styles side by side, appreciating the subtle nuances and celebrating the diversity that makes the craft beer scene so exhilarating.

In the end, whether you find yourself leaning towards the harmonious blend of malt and hops in an Amber Ale or the robust intensity of a Red Ale, the adventure lies in the exploration. So, raise a glass to the craft of brewing and the endless pursuit of the perfect pint.

In the world of craft beer, Amber Ale and Red Ale stand as testament to the artistry and creativity of brewers, each offering a unique expression of flavor, aroma, and character. While they share commonalities in their malt-forward profiles, the subtle nuances that distinguish these styles make them a delight to explore and savor. Whether you find yourself drawn to the caramel sweetness of an Amber Ale or the rich complexity of a Red Ale, one thing is certain – both brews offer a journey of discovery for the discerning palate. Cheers to the brewers who continue to push the boundaries of flavor, and to the beer enthusiasts who revel in the diverse tapestry of craft beer!

Thank You For Reading

If you like this article, please check out our other many articles, including news, beer reviews, travelogues, maps, and much much more. We greatly appreciate everyone visiting the site!

Cheers.

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We are working on a massive project here at The Beer Thrillers. We are creating a map of all of the breweries across the United States. State by state we are adding maps of all of the different states with every brewery in each state. (We will eventually get to the US Territories, as well as the Canadian Provinces, and possibly more countries; as well as doing some fun maps like a map of all the breweries we’ve been to, and other fun maps.) You can find the brewery maps here:

• MAPS OF BREWERIES

We are also working on a project of creating printable and downloadable PDFs and resources to be able to check and keep track of all of the breweries you’ve been to. So stay tuned for that project once we are finished with the Brewery Maps of the US States.

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The Beer Thrillers are a blog that prides itself on writing beer reviews, brewery reviews, travelogues, news (especially local to the Central PA brewery scene), as well as covering other topics of our interests – such as hiking, literature and books, board games, and video games which we sometimes stream with our friends over at Knights of Nostalgia. We are currently listed as #7 on FeedSpot’s “Top 100 Beer Blogs” and #8 on FeedSpot’s “Top 40 Pennsylvania Blogs”. (As of January 2023.) Thank you for reading our site today, please subscribe, follow, and bookmark. Please reach out to us if you are interested in working together. If you would like to donate to the blog you can here: Donate to The Beer Thrillers. Thank you!

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AleCraft Brewery

Just a few days ago, on July 5th we drove down to Bel Air Maryland, an old hang out of mine when I was in high school. Back then, I was even nerdier than I am now (or… what I was into was just considered nerdier back then).

Myself, along with my friends Drew Scott and Rory Dibeler would travel down to Bel Air to play SW:CCG in tournaments ran by another of our friends – Tim Simon. For those interested – SW:CCG stands for “Star Wars Customizable Card Game”.

Yes. Like. I Said. NEEEEEEERRRRRRRRDSSS!

Ironically, this time I went down to do some drinking with Amy. (And yes, when we went down in the past, my buddies and I did some drinking. I recall one tournament where we took a tequila bottle and drank it while playing… needless to say I don’t think I won the tournament, nor do I remember how I even did in the tournament.)

This trip, which you can read here: “Bound for Bel Air – AleCraft Brewery and Independent Craft Brewing”.

So anyway, long story short – we came down to Bel Air Maryland to check out AleCraft Brewery and Independent Craft Brewing.

Grabbed a four pack of this – Ned Flanders Red – to take home. (How could I turn up the chance to grab a Simpsons themed beer to go?).

I made sure to take it with me to Ffej of July – 2022 – and share it with my buddies (Drew, Dave, Jason, Andy Parys, and several others). (You can check out our article about Ffej of July 2021 here.)

Beer Review

Beer: Ned Flanders Red
Brewery: AleCraft Brewery
Style: Sour – Flanders Red Ale
ABV: 4.8%
IBU: 8
Untappd Description: A tart and malty Flanders Red Ale brewed with Roeselare bacteria and Hallertau hops.

Ned Flanders Red by AleCraft Brewery is a fantastic Flanders-style red ale that will leave any beer enthusiast impressed. This beer is a work of art, showcasing the expertise and creativity of AleCraft Brewery in Bel Air, Maryland.

The beer’s appearance is captivating, with a deep ruby-red color that entices the senses. The aroma is equally alluring, with notes of caramel, dark fruit, and oak that make the mouth water.

This color is the result of the beer’s malted barley, which has been roasted to produce a deep color and rich flavor profile. The use of dark malts in the brewing process creates a beer that is visually striking and sets the stage for the complex flavors that follow. The hue of this beer is reminiscent of a fine red wine, inviting the drinker to savor the beer slowly and appreciate the craftsmanship that went into its creation. Overall, the deep ruby-red color of Ned Flanders Red by AleCraft Brewery is an indication of the depth and complexity of the beer’s flavor profile and is sure to impress even the most discerning beer enthusiasts.

The aroma is complex and alluring, inviting the drinker to indulge in its delicious flavors. The beer’s scent is dominated by notes of dark fruit, including cherries, plums, and raisins, which blend together to create a sweet and fruity aroma. This fruity sweetness is balanced out by notes of oak, which give the beer a subtle earthiness and hint at the aging process that the beer underwent during production. The aroma is further enhanced by notes of caramel and toffee, which add a rich and indulgent sweetness to the beer.

Upon taking a deep breath, the drinker is immediately transported to the world of Flanders-style ales, with the beer’s aroma evoking images of cozy pubs and warm fires. The aroma is the perfect prelude to the beer’s rich and complex flavor profile, offering a tantalizing hint of the flavors that are to come. Overall, the aroma of Ned Flanders Red by AleCraft Brewery is a work of art in itself, showcasing the brewery’s expertise and dedication to creating a beer that is as delightful to smell as it is to drink.

Upon taking the first sip, the drinker is immediately captivated by the complex flavor profile. The beer offers a perfect balance between sweetness and sourness, with notes of cherries, plums, and other dark fruits creating a unique and unforgettable experience.

The mouthfeel is equally impressive, with a medium body and carbonation that offers a smooth drinking experience. The finish is long and lingers on the tongue, with the flavors continuing to develop as the beer warms.

The taste of the beer is a true delight for the taste buds, offering a complex and balanced flavor profile that is sure to impress any beer enthusiast. The beer is both sweet and sour, with a perfect balance between the two that is reminiscent of a fine red wine. The flavors of dark fruit, including cherries and plums, are the most prominent, adding a fruity sweetness to the beer that is perfectly complemented by the beer’s subtle earthiness, hints of oak, and notes of caramel and toffee. The sourness of the beer is also noteworthy, with a tanginess that is well-balanced and never overpowering. The flavors of the beer continue to develop as it warms, with the sweetness becoming more pronounced and the sourness fading into the background.

Its a complex and balanced flavor profile that offers a perfect combination of sweet and sour notes. The dark fruit flavors of cherries and plums provide a fruity sweetness that is complemented by the beer’s subtle earthiness, hints of oak, and notes of caramel and toffee. The sourness of the beer is well-balanced and never overpowering, adding a tanginess that balances the sweetness perfectly. The flavors of the beer continue to evolve as it warms, with the sweetness becoming more pronounced and the sourness fading into the background. The result is a beer that is both delicious and memorable, showcasing the brewery’s expertise and dedication to creating a high-quality Flanders-style red ale.

Overall, Ned Flanders Red by AleCraft Brewery is a standout example of a Flanders-style red ale, brewed with care and attention to detail. Its rich, complex flavor profile, captivating aroma, and smooth mouthfeel make this beer a must-try for any beer connoisseur.

My Untappd Rating: ***.75
Global Average Untappd Rating: 3.80 (as of 7.11.22)

All of Our Nerd Content

Here’s all of our nerd content, served up best in one single place. Enjoy!

I know ya’ll here for the nerd reviews. So check out our other nerd reviews below:

Star Wars:

• Beer Review: The Pandalorian (Tattered Flag)
• Beer Review: Wookie Monster (Fourscore Beer Co)
• Beer Review: Out of Order: Blue Milk (RAR Brewing) (Batch 1)
• Beer Review: Out of Order: Tatooine Tart (RAR Brewing)
• Beer Review: Out of Order: RAWRGWAWGGR (RAR Brewing)
• Beer Review: Out of Order: Droid Juice (RAR Brewing)
• Beer Review: Wookies and Cream (Tall Tales Brewing)
• Revenge of the Fifth / Cinco de Mayo
• May the Fourth Be With You
• Beer Review: This is Nut the Fluff You’re Looking For (Fourscore Beer Co)
• Beer Review: This is the Way (Broken Goblet Brewing)
• Beer Review: This is the Whey (Bolero Snort Brewery)
• Beer Review: Java the Stout (Jackie O’s Brewery)
• Beer Review: The Mangolorian (Brewery Fire)
• Beer Review: BoBull Fett (Bolero Snort Brewery)
• Mead Review: The Meadalorian (Space Time Mead and Cider Works)
• Beer Review: Let the Haze Flow Through You (Black Flag Brewing Co)
• Book Review: The Jedi Path and The Book of the Sith (Daniel Wallace)
• Book Review: Guardians of the Whills (Greg Rucka)
• May the Fourth Be With You (2022)
• RAR Out of Order Star Wars Drop!
• Beer Review: Vader (Mispillion River Brewing Company)
• Beer Review: Out of Order: Green Milk (RAR Brewing Company) (Batch 1)
• Beer Review: The Phantasm Menace (Second Sin Brewing Company)

Lord of the Rings:

• Book Review: An Atlas of Tolkien (David Day)
• Book Review: The Lay of Aotrou and Itroun (J.R.R. Tolkien)

Rick and Morty:

• Beer Review: Peace Among Worlds (Cushwa Brewing Company)

Space Balls:

• Beer Review: Moon of Vega (Equilibrium Brewery)

Game of Thrones:

• Beer Review: Game of Thrones: My Watch Has Ended (Omnegang Brewery)
• Book Review: The Wit and Wisdom of Tyrion Lannister (George R.R. Martin)

The Simpsons:

• Beer Review: I Voted for Kodos (Second Sin Brewing Company)
• Beer Review: I Voted for Kang (Second Sin Brewing Company)
• Beer Review: Ned Flanders Red (AleCraft Brewery)

Back to the Future:

• Beer Review: Back to Reality (Three 3s Brewing Co)

Scrooged:

• Beer Review: Scrooge IPA (Iron Hill Brewing)

Groundhog Day:

• Beer Review: Prognosticator Pils (Logyard Brewing Company)
• Logyard Brewing’s Prognosticator Pils is the Official Beer of Groundhog Day (2022)

A Christmas Story:

• Beer Review: The Soft Electric Glow of Sex (RAR Brewing)
• Beer Review: You’ll Shoot Your Eye Out! (Eight and Sand Beer Co)

Pro Wrestling:

• Beer Review: Broken Skull – Stone Cold Steve Austin’s IPA (El Segundo Brewing Company)
• Beer Review: Macho Man (Couch Brewery)
• Beer Review: Royal Rumble (Funk Brewing)
• Stone Cold Steve Austin and the WWE Are Celebrating 3:16 Day

Soccer:

• Beer Review: Pulisic Pilsner (Jackass Brewing Company)
• Book Review: Pulisic – My Journey So Far (Christian Pulisic)

World Cup:

• Qatar Bans Alcohol Sales at World Cup in Last Second Decision
• Breweries Opening Early For the USA vs Netherlands World Cup Ga

Phillies:

• Drunk Phils Fans and Rotunda Brewing Company Collaborate Together on Jam the Batter sWheat Tart

Matrix:

• Matrix Monday

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:

• Beer Review: Terpenes in Time (BAREBottle Brewing Co)

HP Lovecraft / Cthulhu:

• Beer Review: Azathoth (Edmund’s Oast Brewing Company)

Seinfeld:

• Beer Review: Jon Voight’s Car (RAR Brewing)
• Beer Review: Airing of Grievances (Black Flag Brewing Company)

Other:

• Beer Review: Super Villain (Urban Village Brewing Company)
• Beer Review: Pixels (Seminar Brewing)
• Beer Review: Villeinage (Elder Pine Brewing and Blending)
• Beer Review: Intergalactic Deals (Levante Brewing)
• Beer Review: Galactic Space Circus (Creature Comforts Brewing Co)
• Beer Review: The Death of Civilization in Slow Motion I (Ghost 907) (Adroit Theory)

Thank You For Reading

Cheers All!

-B. Kline

As always, thank you everyone for reading! Leave your likes, comments, suggestions, questions, etc, in the comments section. Or use the Feedback – Contact Us – page, and we’ll get right back to you! You can also reach out to us at our direct e-mail address: thebeerthrillers@gmail.com

Thank you for visiting our blog. Please make sure to follow, bookmark, subscribe, and make sure to comment and leave feedback and like the blog posts you read. It will help us to better tailor the blog to you, the readers, likes and make this a better blog for everyone.

You can check out our different directories here: Beer Reviews, Hike Reviews, Book Reviews, Brewery News, Brewery Openings, Brewer Interviews, and Travelogues.

Please be sure to follow us on our social media accounts – Facebook, Facebook Group, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Influence. Please be sure to also follow, like, subscribe to the blog here itself to keep updated. We love to hear from you guys, so be sure to leave a comment and let us know what you think!

You can now find us on our Discord Server here: The Beer Thrillers (Discord Server). We’ve also joined LinkTree to keep track of all of our social media pages, as well as hot new articles we’ve written.

We have partnered with an affiliateship with Beer Drop.com. You can check out that partnership and receive great discounts, coupons, and more here: Beer Drop. Going here and logging in and ordering will help you receive your discounts and coupons as well as help support our page. Thank you for helping to support The Beer Thrillers and to help us maintain the site and blog and to keep it running.

The Beer Thrillers are a blog that prides itself on writing beer reviews, brewery reviews, travelogues, news (especially local to the Central PA brewery scene), as well as covering other topics of our interests – such as hiking, literature and books, board games, and video games which we sometimes stream with our friends over at Knights of Nostalgia. We are currently listed as #7 on FeedSpot’s “Top 100 Beer Blogs” and #8 on FeedSpot’s “Top 40 Pennsylvania Blogs”. (As of January 2023.) Thank you for reading our site today, please subscribe, follow, and bookmark. Please reach out to us if you are interested in working together. If you would like to donate to the blog you can here: Donate to The Beer Thrillers. Thank you!

You can also check out our partnership and affiliation with Pretzels.com, where ordering pretzels and using our affiliate code – AFFILIATE CODE IS THEBEERTHRILLERS20 – will help you get wonderful pretzels and help us maintain and keep this blog running. Thank you!

If you would like to reach out to us for product reviews, beer reviews, press release writing, and other media – please contact us at thebeerthrillers@gmail.com. Thank you.

The above is from last night, after a day was had, in which most things – none of the things – played out as intended, by any means, plans, expectations, and happenstance. This is a beer review, and more, and its almost more of a commentary. This is a beer review and talk of how things can be handled, how things could be handled better, and more. This will be an interesting beer review, because I might actually spend more of the review discussing things like hype, market, promoting your brand, etc; than I do on the beer itself. This will not be a rage long into the night or a damnation or a fight. It also won’t be a fan boy esque crushing on a brewery or much more. I think this will be a reasonable review – at least I hope so. But I think it will also be a realistic review.

Hopefully.

Also, before we get into it – kudos to my man Ming with the photobomb.

How to alienate, annoy, anger, and upset your fans and followers in three easy steps….

That should probably be the main title for this. By now, 11AM Friday the 22nd (2021), we all know the story. Anyone whose reading this has access to the internet, and most likely has seen the large amounts of complaints on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, etc. lobbed at Troegs Brewing. From various Facebook groups – like Beer Gods, Beer Nerds, Breweries in PA, Central PA Whalerz, etc, there was much angst, anger, and bitterness at Troegs.

So what went wrong? What led to all of this bitter hostility and anger?

Well, this will probably get long winded. This might also get dogged down into debates and discussion on business practices. I want to be upfront here and say I do not work for Troegs Brewing, I do not receive free stuff from them, and I haven’t received this beer in lieu of review. I normally don’t mention this when doing my reviews, because practically always I buy the beer myself that I review. I say “Hey, I wanna try that beer” and I go and buy it or try it in some fashion and then say “Hey, I wanna review that beer” and I go and write a review of it. Simple as that. I am mentioning this here, because I think its relevant for the discussion that this beer review – blog post – will have. And some of that discussion centers around brand, hype, and marketing. I know some local bloggers Billy Five Caps (Bearcat on Beer), and others might have a very positive spin on things; especially Bearcat as he’s a big time Troegs fanboy (and as his Twitter stated, he was first in line yesterday). (His blog often mentions how he received things from Troegs directly, their Mad Elf cheese, or a beer, etc.)

This will be a tempered discussion. And it will be what I think is realistic, but also my thoughts and opinion. There will be some “so and so said” or grapevine comments, but the main parts and points will be my opinion on what I think was done and why it was done.

So firstly, lets start by breaking this down and starting from the very beginning…

A new dawn is cracked and the day begins

I was at my friend’s house late Wednesday into Thursday. We were doing a stream for his Knights of Nostalgia page. where we played Mega Man V (5). We started the stream around 9:45PM, and ended around 3AM or so, we went pretty late. I then sat around and chatted and bullshitted with him til about 5, got gas, and went home. I woke up at 8, and kind of snoozed / vegged in the bed before fully getting ready and starting my day.

Around 930 AM I was starting to see things pop up on the various Facebook groups that people were already lining up at Troegs. I wasn’t really sure if people were joking around or not. (As it turns out – no, they weren’t joking around.) Struggling to get up from the late night drinking session and streaming, I finally get my shower at 10AM. Get to my car at 1015 and head to Troegs. Living in Hummelstown, its about a five-ten minute drive depending on the traffic on Hershey Park Drive. Coming up on the Troegs Brewery, I can already see the parking lot is completely packed, I can see a car parked on the side of the road, and right before getting into the entrance I have a car cut me off and enter the brewery’s lot.

As I pull into the lot, I can see the line stretches from the door, through the patio garden area, past the parking lot on the walkway sidewalk they have (asphalt) and stretches all the way back to nearly the train tracks. Two guys quickly run through the parking lot and get ahead of me, I get in line, and soon after another three enter the line behind me. The last of those three is the first to be on the grass where the asphalt sidewalk ends.

The time is 10:35.

I stand there reading – “How to Talk About Books You Haven’t Read” by Pierre Bayard. Guys around me in the line are chit chatting. Up ahead I can see a woman with a stroller and a small child (probably around nine years old) playing in the grass.

Already I knew I was in for a long day, and knew my expectations and how I thought this day was gonna play out were not gonna happen. My original plan was to pop into the general store, pick up two four packs (one for me, one for my buddy), and then go into the restaurant, have the hop fries and order a flight with Double Nugget Nectar and regular Nugget Nectar, to be able to do a side-by-side tasting; specifically for this blog.

Welp…. that ain’t gonna happen.

Its 10:50AM do you know where your Double Nugget Nectar is?

At 10:50AM a woman for Troegs starts working her way up the line stopping at spots to make an announcement. She explains the situation. There is 40 cases for online only sales, 80 cases for in-person sales. There is no limits. First come first serve. Starting with the line. There is 10 kegs for in-house. This means behind the bar in the restaurant and in the store for crowlers and growler fills. When its gone its gone. The online sale would start at 11:00 and the line would begin moving and letting people inside at 11:00.

Immediately everyone gets out their phones and look to try and order online. First pick up would only be 1PM though, but people don’t seem to care. At 11 they can start shopping. By 11:01AM the online sales are complete and sold out. Many people, in line – in person, as well as online in the various Facebook groups and Troegs Brewing page, said that their carts would be full but they weren’t able to check out in time due to how quickly it sold out online.

The line begins moving, first steady as the first wave went in, then in spurts as people would leave they would let others in. By about 11:30 I’m up to the arbor – wooden arch – that leads to the pergola and outdoor seating area. About five minutes later I’m off the road and into the little walkway area around the picnic tables. The people in the line are beginning to be pretty disgruntled.

Specifically the guy behind me who says he came from Wilmington Delaware. The guy in front of me says he came from near him and was supposed to be at work. They both said it was a two hour drive. At this point we can now see the people leaving the store with their goodies. One guy walking out with three cases. This was when the real bitching, moaning, and complaining set in with people in the line.

The guy behind me everytime some one exits with a case, “Oh c’mon, save some! I’ll buy a can off of you right now for 10$. You’re not drinking all of that!”

There is now a line to get into the restaurant. Running halfway down the ramp. And its now 11:45 and the announcement comes out, as I’m standing about three feet past (towards Troegs) the food truck: “No more cans! No more cans!” A collective groan goes up over the establishment.

The employee comes out and gives an update: “The cans have sold out. We do have the kegs in both the store and in the restaurant, you can buy crowlers and growlers in the store.”

Note here on pricing: the four packs were 17.99$ for a four pack (4 16oz cans – total oz of 64oz). The crowler fill is 14.50$ (32 oz), and a growler fill was 22$ (64oz).

I finally get to the steps, and soon after get inside. At this point its 12:10. The inside of the store is a zoo. Employees all running overtop of each other. You get your crowlers or growlers paid at the register, and then wait in a line til they have them canned up (or growlers filled) and then you get yours. I order two crowlers, and pick up a six pack of the 12oz Nugget Nectar cans.

The line is too long for the restaurant and with the limited seating, who knows when they’ll let people in.

The line to get the crowlers is about eight people, and we wait til they fill each person’s allotment of cans that they ordered. In the line with me, a woman gets 10, another woman gets 6, the guy in front of me gets 4, and the guy behind me gets 8. I get my two crowlers, and leave. Running into a shift manager for swing shift that I work with, and my one friend in the line. I explain the situation inside to them. And said if I had thought of it, I could have just saved them the time and ordered their crowlers for them and just handed it to them when I came out.

By this point its 12:40PM, and I had been there since 10:30AM. I was hungry, and to be honest, it was just all so hectic, that I felt a bit frazzled. I can only imagine how the poor employees working felt. And most likely they got few and sparing tips since everything was store purchases rather than drinks at the bar.

How My Thursday Unfolded

The original gameplan for Thursday was to meet up with Drew at his place and do another stream at night. He was waiting for a special HDMI cable to come in so he could play GameCube and Wii games for his streaming page. As it turns out, the piece never arrived.

I ate lunch at Rubber Soul in Hummelstown. And what a world of difference that was. No lines. No angry, angst ridden people, no complainers, etc. I even picked up a four pack of their newest beer – Fiddler’s Elbow – a Belgian Dubbel. The four pack was 15$. I had the Italian Wedding Soup that I love there, and the Soul Patch Pilsner.

I then needed some hiking time. So I did a quick Google Search for hikes and places I never been to within an hour drive. And I came up with this one called Reed’s Run Preserve. The original place was Tucquan Glen Nature Preserve, 1 hour and six minutes from Rubber Soul. I picked it because the pictures showed some beautiful waterfalls.

So off I went in search of trying to get some peace and serenity.

House Rock

The big feature of the place was House Rock. I couldn’t get to Tucquan Glen Nature Preserve because all of the parking lots were closed up due to it being winter, so I hiked the Reed Run Preserve and House Rock Preserve. A 3.16 mile hike. Just me all alone in the woods, and with a gorgeous view ontop of House Rock.

Had me my normal hiking beer (Nugget Nectar), had some meditation time on House Rock drinking it and taking in the view. The hike took about 2 hours and was 3.16 miles. Afterwards, I did my normal “whats nearby” search for breweries and found a few I haven’t been to before. Raney Cellars, Pig Iron Brewing, Columbia Kettle Works (in Columbia), Our Town Brewery in Lancaster.

I decided on Raney Cellars which is in Millersville. While there, I got the message from Drew saying we wouldn’t do the stream tonight, and that he was going to do an online poker tournament. So I messaged Ming and told him I was basically in his backyard. Him and Don and their friend Justin were going to play cards, so they invited me out.

So I quickly hit Columbia Kettle Works on my way to their house (it was on the way… sort of…) I had been to the Columbia Kettle Works 2nd Gear location in Lancaster with my friend Rory a few years back when we saw Dropkick Murphy’s there. But this was my first time at both of these locations (Raney Cellars and Columbia Kettle Works in Columbia). Both were great and the beers were great. I’ll be doing a post about them in the upcoming days, so stay tuned for that if you’re interested.

Got to Ming and Don’s around 7:20-7:30PM for dinner (Shepherd’s Pie) and then some games of Rummy. Also cracked open the crowler of Double Nugget Nectar, had the remainder of the six pack of Nugget Nectar, and had the Fiddler’s Elbow I picked up at Rubber Soul. (Even cracked a Miller Lite at the end of the night – 3AMish, when we were out of everything else.)

Ok… so enough of all of the day’s events, lets finally get to that beer review, probably the only real reason you are here anyway!

Beer Review: Double Nugget Nectar – Troegs Brewing

Beer: Double Nugget Nectar
Brewery: Troegs Independent Craft Brewing
Style: Red Ale – Imperial / Double
ABV: 9.5%
IBU: None Listed
Untappd Description: Let’s take Nugget and double it. Well, it wasn’t quite that easy, but it sure was a fun balancing act. To start, we boosted the Simcoe, and this complex hop’s notes of apricot, peach rings and bright citrus are the star of the show. Azacca enters the picture to add hints of juicy orchard fruit, and Munich malt brings a bready sweetness. To strike a balancing note, Columbus joins Nugget hops, grounding this limited release with a layer of dank pine.

Appearance looks similar to the regular Nugget Nectar. It looks hazier, a bit more cloudy than the original, but also looks lighter in overall color. Still has that same reddish to amber to orange sunset look to it, a harvest moon type coloring. Coming from the crowler and canned only about 8 hours earlier, it still had great carbonation and a nice thin head. Left great lacing on the glass.

Aroma is super hoppy. You can tell this is an amped up Nugget Nectar. Its got the malt aroma, its got the hop aroma, and you can smell a sweetness to it. The hop nose on this is extremely strong and powerful and is the best feature of the beer. It just smells like an amazing beer.

Ok, lets get into the beer itself. First thing’s first: is it worth the hype? ….Yes and No. It is… but to a degree. Nugget Nectar is a universally beloved Troegs offering. So doing a double version of it immediately hypes it in and of itself. This deserves that level of hype. It does NOT deserve the hype of people waiting in line at 9AM to get into a brewery at 11AM. Its not “I better get 3 cases” of it hype. (Outside of the turn around sales.) This is a really well done beer though. Its extremely tasty. And I could easily drink three cases worth…. (not in one night of course!) but overall in months. I would go for this over regular / original Nugget Nectar. That being said, I’ve had many better beers, and many many worse beers. This is a wonderfully tasty beer though. Thankfully, luckily, its not a malt bomb. It is malty, and it is sweet, but not moreso than Nugget Nectar (original) is. In fact, I think Nugget Nectar is sweeter than this. With the hopped up nature of this one, its a bit more bitter, a bit more hoppy than the original. Probably more than a ‘bit’ – a lot more hoppy, but only a bit more bitter. There is some bready taste to it with the malt, as well as peach, citrus, and pine from the hops. It all strikes a nice balance. The 9.5% makes it a bit stronger than the original which was 7.5%. So its on par with a lot of DIPAs (Double IPAs) as far as strength. But the ABV is pretty well hidden, and doesn’t really kick you in the butt, even in a 32oz crowler. I do like this beer and think its an improvement over whats already one of the better Red Ales / Amber Ales in the area. I will be interested to see if they decide to try and make this a regular seasonal in the future, of if they shelve this.

My Untappd Rating: ****.25
Global Untappd Rating: 4.49 (as of 1.22.21)

(For reference sake – my Nugget Nectar Untappd rating was originally 4.5 when I first had it checked in, so so so so many years ago, and have in the past few years adjusted it to 4 caps.)

My Final Thoughts and Opinions

So, circling this back to the beginning of the post, and my subheading there: “How to annoy, anger and alienate your fans in three easy steps…”

This is what Troegs did in a big way. Will it make an impact in the long run? Probably not. I think a bigger question here is – was it intentional or poor planning? Either answer is not a great look for Troegs. And is kind of a shame really. Troegs is not known for their line life, in fact, I don’t think I’ve ever waited in a line, outside of five-ten minutes due to COVID over this past summer just to get in. This isn’t Tree House, or Trillium, or Imprint, or back in the day Tired Hands, where you had to wait to get the new release.

So… did Troegs just not expect the turn out? Or did they do it on purpose?

If they did it on purpose, their “plan succeeded”. It made and built hype for this beer, it makes them look like a hype brewery, and it gets them talked about over and over and over again in online circles. Publicity cheap. Advertisement done by others. As the old saying goes: “Even bad publicity is still publicity.” “Negative attention is still attention.” The over hype on this will create a second market, and the beers will sell higher now. My own co-worker offered me 25$ for the crowler I got and paid for at 14.50$. More than likely, that guy who walked out with the three cases was either there for a lot of friends, or was going to sell online in various FT/ISO and mule groups. Will he upcharge? Who knows; but more than likely.

The comments section on Troegs page is a bit interesting right now. A lot of entitlement, and a lot of anger. People saying Troegs is forgetting the locals, the people who helped build them up to where they are. A lot of people who never lost out on limited release beers before, and it shows to a pretty high degree in the comments section.

So, maybe it was just handled poorly? This is believable. Maybe Troegs didn’t believe their own hype? Maybe they didn’t think it would really sell out the way it did. I don’t know. I do know how it was ran, was pretty poor. They bungled the pre-sale on Monday by posting it up on Sunday despite initially telling everyone it would be Monday. Then they didn’t put limits on the beer. And they tried to mitigate things COVID wise, but in reality, not really. If I had to take a guess at how many people were in the line when I got there at 10:30, I would say 250-300. And once inside, the store would hold 24 people at a time, and people went about touching everything, being close to each other, etc.

The beer completely sold out by 1:30PM. That counts the 10 kegs they had for on-site and growler / crowler fills, as well as the 80 cases for in-person and the 40 cases for online. That means in 2 and a half hours they sold 10 kegs and 120 cases of their beer. Impressive.

Going forward, what would be some solutions? The most obvious is limits. Two to three four pack limit. Does this completely negate everything? No, because people can come in groups, and buy up still, but it does limit that. It also gets the beer in as many hands as possible. Their online sales could have been improved so that carts didn’t get voided because people couldn’t type in their credit card info quick enough.

Will the lesson be learned? It will be interesting to see. Did Troegs do it on purpose? Thats debatable. My gut tells me – yes, they did it on purpose, to create their own hype. But, some friends think they just didn’t realize their own hype. That they were just this woefully unprepared.

I do want to give a big shout out to the workers there though. This had to be an extremely trying and tough day, and I can only imagine how the tap room was once the last keg kicked.

Would I recommend getting it on the secondary market? Depends. Obviously on price point it depends a lot. The four packs went for 17.99$ in person. If your paying more than 25$ for a four pack, I would say its probably not worth it, but that is up to you, so who knows. Your tastes and money mileage varies.

I will be curious about the fall out from this, if Troegs will offer an apology, if they will try and remedy it, if they try and brew this again to sell. Will be interesting. Will have to wait and see.

Either way, lets all be kind to each other, the brewery, the workers, ourselves, etc. Happy New Year. New Year, New You, New Happiness. Yesterday at 9:21PM was a very interesting time. Especially at 9:21:21. It would have been the 21st second, of the 21st minute, of the 21st hour, on the 21st day, of the 21st century. Very cool.

Would love to hear everyone’s experiences with Troegs and the Double Nugget Nectar release in the comments. Let me know. Were you there? What was your experience? Feel like you got lucky? Missed out? Etc. Let us know! I’m very curious to see everyone’s reactions!

Cheers everyone!

-B. Kline

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(Just a quick note, late addition on this, this is going to be a two-part article. First part a look-back at The Beer Thrillers articles of 2019, and the second part about our top beers, top breweries, and other happenings of 2019 for myself personally and the blog, and some of our friends in general. So make sure to check out both parts.)

So its the end of the year… end of decade even…. and thus its time to reflect back on where we came from, how we got to where we are, and where we are going. Humanity, since the inception of time, and creating of calendars and years and New Years Eves and New Years Days have always taken the last few days of each year to look back on their year, their life, and reflected, and thought about how they could better themselves, come up with “resolutions” for the upcoming year, and join in with friends and families as they ring in the new year. “New Year New You.”

We here at The Beer Thrillers are going to do something …. similar. Not fully introspective though, because we don’t take ourselves that seriously. But just a fun look back at the year that was 2019. I can’t speak for my co-writers, but I can say for me, personally, 2019 had its fair share of ups, downs, in-betweens, lefts, rights, diagonals, crosses, bounces, turns, jukes, and jives. But I’m still here and better for it all. But I’m not going to go on and on too much about myself personally.

Rather, I’m going to write about how the blog has done, where we started from, where we’re headed, etc. And yea, I’ll probably get a little personal. But nothing deep or philosophical or introspective. More along the lines of what were some of the best beers, breweries, or events I’ve done of the year. So don’t worry, the blog will uphold the Seinfeld idea of “Nobody learns, nobody grows, nobody hugs”.

I started this blog back on May 17th, 2019. (This year!) It was a Thursday, my girls (my daughters) were at school, I was bored, and trying to figure out what I’m doing / was doing. I needed something for my days off while the kids were at school, something that was fun, something I was passionate about, something that let me feel like I was being creative, using my talents, and something I knew about. I’ve been reading blogs, and news sites, and all kinds of things about beer for so long, and I have a lot of experience drinking… …and writing… that I figured why not combine the two? I was feeling like I was in a rut, my job is the same its been for the past seven years, I wasn’t doing anything outright ‘creative’ and needed an outlet for it, and we are in a review culture. I do all kinds of reviews all the time, in small nondescript and unimportant ways. Like reading books when I’m finished, I write up a review of them when I check them off on GoodReads. Same with Untappd, when I drink a beer, I write up a small (Tweet size) review of it. I also felt, I was in a unique spot to start this up. I was getting to a spot where I knew enough people “on the inside” or “in the business”, and I was also doing stuff beyond just being a consumer; like home brewing, growing hops, helping can at Tattered Flag, being engaged in conversations with home brewers and professional brewers a lot, that I felt like I could provide some interesting conversations and articles to the world.

Mainly…. I was looking to not be bored, and to do something I love doing – writing and drinking beer.

So I started the blog up on May 17th, 2019. Basically having no clue what I was doing. I started up using WordPress and here we are. Its still WordPress, albeit the ‘weaker’ version (fingers crossed come sometime the new year, I switch over to the more advanced version, where I have more control over the site and the appearance). I did a little bit of research, chose a name – which to be frankly speaking – the name “The Beer Thrillers” just popped up to me. Nothing too deep or crazy or interesting behind it. I was honestly conjuring up the idea that it would be me, and a few of my friends writing, thus the “Thrillers” and not “Thriller”. I thought me, Drew, Dan maybe, and a few others would all writing all kinds of blog posts and contributing. Maybe some of the insiders in the business I know too… …while this hasn’t happened exactly; I have enlisted friends and other writers over the year to help out. (More on that as I get to their participation.)

Outside of creating the home page and starting up the site, my very first article on the blog was a beer review of Troegs’ Scratch 375 – The CocoNator. As far as first time articles go, I have no problems with it. Counting the writing of my colleagues and fellow contributors and cowriters to the blog, we’re now up to 130 blog posts (this being #131). I definitely think I’ve come a long way from that first blog. But I also like to think I laid the foundation there. I set up a system for how the beer reviews (I do) are written, presented, and I hope they are written in a fun, interesting, educational, and most importantly entertaining way.

When I started this in May, I had just gotten a couple of cans from my shift manager at work – Jordan and used them a the base for my first few beer reviews. The CocoNator was quickly followed by two South County beer reviews – Painting with Light (May 19th) and Sundrifter (May 30th). Also during this time, from my recent volunteer work helping can at Tattered Flag I worked with and gotten quite a few of their cans (hard work and sweat at their brewery resulted in many cans of whatever beer was being canned that day, as well as lots of other cans they still had from past canning runs). Two of these resulted in the beer reviews of Boulangerie Stout – Imperial Churro (May 22nd) which was a collaboration between Derek Wolf of Wolf Brewing Co. and Tattered Flag and You Hoppin’ On Me? (May 24th).

I was trying to write fast, furiously, and get some articles out there as a starting blog, I knew content was going to be the main driving force (and still is). Quality content even better. Hopefully I provided the quality content. I guess thats all up to you guys to decide, but I like to think I did (or at least, like I said, hope I did). As you can see from my picture of the Imperial Churro; often times in the background or foreground or beside the beers you’ll see some of the recent books I’m reading, as well as my dog Leela – especially if I’m drinking at home where she typically has to get her nose into the business of all involved. On May 27th, I conducted a bit of a science experiment when I found an old (over a year old) Black and Blue Tastee from The Veil. I had gotten a four pack from one of my favorite bartenders – Chris – who had traveled down and muled some back up. I wrapped up May, my first month of writing for the blog, with my first beer review from a bar – Warwick Hotel – on May 31st with a beer review of Cinnamon Toast Crunch by Collusion Tap Works.

May finished, and my first month done; even if I had only started late in the month on the 17th, I felt accomplished with the blog. I published 9 total blog pages; which included the home-page, the author-bio page, the contact page, and other necessary background pages. Word was slowly trickling out about the blog, I was up to 59 visitors and 121 views. Not a bad first month – especially considering it was basically just two weeks (the 17th through the 31st). Lets say I was “pleased as punch” with the start of the blog. June was looking bright!

June started with a beer review from the Bissell Brothers Brewing Company – Baby Genius on June 3rd. Followed up by a bottle of LazerSnake by Three Floyds on June 9th.

On June 13th, I did my first multiple beer review, and my first beer flight review – from Troegs Independent Craft Brewing – of course. What other place would I do my first beer flight review? Troegs was basically my initiation into the craft beer scene when I was ….cough turning 21…. and was the start of my craft beer love. Troegs is still a wonderful brewery, a fantastic venue there in Hershey, and overall holds a definite soft spot in my craft beer loving heart.

June 14th ended up being my first “double blog post” day. Earlier in the day I had stopped in at Tattered Flag to pick up a four-pack, had a beer, and when home, wrote a review, and later that night, with my daughters, I stopped in at Boneshire Brew Works, had a beer, and did a review before bed. At Tattered Flag I had the Abra Collabra beer, and at Boneshire I had the Sunburst beer. A week later I did my first brewery review, when I took my oldest daughter to Gettysburg for the day to visit the battlefields and monuments. Before visiting the sites, we stopped for lunch at the Battlefield Brew Works. A day later I was back at Warwick for another beer and review – Manayunk’s King Crunch.

Around this time, looking to expand, I enlisted the help of a buddy and fellow craft beer aficionado and enthusiast, and Boneshire lover – Josh Doncevic. We had a few talks at Boneshire Brew Works, and we chatted on the Central PA Whalerz group, and discussed this and that and everything beer related, and I thought he’d be a perfect fit for the blog – and he is and still has been. And on June 27th, he took his plunge into the world of blogging with his first beer review Northmont by Yellow Bridge.

A flurry of beer reviews followed – Should Have Put Him in Custardy, a beer flight from Hershey Biergarten, helped close out June and start July with Josh’s review of Ectogasm. June saw the blog grow by massive leaps and bounds, we went from 59 visitors in May to 848 visitors in June with 1100 some views. July was looking to be a great month for The Beer Thrillers, and it certainly delivered some amazing beer reviews! Pink Guava, Inexplicably Juicy, Miami Vice, Old 51, Dillston, Saison and Hurry up and Wait, a beer flight from Tony’s travels up north at the Black Gryphon, Wolf Prints, and Mango Guyabano sWheat Tart.

On July 19th we launched our Twitter page. Which just a few days ago, we hit our 100th follower! (Time for me to plug in here and suggest everyone head over there briefly to follow us, then come back here.) On July 23rd we also started our Instagram page. I will be the first to admit that we don’t do as much with Instagram, primarily because I don’t know enough about it yet. Looking to learn more about it in 2020 and get that page going a lot more.

July continued with some more beer reviews like Enigma, Green Zebra and Next Coast, Good Walk Spoiled, another beer flight from Troegs, and Road Less Traveled. I ended the month by discussing my upcoming road trip with my daughters.

July also saw some fun and interesting events I got to do for the first time. I lost my Ffej of July cherry, getting to make it out to possibly the biggest, baddest, most sickest birthday bash / lawn party ever. Me and Drew also attended the Moo-Funk Home Brew event as well. July was certainly a fun month, but August was looking to be even better.

August started off with a bang, I took my daughters up north PA to visit Elk Country, then we visited Straub Brewery, then we went to Kinzua Bridge and after that stopped at Logyard Brewery and next door to it was Twisted Vine Brewery. That was Day One. Day two saw us hitting the Pittsburgh area. First at dawn we hiked McConnell’s Creek, then went to ShuBrew before going into Pittsburgh proper and visit the city where we did a whole slew of things like see Fort Pitt, take the Duquesne Lift, check out medieval Catholic relics, stop by a Jewish synagogue, see the outfield wall still standing, and we also checked out a few breweries like Cinderlands Warehouse, The Church Brew Works, and we finished the day staying at a motel right next door to Yellow Bridge Brewing. Day Two was a lot busier than day one, but just a much fun.

We didn’t slow down for Day Three. We had a whole host of driving to do on day three. We started at Bushy Run to watch the reenactment and check out the events, then went to the Alleghany Portage and Railroad Museum, and then went into Johnstown to see the Johnstown Flood Memorial and there we checked out the brewery Stone Bridge Brewing. From there we Staple Bend Tunnel Trail and then we stopped and paid our respects at the Flight 93 Memorial. On the way back home to the Hershey area we stopped at Olde Bedford Brewing.

Was a fun three days where we got to see lots of cool places, museums, memorials, monuments, and nine breweries to boot. Can’t beat that!

The beer reviews weren’t going to slow down in August either. Ghost in the Machine by Josh, a beer flight at Twisted Bine, Juicy Fruit sWheat Tart, and Caucus Race 6.0. Then shortly before my oldest daughter’s birthday I took her and my second oldest down to Antietam to see the battlefield there and on the way back home we stopped at Cushwa Brewing. Which I did a brewery review of.

They have since moved out of that building but they are still close by to the location. August still had plenty more beer reviews for you guys starting with Harrishire, Kettle Sour Series – Raspberry, Ghost in the Machine by B. Kline, Good Vibrations, and then I did a dual beer review from two beers I had at a Harrisburg Senators game – a Pineapple Kolsch and a Dry Irish Stout, Reve Coffee Stout, Rye for an Eye (my birthday blog post and beer), and that closed out the month of August. As for events in August, me and my friend Ming went to the Lancaster Brewfest and afterwards went to Mad Chef Brewing (my first time there) which was an overall fun event.

Moving onto September started with my cashing in my birthday taco coupon at Newfangled Brew Works and had a really tasty Kettle Sour from them. In September I wrote a piece for Breweries in PA and also posted it on my blog – the version on the blog is found here: Breweries Around the Outskirts of Harrisburg (9.6.19). It has become one of the most popular pieces on our blog, and I believe it has done very well for the Breweries in PA crew as well. Beer reviews certainly didn’t slow down: a flight of Levante and Tattered Flag beers, a flight of Troegs beers, Fresh Fest and Trail Day Pale Ale, a flight of beers from Mount Gretna Brewery, and Spundae.

September also saw me do our first listicle articles. With two – one celebrating our oldest posts – and one celebrating our most viewed posts. Followed by, as always, more beer reviews – Key Lime Pie, They Burn Them All Away, AuZealand, a flight of Ever Grain beer, Vanilla Ice Cream Stout, and a Sour Blueberry wrapped up September.

October started off with a couple of Boneshire Brew Works beers – Tried and True (Mango) and Iscariot. I then got to attend Dr. Alison Feeney’s seminar and event at Mid-Town Scholar “For the Love of Beer“. Afterwards I went to The Millworks and had a flight. I did a book review of Dr. Alison Feeney’s book – For the Love of Beer. We finally joined Facebook on October 17th, you can find our Facebook page here. We are now up to 154 followers on Facebook, hoping to grow more! Did a beer review of Salted Caramel Moo-Hoo next.

I was contacted back in September by Midwest Coast Brewing Company to do an advertisement article and announcement article about their brewery opening. And I think it turned out very well. This was the first time a brewery reached out to us and asked us to do a piece for them and I think it turned out very well. I did a bit of an interview with the owners / brewers, and talked about their brewery’s opening. This has led to Mellow Mink reaching out to us and inviting us to their place to check them out and do an article (January 2nd we’ll be doing that).

J. Doncevic did a review of Ekaunot by Barebottle. We then covered Rotunda Brewing Company’s rebranding of Irv’s Pub into Rotunda Brew Pub. Also did a news article on Pennsylvania breweries that won at the 2019 GABF. That was my first straight up news article for the blog.

More beer reviews: Athena, Sour Me Peach, Irish Table, Envie and Envie 4X, Yuengling’s Hershey’s Chocolate Porter, and to wrap up the beer reviews of October I did Fatum Series: Member Berries. We also covered Boneshire Brew Works’ 3rd Anniversary Celebration.

November was a crazy month for me. I challenged myself to doing 30 blog posts, one per day – MINIMUM, and I am proud to say I achieved that and met my goal. It was certainly daunting a task, but I did achieve it.

Here’s the list of my articles in November: Pumpkin Stout, St. Thomas, Walker Station Stout, a flight by ZeroDay, King Sue, Intergalactic Warrior, s’Mores LazaRIS, There’s Nuttin Butter Than a Nice Pair of Camo Pants, Secret Machine, Broken Heels, Animal Adjective, 556 Stout, Boat Drinks, a flight of Tattered Flag – Newfangled Brew Works – and Cox Brewing beers, Alpha Abstraction, Double IPA, Lager, Birra Di Levante, Tickle Parts – Passionfruit, a flight of beers from Appalachian Brewing Company, Default Brewing, Darwin’s Salted Forehead, Newfangled Pils, Gotta Get up to Get Down, Paradise Lost, Moon of Vega, Citraquench’l, Azathoth, a flight of Troegs including Mad Elf, and finally a review of Official BBQ and Burgers – Pizza Boy’s second location. WHEW! That was a lot to get out, you can read about it in the November Recap.

November also saw Default Brewing join us here at The Beer Thrillers. Headed by AJ Brechbiel, they are a group of home brewers who will be providing home brewing articles for the blog from time to time. They gave us a welcoming post in November: Cheers from Default Brewing.

I also started up a collaboration with Let Us Drink Beer blog. Where we would be guest writing and contributing to each other’s blogs occasionally. They are down south, and with us being here in PA, it seemed like it’d be a nice fit. Provide some information and beers and breweries that readers might not normally get to see. They posted their first article “Five Must See Breweries in Atlanta” in November.

Josh also wrote two beer reviews in November: Ghost 782 and Ghost 779.

December started off a little slower here for us, probably because I was a bit tired from November, or perhaps just because its the holiday season, I don’t know. But my first beer review was Ice Dreamz. I did a few more beer reviews in December – My Watch Has Ended, The Hog, Scrooge IPA, Sap, and Autumn.

Default Brewing gave us an introduction to their crew: “Meet The Crew at Default Brewing“.

I covered the guest blogging that was going on and Let Us Drink Beer gave us a review of Koki Bunni.

Finally, the last article posted in all of 2019 (outside of this one now) was a travelogue of me and Drew brewery hopping around Harrisburg. Starting at Boneshire Brew Works, and going to The Vegetable Hunter, The Millworks, The Sturges Speakeasy, and ZeroDay Brewing. Was a fun day jumping around from place to place.

Hopefully you enjoyed this look back on 2019 with The Beer Thrillers. The second part of this article will most likely be posted January 1st, possibly before work, possibly after work. I have to leave for work now, and work until (at least) 8PM, and will most likely be going right out to enjoying New Years Eve festivities with my daughters. Tomorrow I work 10-6, and afterwards will be doing a podcast with Esteban about LOST.

The second part of this series will cover top beers, top breweries, and other things about the year for The Beer Thrillers and myself. For example – podcasting.

So make sure you check out part two then as well!

As always, I hope you have a Happy New Year, enjoyed the blog, and continue to do so! Without you, we don’t need to write, so we hope you are having as much fun and entertainment with this as we are!

-B. Kline on behalf of The Beer Thrillers staff.

Want to take a trip with us? A journey along Harrisburg? C’mon, it’ll be fun. You get to hang out with me, and my buddy, and we basically do nothing but chat about Star Wars, The Mandalorian, Coen Brothers movies, how we were so disappointed by the sequel trilogy, about the blog, about the podcasts, we run into other friends, chat with bar patrons, and generally have a good time.

So why not join us? We hit several stops in the Harrisburg area. Not as many as originally wanted, and not all of the places we wanted, but we jumped around, had some fun, and called it a day and were happy. So no complaints there! Can never be upset with a day out with friends, beer, and no stress. Plus…. we got to pet a baby corgi… so there’s that too!

I have written a bit, here on this blog, and for Breweries in PA, as well as the Let Us Drink Beer blog about the breweries around Hershey and Harrisburg and Hummelstown Pennsylvania. Mostly recap articles on the locations, taps, places, atmosphere, beers, etc. The bigger – main article can be found here: “Breweries Around the Outskirts of Harrisburg“. The blog post that is primarily a link to the Breweries in PA article with a few bits of new information can be found here: “Touring Through the Breweries that Surround Harrisburg“. The actual Breweries in PA article is here: “Breweries Around Harrisburg (BiPA)“. And of course, the last article of the series, the larger one yet – that also delves into the breweries of Hershey PA can be found here on the blog Let Us Drink Beer: “Breweries Around Hershey and Harrisburg PA.” I do guest work and contribute to the Let Us Drink Beer blog, so make sure you check them out and my other articles there, like my review of the Pretoria Fields Collective Walker Station Stout. (I also did a review of it here for my blog: Walker Station Stout. For more information on Let Us Drink Beer’s Blog and to just check them out, their blog home page can be found here: “Let Us Drink Beer“.)

Lets start off with the pre-adventure details. First off, the events of this day occurred on December 27th, 2019. A Friday – and my day off (my days off are Thursdays and Fridays for now, before they change soon after the new year). Having worked the week, including Christmas, and spending the night of Christmas with family, and then spending Thursday with more family, Friday was a day for me and friends. I still got some crucial stuff done pre-noon, I finished reading a chapter book with my youngest daughter, I got the Autumn beer review blog up, did some minor editing on the Sap Beer Review and The Hog beer review (website formatting changes) and I walked my dog. So, noontime, dog home, I shower up, and head out to Boneshire Brew Works to meet up with Drew for the first leg of our trip.

(A final in-line, late note, just before publishing this, instead of listing the beers with the brewery we had them at, I decided to put them at the end, categorized by brewery / location and gave bare-bones information from Untappd on them. I’ll leave my rating with them as well, but not go into a full break-down beer review of them. So if you wish just to see what Drew and I drank, you can jump to the end of the article.)

As anyone who knows me and has read this blog, Boneshire Brew Works is typically home base of operations. Its about three-five minutes from my house, right by Rutter’s, right off of Nye’s Road and on Derry Street. Close enough for my friend Drew to meet us there, and its also not too far out from where Dan lives (near Breski’s Beverage). A lot of other friends are close by too, from the Hummelstown, Middletown, and Harrisburg areas. Even from Hershey – its not a stretch of a drive. So its always a great place to meet up; plus the beer is superb, the atmosphere is nice, the bartenders and beertenders all know us, and its just a great place to hang out.

I got there about five minutes before Drew, and ordered the newest beer on the menu – The 2019 Holiday Reserve. A tradition now, at Boneshire, its always a glorious beer to end the year on. One of a handful of great NE-IPA style beers in the area, its usually one of the best, and always fantastic straight from the tap. And this year’s was no exception. After Drew gets there he orders the same, and we spend a good twenty minutes nursing our first beer of the day at lunch-time while discussing the intricacies of Star Wars; including The Mandalorian’s season finale (which had just dropped that morning), as well as how bad Rise of Skywalker was and the sequel trilogy as a whole, how bad the prequel trilogy was, how there’s now more bad to good movies in the Star Wars canon, how some of the books fit into the movies, etc.

We also talked about the next jump on the tour – The Vegetable Hunter, about them teaming up with the Harris Family, and other things beer related in the area. We discussed maybe checking out the BBQ place that is home to Pizza Boy’s secondary location; but decided to skip it, and decided to skip Newfangled Brew Works since with Drew, thats basically home number two. I’ve been to The Vegetable Hunter one time, but quite a long time ago, soon after they added the mini-micro-nano-brewery part to it. So I settle up the tab with James behind the bar, talk a bit about heading on some brewery jumping, and then we’re off to the city proper.

Now, it should be noted, number one, I am horrible at getting to any place. I’ll get there. No doubt about it, but it won’t be right, will consist of wrong turns, driving on one way roads, and being a bit late…. but I’ll get us there. And case in point was getting here. Next thing we know, we’re crossing the bridge and the river and turning around on Erford Road and heading back, finally finding a parking spot in front of the restaurant turned brewery.

I don’t know much about The Vegetable Hunter unfortunately. I do know its a super tiny micro / nano – brewery, and I know that Tim Myers is the head brewer. He is also the head brewer for River Bend Hop Farm – you can check out a review of their Dry Irish Stout I did. I was there at their brewery a year ago (on the 28th, it came up in my ‘memories’). Fantastic brewery and facility and the beers were great. Tim definitely produces some great beers.

I’m not vegan or vegetarian, and neither is Drew. So we didn’t order anything to eat. (Not saying you HAVE to be vegan or vegetarian to eat there, but its more likely to appeal to those who are.) Not sure if they do flights of beer there or not, I think they might, but the two kids behind the food counter who were finishing up an order for the family that was in the place eating (six or seven people with a small child) and doing a lot of cleaning (dishes / glasses) didn’t mention it. We each ordered a pint. I ordered the Brother of Thor! and Drew ordered Today’s Tom Sawyer. Their on-screen board listed only four beers. But their Untappd app lists six. I have also heard (after the fact) that they have an upstairs. Not sure if that was open when we got there or not, but they probably have more taps up there.

Brother of Thor! was tasty and delicious. Drew also said the Today’s Tom Sawyer was also good. Both are IPAs and were neither super hoppy or super bitter, but also not NE-IPAs. We would both recommend them to anyone traveling in the area. Can’t say anything about the food (sorry), but we both enjoyed our beers, the relaxed, hipster, like atmosphere, and overall thought it was a pleasant time there. We didn’t stay long, (not long enough to use our full hour of parking meter time – 3$, right in front of the restaurant), but we enjoyed our beer, and chatting, and stayed for probably twenty – thirty minutes.

After leaving, we decided the next stop would be The Millworks, since its close by. Did a few turns here and there and parked next to the Market. And went inside to the Millworks, which even at 2:30-3PM was pretty full with the bar nearly packed (luckily found two seats together) with lots of people eating.

Sidled ourselves up to the bar and plopped down. Ordered myself a flight, Drew ordered a pint, and got himself the brisket pizza. Drew typically always does pints rather than flights, and I typically will do flights whenever possible – to try as much as I can. Especially if its a venue I’m not likely to get to all that often.

My flight consisted of Winter Saison, Cherrywood Rauchbier, Kiwi Berry Gose, Triple IPA. Drew ordered the Market Day Session IPA.

Once we ordered and he ordered his food, the pizza arrived pretty quickly. I enjoyed the Saison, the Rauchbier was a nice, smokey, malty tasty drink, the Gose was a little bland, and not quite as interesting as I’d hope, but the Triple IPA made up for it and was very tasty, juicy, and hoppy. Drew enjoyed his Market Day IPA (I had it once before and found it enjoyable myself).

Drew said the brisket pizza was delicious. While here, we discussed various ongoing TV shows that we are still watching and looking forward to of upcoming seasons, like Fargo, HBO’s Righteous Gems, and of course still The Mandalorian. We broke down Coen Brothers movies, like A Serious Man, The Big Lebowski, Fargo, and talked about how interesting it was for that show to be made (the Fargo show). We also talked about upcoming podcasts including me and Esteban doing one about LOST, a show which Drew had never watched.

While closing out and debating how far to stray from Harrisburg and getting texts from Dan Arndt that he’s getting off work and wants to jump in on the festivities, the bartender pointed out that it was 4:15PM and that The Sturgis Speakeasy was doing their happy hour from 4-6. So since Dan usually likes to meet up at ZeroDay when in the city, we figured we’d stay local, hit up Sturgis, then meet him over there. So off we were to a “pit stop” on the brewery tour.

A hop skip away from The Millworks we found ourselves good parking beside The Sturgis Speakeasy and headed in. They had a nice tap list including several noticeably good beers, quite a few New Trail Brewing Co. beers on tap, and a pretty good bottle and can listing. Drew asked for one of the bottles on the list and was told they just sold out, and so he then settled on the New Trail Porter – Sunset. I ordered the NE IPA Goggles from New Trail which everyone has been raving about in various Facebook beer groups I’m in.

You can’t go wrong with New Trail, they seemingly haven’t made a bad or even mediocre beer yet (at least that I’ve had). I’ve had several from them before – Broken Heels, Double Broken Heels, Corvus, and I believe a sour of theirs that name eludes me at the moment. Goggles was another fantastic New England style IPA, this time a Double Imperial New England IPA. At 8.8% ABV it does give you a good punch and with the large pour at Sturgis it was really good. For my second beer I got the Porter, which was a very nice chocolate porter. Not too overpowering, not too heavy chocolate, pretty much just the right amount. A nice mixture of flavors and complexities to keep it tasty.

On the background TVs was an English Premier League soccer (or “football”) game. A roar went up at one point from the denizens of the bar as the one team scored, and me and Drew talked about my years playing and coaching soccer. Also discussed Christian Pulisic a bit and how I grew up knowing the family due to his father – Mark Pulisic – and his days playing for the Harrisburg Heat. Christian is a great kid, and Mark was a great player, coach, and all around guy. His wife (and Christian’s mom) Kelly is also a wonderful person. So its so great to see the family achieve so much success. Hopefully it also translates to the US Men’s Team finally getting better and possibly winning a World Cup some day (obviously not the next one…. ….since we didn’t even qualify….. ugh……). Side note here: if you ever want to discuss soccer – make sure you see Owen, bartender for Boneshire Brew Works, the men has forgotten more about soccer (due to concussions) than most people will ever know. Plus he’s a great dude, especially after a few.

Nearing our end at the speakeasy a nearby bar patron started chatting us up about local Harrisburg politics, and all kinds of manner of other things. Now, me and Drew will often get chatty about politics, philosophy, religion, etc – but only with ourselves, and more quiet, …and usually when we’re a lot more drunk. We tend to not jump into these kind of conversations with people we don’t know, because well… you never know how the conversations are going to go, and typically we like to follow the bar rule of “No Religion. No Politics. No Gender.” discussions. But we allowed him to talk to us about it, and we stayed neutral and listened. (Always remain neutrality when listening, always the best case scenario.)

We paid up, said goodbye to the friendly bartender lady who was very nice, and chatted to us a bit about The Mandalorian (noticing a theme with our day yet?), as well as Netflix and other TV in general, thanked her for the good beer, and we were on our way to ZeroDay.

We park back behind Midtown Cinema and head into ZeroDay. Finding a spot at the bar we jump up, Drew orders the Financial Panther, and I get myself a flight. I also try their hard seltzer, one of the first craft brewery hard seltzers I’ve had. And I just have to say…. the style does nothing for me. No White Claws for me, no Truly Hard Seltzers, just… nope. White Claws mean no Laws is BS and I stand by it. I’ve never been a fan of carbonated water or seltzer to begin with, so making it slightly alcoholic doesn’t do enough for me. The first time I tried a hard seltzer was at Ffej of July this year from Karl Larson’s group. This was my first time trying it from a craft brewery.

My flight consisted of: Accidental Fluffer, Grievance, Smooth Metal, Mister Bubz, North St. Stout, and ZeroDay Dunkel. With an additional taster of plain Automatic Refresher (the hard seltzer).

We hung out inside for about fifteen minutes before our friend Youngblood and his girlfriend arrived. After about another five or so minutes Dan arrived, but had to stay outside because he had his corgi with him – Domino Thunderthighs. And yes, thats its actual name, and yes, the dog is totally a babe magnet and the most adorable thing since Baby Yoda – The Child. So we went outside and hung out at the picnic table, and watched the slow human avalanche of people finding out theres a nine month old corgi outside as they all came out to pet him and either go back in or head to their cars. Even the bartenders took turns coming outside to pet the dog.

Outside was a nice brisk evening, and we stayed out there til 9PM. Youngblood does stand up comedy work for various places, so we chatted some about that, his upcoming shows, some bits, we talked with Dan about his work (lung respiratory nurse), talked about our jobs (Drew as bartender, me at the casino, etc.), we talked about dogs (my border collie Leela and my new pitbull / black lab mix – Tink), Dan’s two dogs the corgi Domino Thunderthighs and his other dog Indiana Bones. Dan talked about his latest trip with his fiance Kat at Tree House Brewing Company where he brought back the beers I’ve done reviews of – Sap and Autumn. Talked about the places we stopped at today – Boneshire Brew Works, The Vegetable Hunter, and The Millworks. Talked about local breweries in general, places like Iron Hill, Troegs, Moo-Duck, Cox Brewing, The Vineyard and Brewery at Middletown, and Spring Gate.

We got into our normal shenanigans and revelry and had a good time hanging out together. Killing an afternoon / evening. At about 915 or so, we discussed evening plans, I had to take Drew back to Boneshire Brew Works for him to get his car and I was gonna head home, Dan, Youngblood, and Youngblood’s girlfriend were going back to their apartment after Dan dropped off his dog. As usual partings go, we cleaned up and took our glasses back in, gave our goodbyes to each other, walked to our cars and left. Knowing we’ll all be doing this again in a few days most likely, just chilling, relaxing, hanging out, having a good time, and drinking beers at places like ZeroDay or Boneshire or Troegs or at bars like Chick’s, Sturgis Speakeasy, The Manor, Gin Mill, The Boro, Warwick Hotel, etc. There is few things on this planet that are better than hanging out with friends, having fun, laughing, not being stressed by life or cares and just taking care of each other through communal friendship and just being with each other as we drink and bond. Its easily one of the best things about craft breweries is the communal nature of the small local craft breweries. The atmospheres and the venues and the way it brings people together to talk, hang out, have fun, and drink good delicious beers. Not even macro beers at big time bars can deliver the same kind of intimate friendship and kinship that craft breweries can give you, just based on the structure of how different the two are.

After we departed, took Drew back to Boneshire Brew Works and let him get his car. It was 9:45PM and Boneshire was soon closing for the night. Made our safe returns and trips, and had ourselves a fantastic trip basically over Harrisburg and the suburb of it a bit. We got to drink at Boneshire Brew Works, The Vegetable Hunter, The Millworks, The Sturgis Speakeasy, and ZeroDay Brewing. Had great beer, Drew had some great food, lots of great conversations, lot of fun, and much laughter. Was a fantastic day, and a nice leadup to the end of 2019 and the end of a decade and to the start of a new year, new decade, and certainly many more adventures.

As a final note before listing the beers, I started writing this up Sunday December 29th 2019 early in the morning before work, had to go to work, wanted to finish it after work, but had a retirement party for a co-worker at Thoroughbred’s, and after that it was late and I was unable to finish it. So I am now finishing this up (started at 5:30AM when I woke up, and now finishing it at 7AM). And since its December 30th now, I can safely say to Drew happy birthday, as the old man is now 35. So in his honor, make sure you listen to some of his podcasts and mentally give him a shout out and happy birthday.

And now onto the lists!

Boneshire Brew Works:

Beers:

• 2019 Holiday Reserve
• The Hog

Beer: 2019 Holiday Reserve
Brewery: Boneshire Brew Works
Style: IPA – New England
ABV: 8.5%
IBU: None
Untappd Write-Up: What we have here is a small Christmas miracle! This year’s batch of Holiday Reserve is a NEIPA brewed with 12 varieties of hops and copious amounts of Flaked Oats, Wheat, and Barley and clocks in at 8.5% abv. This batch is brewed with Apollo, Cashmere, Columbus, Simcoe, Warrior, Motueka, Amarillo, Azacca, Lemondrop, Citra, El Dorado, and Mosaic. This NEIPA is sure to please everyone for the holidays.
My Untappd Rating: 4.25
Global Untappd Rating: 3.98 (as of 12.30.19)

Beer: The Hog
Brewery: Boneshire Brew Works
Style: IPA – Triple
ABV: 9.8%
IBU: 51
Untappd Write-Up: Our collaboration with Muggers of the year 2018-2019. Mike Luckovich and Dan Ploch dreamed up this big hoppy fruit forward IPA. Brewed with Simcoe, Amarillo, Zythos, and Citra hops.
My Untappd Rating: 4.50
Global Untappd Rating: 4.16 (as of 12.30.19)

The Vegetable Hunter

• Brother of Thor!
• Today’s Tom Sawyer

Beer: Brother of Thor!
Brewery: The Vegetable Hunter
Style: IPA – American
ABV: 6.5%
IBU: 27
Untappd Write-Up: Hoppy IPA with the Viking/Norwegian yeast strain Loki.
My Untappd Rating: 3.50
Global Untappd Rating: 3.67 (as of 12.30.19)

Beer: Today’s Tom Sawyer
Brewery: The Vegetable Hunter
Style: IPA – American
ABV: 5.6%
IBU: 70
Untappd Write-Up: West Coast IPA – Slappin’ da bass hops! Nugget, Equinox, Citra, Amarillo, and Columbus hops.
Drew’s Comments: Good, hoppy, tasty.
Global Untappd Rating: 3.45 (as of 12.30.19)

The Millworks

• Market Day Session IPA
• Winter Saison
• Cherrywood Rauchbier
• Kiwi Berry Gose
• Triple IPA

Beer: Market Day Session IPA
Brewery: The Millworks
Style: IPA – Session / India Session Ale
ABV: 5%
IBU: 30
Untappd Write-Up: Light body, hop forward ale. Orange-golden in color. Floral and citrus in the aroma and flavor. Restrained bitterness that is noticeable but not overwhelming. Easy drinking, lower alcohol session ale.

Malts: Pale, Vienna, Cara Pils

Hops: Nugget, Cascade, Chinook, Crystal
Drew’s Comments: Tasty, crisp.
My Untappd Rating (from previous time): 3.50
Global Untappd Rating: 3.66 (as of 12.30.19)

Beer: Winter Saison
Brewery: The Millworks
Style: Farmhouse Ale – Saison
ABV: 7.9%
IBU: 30
Untappd Write-Up: Medium body, dark spiced farmhouse ale. Deep mahogany in color, lightly spiced with cinnamon, clove, nutmeg, vanilla, and french oak chips. Fermented with spicy belgian saison yeast.
My Untappd Rating: 4.25
Global Untappd Rating: 3.69 (as of 12.30.19)

Beer: Cherrywood Rauchbier
Brewery: The Millworks
Style: Rauchbier
ABV: 5%
IBU: 20
Untappd Write-Up: Classic Rauchbier brewed with local PA Cherry Wood smoked malt. Mild smokiness balanced with sweet bready malt
My Untappd Rating: 3.75
Global Untappd Rating: 3.87 (as of 12.30.19)

Beer: Kiwi Berry Gose
Brewery: The Millworks
Style: Sour – Fruited
ABV: 4%
IBU: None
Untappd Write-Up: PA Preferred beer brewed with Deer Creek Malt and 350 lbs of Kiwi Berries from Threefold Farm
My Untappd Rating: 3.75
Global Untappd Rating: 3.81 (as of 12.30.19)

Beer: Triple IPA
Brewery: The Millworks
Style: IPA – Tripel
ABV: 11.5%
IBU: 80
Untappd Write-Up: Full bodied IPA brewed with Amarillo, El Dorado, and Idaho 7 hops
My Untappd Rating: 4
Global Untappd Rating: 3.96 (as of 12.30.19)

The Sturges Speakeasy

• Goggles
• Sunset

Beer: Goggles
Brewery: New Trail Brewing Co.
Style: IPA – Imperial / Double New England
ABV: 8.8%
IBU: None
Untappd Write-Up: Goggles is a Hazy Double IPA focussing on some of our favorite hops. Brewed with a mixture of wheats and oats. Heavy handedly hopped with Galaxy and Citra. Goggles is excessively fruity and dank.
My Untappd Rating: 4.50
Global Untappd Rating: 4.21 (as of 12.30.19)

Beer: Sunset
Brewery: New Trail Brewing Co.
Style: Porter – Other
ABV: 6%
IBU: None
Untappd Write-Up: Sunset is a Chocolate Porter brewed with layers of dark and chocolate malts, rested on Cacao Nibs from Ghana. Expect a rich porter layered with deep chocolate flavor reflecting both dark and milk chocolates. Brewed for the early winter sunsets and long dark nights.
My Untappd Rating: 4.25
Global Untappd Rating: 3.67 (as of 12.30.19)

ZeroDay Brewing

• Automatic Refresher
• Financial Panther
• Accidental Fluffer
• Grievance
• Smooth Metal
• Mister Bubz
• North St. Stout
• ZeroDay Dunkel

Beer: Automatic Refresher
Brewery: ZeroDay Brewing Co.
Style: Hard Seltzer
ABV: 5%
IBU: 0
Untappd Write-Up: Hard Seltzer brewed for you! We brewed a blank Hard Seltzer and provide the flavors for you to add how you please!
Global Untappd Rating: 3.87 (as of 12.30.19)

Beer: Financial Panther
Brewery: ZeroDay Brewing Co.
Style: IPA – New England
ABV: 6.5%
IBU: 47
Untappd Write-Up: Inspired by the hard work it takes to not only make the beer, but the prowess required to run the business, we are excited to release Financial Panther, our newest IPA double dry hopped with copious amounts of Motueka from New Zealand. With notes of crushed lime and bright citrus, it’s sure to start your weekend right.
Drew’s Comments: Had this before, second favorite from ZeroDay behind Mango Hab
My Untappd Rating (from previous time): 4
Global Untappd Rating: 3.77 (as of 12.30.19)

Beer: Accidental Fluffer
Brewery: ZeroDay Brewing Co.
Style: Malt Liquor
ABV: 6.7%
IBU: None
Untappd Write-Up: A Zeroday holiday classic, Accidental Fluffer is one of our most creative libations. Peppermint flavor and aromas shine in this malt beverage from the addition of pounds of candy canes in the fermenter. This fresh, minty characteristic is complemented by a sweetness derived from a light grain bill, milk sugar, and copious amounts of Marshmallow Fluff.
My Untappd Rating: 3.25
Global Untappd Rating: 3.36 (as of 12.30.19)

Beer: Grievance
Brewery: ZeroDay Brewing Co.
Style: Winter Warmer
ABV: 8.5%
IBU: 15
Untappd Write-Up: (Blank)
My Untappd Rating: 3.75
Global Untappd Rating: 3.83 (as of 12.30.19)

Beer: Smooth Metal
Brewery: ZeroDay Brewing Co.
Style: Red Ale – Other
ABV: 7.3%
IBU: 50
Untappd Write-Up: Smooth Metal showcases a balance between a smooth caramel malt backbone and an assertive floral hop bitterness. The American grown Nugget and Cascade hops provide a classic hop character for this full-bodied ale. Smooth Metal is soft spoken at first, but definitely has a lot to say.
My Untappd Rating: 3.75
Global Untappd Rating: 3.65 (as of 12.30.19)

Beer: Mister Bubz
Brewery: ZeroDay Brewing Co.
Style: Dunkelweizen
ABV: 5.6%
IBU: 16
Untappd Write-Up: Our dunkelweizen is brewed to the traditional German style. This dark wheat ale (“dunkel” means “dark” and “weizen” means “wheat” in German) is a wheat-based beer with dark malt components. While the malt supports a smooth backbone, the yeast is what shines in this beer. Banana and clove aromas and flavors really standout in this dark brown easy-drinking wheat beer.
My Untappd Rating: 3.75
Global Untappd Rating: 3.46 (as of 12.30.19)

Beer: North St. Stout
Brewery: ZeroDay Brewing Co.
Style: Stout – Coffee
ABV: 8.3%
IBU: 5
Untappd Write-Up: A vanilla-latte inspired Stout brewed in collaboration with the Elementary Coffee Co.
My Untappd Rating: 4
Global Untappd Rating: 3.98 (as of 12.30.19)

Beer: ZeroDay Dunkel
Brewery: ZeroDay Brewing Co.
Style: Lager – Munich – Dunkel
ABV: 4.2%
IBU: 20
Untappd Write-Up: Light in body, dark in color, this Munich Dunkel brings forth notes of roasted malts and chocolate.
My Untappd Rating: 3.50
Global Untappd Rating: 3.45 (as of 12.30.19)

Hopefully you enjoyed this travelogue of our jumpings and hoppins around of Harrisburg. Was a fun day for us, and we do this somewhat often (less now as we get older though). Hopefully there will be more articles like this in the future of more different / diverse places like Pittsburgh, Philadelphia, Baltimore, Washington, etc. I’m looking forward to 2020 and hoping it has a lot more great breweries in store!

For some other articles and beer reviews and brewery reviews, you can check out these past written articles:

• ZeroDay Beer Review
• The Millworks Beer Review
• November Recap
• Cushwa Brewery Review
• Battlefield Brew Works Brewery Review
• Official BBQ and Burgers – Pizza Boy’s Secondary Location
• The Trip Day 1
• The Trip Day 2
• The Trip Day 3
• Going On The Road
• Midwest Coast Brewery Opening
• Rotunda Brew Pub Opening
  

As always, there is tons of things to see, read, and do here on the blog. You can also head over and listen to the podcasts me and my friends – Drew, Esteban, Dan, Andrew, and Andy all have done and created. We talk about beer, movies, pop culture, TV, you name it. You can see the podcast listings here: So a Mexican and a Scot Walk Into a Bar…

Please help us out with word of mouth, share, like, comment, re-tweet, re-blog, whatever works for you. We love to hear from you guys, so please leave a comment. There is still time to get in what you think was the best beer or breweries of 2019, as I’m hoping to have that article fully done and up before the end of 2019. Fingers crossed!

Thank you for reading this long, rambling, blog post. I know its a bit different than some of our past articles. I’m looking to try and expand what all this blog has to offer, so there’ll be tons of different times of articles to read in the future. Not just beer reviews, but brewery reviews, beer related book reviews, home brewing articles, hop growing articles, beer event reviews, news, brewery opening news, travelogues, and so much more!

I have a packed schedule coming up. Looking like at the end of the day on New Years Day I’ll be doing a LOST podcast, Seasons 1 and 2, and then on January 2nd, me and Josh are traveling to Mellow Mink to do a write-up and have some fun with the head brewer Matt Miller. So be on the look out for that. That should be lots of fun!

I also just want to give a shout out – we just hit 100 Followers on Twitter. Thank you all so much for subscribing and following us on Twitter! If you aren’t following us already, you can click here: The Beer Thrillers on Twitter and follow us. That way you won’t miss any great announcements, pictures, and updates! You can also follow us on Facebook at: The Beer Thrillers on Facebook. Thank you everyone!

As always, thank you everyone for reading, and cheers, and Happy New Year!

-B. Kline