Back At It

Back from our recent trip to Maryland, Delaware, and New Jersey, we’re back at you with some beer reviews. (And yes, we did survive, despite rumors.) You can read about the road trip here:

• Road Trip
• Road Trip Day Two
• Road Trip Day Two Recap
• Road Trip Overall Recap

We stopped at some fun breweries (including RAR Brewing, Burley Oak Brewing, and Cape May Brewing), even tried a milko pour, and also got a little bit of walking and hiking done. And hell, I even survived a ferry.

So we’re back to work here at the blog and delivering still our daily November articles. Today’s is another beer review.

Stout Season

Personally… I think its always stout season. It can be 98 degrees in the sun, and I can be sitting outside relaxing, reading a book on my patio, and I think its still stout season. But thats just me. I know that doesn’t apply to all people. For most (sane?) people, now is stout season.

So why not throw back an excellent stout by Aslin Beer Co in accordance with this wonderful season. So in appreciation of Stout Season I offer you: How Now Brown Cow – with a twist – Pumpkin Spice. My friend is a big time pumpkin spice lover, so when we saw this at Breski’s Beverage, it was an immediate grab. So here we are. Lets get to it.

Aslin Beer Company

First, let’s take a look at Aslin Beer Company. Just as an aside, they are coming to Pittsburgh shortly, and you can read about that here:

• Aslin Beer Company Shipping to Pennsylvania
• Aslin Beer Co Coming to Pennylvania
• Aslin Beer Company Confirms Their Coming to Pennsylvania

It first started with them being able to ship to Pennsylvania during COVID, but now they are full on moving in, and setting up shop in Pittsburgh.

According to Untappd they are a regional brewery that started in Alexandria Virginia. 607 unique beers to their name, and over 1 million check in and 933 thousand ratings. They have a global average rating of 4.11 as of 11.21.21. Their Untappd description reads:

Aslin Beer Company is a northern Virginia, DC suburb, microbrewery suited to provide great beverages and a wide variety. Visit our spacious, 24-tap tasting room in Alexandria, or our Herndon location for to-go beer only.

Untappd: Aslin Beer Company

Beer Review

Beer: How Now Brown Cow w/Pumpkin Spice
Brewery: Aslin Beer Company
Style: Stout – Milk / Sweet
ABV: 6%
IBU: None
Untappd Description: This iteration of our delectable Milk Stout packs a punch of pumpkin & a creamy vanilla finish! Rich aromas of a fall evening ready for those cool, cozy days ahead.

First off, this is just a fun beer name to say over and over while drinking, I don’t care who you are. And I can only assume that everyone who is drinking this must repeat the beer name at least 15 times while drinking it. If not… what are you even doing here?

The aroma is a fun pleasant pumpkin smelling stout. You get the notes of your typical pumpkin spiced beer as you pour it out, and as you bring it to your nose and lips. You get your spices, you get all that reminds you of pumpkin, and you get some subtle (hidden by the pumpkin spices) malt and stout aromas.

Visually, this is a stout through and through. Its dark, its black, its pretty. Lovely brown creamy foamy head that left a nice lacing on the glass as I drank it. Varied and dispersed bubbles and nice head retention. The stout is certainly the type of black that Nietzsche would warn you about staring into.

This is a light bodied, creamy, smooth stout that really gives you a wonderful pumpkin spice flavor. Its a fun and tasty beer, especially if you enjoy pumpkin spices (if you don’t, your mileage will certainly vary on this one). The pumpkin spice comes in hard and heavy right out the gate and pummels your palate, after that, leaving you with a creamy stout, not itself light in flavor. The stout base is a good solid light (but not watery) stout, creamy from the vanilla, and well rounded with its malt base. I haven’t had the other iterations of this (looking at Untappd, seems like they’ve done a peanut butter, a coconut, coffee, coffee and maple, coffee and maple and bacon, hazelnut, and milk chocolate. To be honest, all of those different variations sound absolutely amazing, especially knowing how good this stout is. Aslin Beer Company certainly knows their stouts and does them very well. You’ll hear no complaints from me in that department or how well their made or executed. They can keep pumping them out and sending them my way, thats for sure. And at 6% this goes down easily and smooth and doesn’t hammer you over the head and knock you out. Makes for a perfect fall beer, perhaps around a camp fire making s’mores. (Or inside watching Dune before it leaves HBO Max like we did.)

My Untappd Rating: ****
Global Untappd Rating: 3.86 (as of 11.21.21)

Dune

Speaking of Dune, spent the night watching this with my friend, while we drank the above mentioned beer, as well as a few others (including FestiFall by South County Brewing Company). What did everyone else think of the movie? I really enjoyed it. I’ve heard complaints that it was hard to follow, or confusing, or that its just too much setup, etc. But I enjoyed it. I’m not a huge ‘Dune’ head, I read the original back in my Middle School or High School days (oh god how long ago was that?!), and have not read the sequels or all of the add-ons that Frank Herbert’s son Brian Herbert did with Kevin J. Anderson. (I have all of Frank’s sequels in my office, I really need to get around to reading this series again.)

So curious what everyone else’s thoughts were on the movie. Leave them in the comments!

Recent Beer Reviews

We’ve gotten quite a few recent beer reviews for your reading pleasure here on the blog. Be sure to check out the list below, or go to the “Beer Reviews” section to see some older ones. First, here’s our review of Aslin’s Isolation Anniversary beer:

• Beer Review: Isolation Anniversary (Aslin Beer Co)

Our most recent beer reviews:

• Beer Review: Sorbetto 40 (Ever Grain Brewing Co)
• Beer Review: Cream on the Inside, Green on the Outside (Other Half Brewing)
• Beer Review: Sunny Side Up – Bacon (Pizza Boy Brewing)
• Multiple Beer Reviews: French Toast Shire, Cinnamon Bun Shire, Hazelnut Shire, Coconut Shire (Boneshire Brew Works)
• Beer Review: Life Sentence (Tattered Flag)
• Beer Review: Peace Among Worlds (Cushwa Brewing Company)

Thanks For Reading

As I always like to end my reviews here, I want to say thanks for reading. If you enjoyed the review, please a comment, like and follow us, and even share the article if you really liked it. If you have anything, comments, questions, thoughts, or even concerns, please go ahead and leave a comment here on the page, or on our social media pages. We love to hear from you guys!

Take it easy everyone! Getting close to Thanksgiving time!

Cheers!

-B. Kline

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Big, wonderful, fantastic news is coming to The Beer Thrillers! Excited to finally announce that we have our own home brewing section soon to start up. AJ Brechbiel is an amazing home brewer who along with a buddy (sometimes buddies) brew under the name ‘Default Brewing’. You can check their Facebook page here: Default Brewing.

AJ comes with an immense amount of experience and knowledge about home brewing and beer and the industry and cannot wait to further that knowledge here on the blog. He is looking forward to imparting his wisdom onto all of you.

So for those of you who are home brewers, or into home brewing, or just want to learn or read up about home brewing or the brewing process, stay tuned for all of AJ’s future posts. They will definitely be ones you won’t want to miss. I know I am excited to have him onboard and to see The Beer Thrillers expand and grow and our team of dedicated writers getting bigger and better and larger.

Some additional house keeping notes, our FaceBook page has reached 106 Likes and were looking to keep that growing. So check out our FaceBook page and click like to get the latest information. Likewise, our Twitter following has grown by leaps and bounds in the past few days. We are up to 91 and looking to break 100 by the end of November.

We are also still currently listed as #11 on FeedSpot’s Top 100 Beer Blogs. You can see a full ranking of their top blogs here, and see that we’ve been at #11 for quite a while nice. Would be amazing to crack the Top 10 by year’s end!

We were recently asked by Matt, owner / brewer for Mellow Mink to meet with him for a behind the scenes look at a brewday and to try out some of their newest samplings. That was in the works for today, but it has gotten pushed back to December (most likely either December 5th or December 12th). This is a wonderful opportunity and we can’t wait for it. So please check in with us to see that great article once its published.

My (B. Kline) version of NaNoWriMo is still going strong. Though this is a bit of a ‘cheat article / blog post today, I’m still counting it. (I’m above using emojis in my post, but just imagine me sticking my tongue out at you right now.) This marks the 21st day of November, and the 21st day of blog posts (at least one per day). Granted I got some of them in and published just in the nick of time (last night’s got published at 11:58PM EST), but I have still maintained my record of one per day.

I am going to be going back through and combing the beer and brewery reviews to make sure they are consistent with future styling. I am going to be adding a category for ‘style’, and that will make it easier if you want to see a STOUT review or a IPA review or a PILSNER review. You can scroll down to the Category: Style and select STOUT or SOUR or what have you, and be able to see all of our reviews of that style of beer. I will be doing the same with locations and maintaining a better listing for all of that going forward. I am also going to go back through and work on some of the backlinking to make navigating around the blog a bit easier and more fun.

As always, we here at The Beer Thrillers, myself (B. Kline), J. Doncevic, and AJ / Default Brewing, are extremely thankful for you, and that you’ve taken the time to read our articles and blog posts. So please, in the future, leave us some feedback. We love comments and feedback. Let us know what kind of reviews or blog posts you want to see more of in the future. Or if there’s a beer you think we should review or a brewery we need to check out and review. Let us know. We love hearing from you!

Thank you everyone for reading and please welcome AJ Brechbier and Default Brewing on board. We are so grateful to have him here and can’t wait to read what all he has to say!

Cheers all!

-B. Kline

— The Beer Thrillers Staff