4 for 4 - The Beer Thrillers

Beer Reviews: French Toast Shire, Cinnamon Bun Shire, Hazelnut Shire, and Coconut Shire (Boneshire Brew Works)

BKline — Thu, 04 Nov 2021 21:20:17 +0000

Flight of Shire Stouts at Boneshire Brew Works

5th Anniversary Celebration

This past weekend marked the 5th Anniversary for Boneshire Brew Works. All weekend they had a big ‘bash’ of a celebration, from Friday – October 29th, through Sunday – October 31st. I got to stop out for a lunchtime visit on Sunday, and got to try out the brand new stout series – “Shire Stouts” by Alan (head brewer of Boneshire Brew Works). I also got to try the Caucus Race 10 and the Fall Hippo (shown above in my Mug Club 2021 Mug).

International Stout Day

Today is International Stout Day; so what better day to post my review of this delicious tasty flight of stouts? You can actually read about International Stout Day here – at StoutDay.com: International Stout Day. There’s a lot of information on the site, but here’s a quick blurb from the ‘About’ section:

Erin Peters – aka The Beer Goddess – is the founder of International Stout Day. The global holiday was created by the beer writer in Southern California in 2011. It soon became a worldwide celebration; online, in breweries and bars worldwide.
#StoutDay will be celebrated for the 10th year, on Thursday, November 4, 2021. Just like wine vineyards tell the story of the people, the weather, the land and its history, beer, too, tells a story of the land, of the people and the brewers. Having a day dedicated to a beer style really has just accelerated the excitement in the craft brew circles as more learn about the intrigue regarding its history and the variety that the craft beer industry has to offer.
Stoutday.com (About International Stout Day)

Also, if you check into any stouts today on Untappd, you’ll even receive a specialty badge for your troubles. (Woohoo…. do we have any badge collectors and hunters who visit the page? I guess they still exist, I dunno.)

The Shire Flight

Ok, lets get into it, but first, a quick word about the flight. This is a new stout series at Boneshire Brew Works. Its not variants of LazaRIS which Alan has done in the past, this is a new stout with various variants of it to start off with. This flight consisted of French Toast, cinnamon bun, hazelnut, and coconut.

Ok, onto the reviews:

French Toast Shire

Beer: French Toast Shire
Brewery: Boneshire Brew Works
Style: Stout – Pastry
ABV: 7.8%
IBU: None
Untappd Description: (Blank)

Right off the bat, hit the ground running hard on this one. Huge maple aroma and french toast deliciousness from the first whiff. This smells like a snow day Tuesday morning with mom off work, and your school closed, and mom’s in the kitchen making breakfast.

Appearance is going to be pretty similar with all of the beers in this flight. The head / foam of each beer might look slightly different, but for the most part, each beer has the same appearance. (And given that each is a variant of the other, thats how it should be.) These are standard looking stouts; Razor Ramon hair black, like a black maw, something that Nietzsche would tell you to avoid looking at.

First sip is straight up tasteeeeeeeeeeeeeeey! Its like drinking liquid french toast. Very heavy maple flavors, subtle bread and sugar, lovely backburner of a stout behind it all. Full bodied, there’s a lot to love about this beer. Its a light but tasting heavy stout, nothing disadvantageous about that. Nothing cloying, nothing off flavored, nothing that sticks out as being unnatural or unwanted in the beer. You are getting all the flavors you should want, and all the flavors that are intended in a ‘french toast stout’. This is exactly as it should be. This might be my favorite of the flight (and I’m saying that post – having all of them; not just saying that right at the onset). I will definitely be needing to come back and give this a full mug try and get to really delve deep and enjoy this bad boy.

My Untappd Rating: ****.50
Global Untappd Rating: 4.12 (as of 11.4.21)

Cinnamon Bun Shire

Beer: Cinnamon Bun Shire
Brewery: Boneshire Brew Works
Style: Stout – Pastry
ABV: 7.8%
IBU: None
Untappd Description: (Blank)

Aroma for this bad boy is very heavy cinnamon. You can smell the cinnamon bun big time on this one. Right out the gate you get a nose of cinnamon followed by some bready and then the stout underlaying it all. This is certainly a very aromatic series of stouts – which they should be and is one of the great thing about stouts, aromatics work so well with them, and you get such a strong array of smells and aromas with them.

Just like the above stout, this looks like the abyss (didn’t Nietzsche warn us about them?), and it definitely stared back. This one had a bit more of a head to it than the French Toast one (a small slim foam crest to it). All in all it looks like a good healthy stout.

This one comes at you strong, fast, and heavy with the first sip. A blast of cinnamon right up front. A bit overpowering it, it wallops you right away. It doesn’t give as much of a bread or bready taste as I was looking for, or even a bit of a glaze / sugary taste that I expected (the bun and glazing of ‘said’ cinnamon bun). Still overall, its certainly a wonderful stout; just a bit overpowering on the cinnamon. So if you don’t mind cinnamon (or even better yet – if you really like cinnamon) then this is definitely up your alley. This isn’t really to take anything away from this stout, its definitely really good, just a bit strong on the cinnamon.

My Untappd Rating: ***.25
Global Untappd Rating: 3.93 (as of 11.4.21)

Hazelnut Shire

Beer: Hazelnut Shire
Brewery: Boneshire Brew Works
Style: Stout – Pastry
ABV: 7.8%
IBU: None
Untappd Description: (Blank)

Aroma for this smells like a typical stout, with a hazelnut added bonus. This might be the least aromatic of the four, but still very aromatic. That was the fun thing about this flight, you could put all four in front of someone blind, and let them take a whiff, and they could easily tell which was which.

This one looks a lot creamier (and oh yea, its definitely a lot creamier than the others). It has just a shinier, creamier look to the beer, almost as if it were a nitro. It also has a little brown ring of foam head (more tan than pure white) with small little bubbles. Still stout typical – Razor Ramon hair black.

As if with appearance, this is a very creamy beer. A nice smooth, creamy stout. This is one of the chief things about hazelnut in stouts (or hazelnut stouts, or however that should be phrased), it just gives the beer a kind of nice, creamy, near nitro like taste, appearance, and flavor to it. Hazelnut, Coconut (as we will see in the next beer), and chocolate tend to be very popular additions to stouts, and all three flavors tend to stick well with the body of the beer to create a lovely flavorful beer. This is certainly proof of that. This is a nice, tasty, delicious stout, that has the wonderful body feel and taste of a stout, with the nice creaminess of the hazelnut, and hazelnut flavors, and overall just a fantastic beer on par with the other two of this series.

My Untappd Rating: ****.25
Global Untappd Rating: 4.01 (as of 11.4.21)

Coconut Shire

Beer: Coconut Shire
Brewery: Boneshire Brew Works
Style: Stout – Pastry
ABV: 7.8%
IBU: None
Untappd Description: (Blank)

Another ‘nut’ stout…. except its not! Oh, coconut, you imposter, you fake out. Like the others, you get a lovely coconut smell right out of the gate on this aromatic stout. Coconut can be a wonderful smell and it always seems to work so well with stouts; I think the heavy body of the stout gives it a great body to add ontop of with the aroma and flavors of coconut. I’m typically not a fan of coconut outside of stout based beers (coconut candies, milk, etc, all taste horrible to me).

Appearance is just as we’ve been describing with the above beers – basically this entire flight. Razor Ramon hair black; the abyss that Nietzsche warned us black; stout black. Jet engine fuel black. Etc. etc. etc.

The last of the flight, and it doesn’t disappoint. (None of the flight did, not a single bad beer in the batch.) The coconut is a bit more subtle in flavor than it is in aroma on this. Out of all four of the flight, this one gives you the better true taste of the base stout underneath the variants. You still get the coconut in it; it’s just a bit more muted and subtle than the variants in the other stouts (especially the cinnamon in the cinnamon bun stout). I like that with this one, letting you get a good strong stout, with the coconut flavor, rather than a strong flavor with a pinch of stout. This all works into a really good stout. Just as with the others, there’s nothing cloying, nothing unnatural, no off flavors or anything bad with this. A wonderful mouth feel, a nice clean stout and coconut taste, and a good finish, no lingering taste or aftertaste, and nothing to detract from the beer itself.

My Untappd Rating: ****.25
Global Untappd Rating: 4.02 (as of 11.4.21)

Overall

Overall this was a downright delicious flight. (The Fall Hippo and Caucus Race 10 I had with them were also very good.) As of last checking Boneshire Brew Work’s (Derry Street location) menu list on Untappd, all of these beers are still on, so if you haven’t had them yet, you can still get in and check them out. (I last checked the menu list last night at around 10PM – 11.3.21 – so things might have changed since.)

I would highly recommend all four, either as a flight to try and taste them all out, or if there’s a particular flavor you really wanna try, grab a pint of it. This was a fun flight and added a great new list of beers for the 5th Anniversary Celebration. Hopefully we’ll see more of the ‘Shire’ Stout series in the future.

Thanks For Reading

As always everyone, thanks for reading. And day four of November is complete, and we are still at it with at least a blog / article post a day. Make sure to check in tomorrow to see what tomorrow brings! Get out there and enjoy your international stout day, grab a lovely stout, kick back, and relax. Cheers!

-B. Kline

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Beer Review: Super Villain (Urban Village Brewing Company)

BKline — Wed, 04 Nov 2020 21:47:13 +0000

Super Villain by Urban Village Brewing Company

Day four of November means its time for the fourth blog post. Did you think I’d quit and stop now or slow down and not keep up my 30 for 30? Not damn well likely! We’re also doing another beer drank during a streaming session. This time, came from a night of Drew, Rory, and myself, hanging out on the couch drinking (well, Drew and I drank; Rory was participating in Sober October), while Rory played ‘The Last of Us’. A zombie game for the PS4 (PlayStation 4).

I chose to lead off with this for this particular streaming session primarily because it is pure ‘nerd culture’ can label. And I always love good can art, and always really hope it correlates with a good beer. Luckily and thankfully this one does.

Super Villain can label

Nerd culture definitely speaks to me. Look at my numerous beer reviews on here that are Star Wars themed, or video game themed, or some TV show themed. Jon Voight’s Car, Out of Order – Blue Milk, Moon of Vega, This is the Way, This is Nut The Fluff You’re Looking For, etc. You can see Josh also is very fond of nerd culture / pop culture and beers clashing with his latest review – Terpenes in Time.

Don’t worry this won’t be the last in that vein – if you’re interested in that. Especially this month where I’m doing 30 blog posts, so you will be definitely getting a lot of beer reviews, and so there will be a fair amount of nerdy, pop culture, or mainstream movies / shows / references in the beers I review.

Super Villain by Urban Village Brewing Company

Beer: Super Villain
Brewery: Urban Village Brewing Company
Style: IPA – New England
ABV: 6.5%
IBU: None
Untappd Description: Loads of oats and milk sugar give this IPA great mouth feel. Hop blend of Vic Secret, Mosaic and Motueka pair up with this for a super juicy IPA

My camera angle isn’t the best because I was taking it looking down from the couch, but, this is similar to that of nearly all other New England IPAs. Its golden yellow / orange and very cloudy, murky, dank. The head wasn’t much and was gone pretty quickly, but it did leave nice lacing on the glass. Everything seems to be on style and on point.

Aroma is that lovely hop juicy-ness of New England IPAs. You get some nice hop aroma from this, a blend of fruity mango, passionfruit, peach, with a hint of melon. No earthy, and no pine to this. You get some note of vanilla or sweetness to.

This is extremely juicy and very super smooth despite how it looks like you could kind of chew it. Its certainly opaque and not one bit transparent and murky and dank looking, cloudy, like most typical New England IPAs are, but it drinks incredibly smooth and silky like. Most likely from the milk sugar and lactose. This is probably borderline a Milkshake IPA or possibly could even be described as that all but in the style used to name it on Untappd. This is a very fruity juicy New England IPA from the hops selected. Vic Secret, Mosaic, and Mouteka. Notes of mango, peach, and melon are most abundant, with some more subtle notes of passionfruit and a wee bit of grapefruit. (Thankfully not much more than subtle grapefruit, as I’m not a huge fan.) You get the smoothness and softness of the drink from the combined milk sugar and oats used. There is a creaminess to it in that smoothness and softness. The milk sugar gives off a lactose vanilla like flavor that also is subtle, but due to the smoothness you take notice of it. The oats make it have that softness to the drink that helps round it out too. Its also not a crazy high ABV at 6.5% so it’s a nice pint that won’t leave you fully buzzed after just one can. This is a fun drink; from the can label down to the last sip, which did leave a bit of sediment in the glass (I don’t recommend drinking that). All in all a great beer and one to look forward to again.

My Untappd Rating: ****.25
Global Untappd Rating: 3.92 (as of 11.4.20)

As always, you can check out the video game streaming we do on Drew’s page: Knights of Nostalgia.

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Cheers!