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Beer Review: Wookies and Cream (Tall Tales Brewing Company)

BKline — Thu, 03 Feb 2022 13:00:00 +0000

Wookies and Cream by Tall Tales Brewing Company

Double Whammy

You guys are getting a double whammy today, starting off the day with the beer review of Prognosticator Pils by Logyard Brewing since its Groundhog Day (2.2.22) and now you are (finally) getting your Star Wars Wednesday beer review: Wookies and Cream by Tall Tale Brewing Company. Thank you for your patience waiting for this one. Ended up becoming a busy day. I was busy from 1-4PM, and then had a little time to start this up, and then had Boneshire Brew Works Trivia to attend – (went with my sister, my brother in law, and my dad) and now wrapping this up, working late into the evening. (By the way – the barleywine that Boneshire Brew Works just put out is absolutely phenomenal and you have to go and check it out.)

We were team named Swillburg (my sister’s go to team name for trivias, because she lived in the borough of Swillburg in Rochester when she went to RIT – Rochester Institute of Technology), and surprisingly we didn’t come in last place. (I have a track record for such things.) We didn’t do amazing, but for a while we were holding our own, tied for 2nd after the first round, and then in 3rd place after the second round…. to slip to somewhere in the 4th-6th positions at the end. (31.5 out of a possible 40 [41 if you count the bonus point] points).

Star Wars

So since this is Star Wars Wednesday, and since its the end of Wednesday (til this goes up live, it’ll probably be at least 11PM even though I started it around 5PM for about half an hour, and worked on it from 945 til its done), we can discuss ‘The Book of Boba Fett’ some. (Nice thing about posting the review late in the day, get to discuss the show a bit.)

Not going to go too deep here into it, since spoilers are still a thing, and some might not have seen it, and I fully intend to do a bigger, more encapsulating piece on it after the finale airs next week, but I will touch on a few non-spoiler things here.

Firstly, this was a good, fun episode, albeit complete fanservice. There is absolutely a lot here for people to love, and to make the fanboy in me squeal with happiness. I do think though, at this point naming conventions for the shows are out the window. Call them anthology shows or just call it “Star Wars” and let the episodes rip, some might be Mando, some might be Fett, some might be Ashoka, some might be Grogu, etc. I’ll leave it at that, because if I go a bit more into it I’m gonna hit spoiler territory and I don’t want to do that.

To see all of the Star Wars Wednesday Beer Reviews to coincide with The Book of Boba Fett episodes, you can see them here:

Tall Tales Brewing Company

Actually first had this beer when out on our recent Maryland trip. Starting off going down Delaware on our way to Burley Oak and from there to get near Cushwa for the brewfest we stopped at the Tall Tales Brewery. Had a taster of this and loved it. I was actually going to do this beer for last week’s Star Wars Wednesday or even double down on it and do two last week, but decided instead to save it for here. If you want to read more about our trips, you can catch the recaps from that trip here (the full articles are on their way):

Coincidentally, soon after coming back from our trip (just a few days ago), Breski’s Beverage and Ted’s Bar and Grill both got cans of Wookies and Cream to have on hand at the distributor (Breski) and restaurant (Ted’s), so if you want to try this, you can get to both locations here in the Central PA area and try it. (Definitely recommend that you do so.)

Beer Review

Wookies and Cream by Tall Tales Brewing Company

Tall Tales Brewing Company is a micro brewery from Parsonsburg, Maryland. It has 110 unique beers and just over 70 thousand ratings. It has a global average rating of exactly 3.5 as of 2.2.22. (All according to Untappd.) It has no description listed on Untappd. When we were there, it was a somewhat busy restaurant, with a nice layout and good looking food menu and a wonderful brick oven pizza menu.

Beer: Wookies and Cream
Brewery: Tall Tales Brewing Company
Style: Stout – Oatmeal
ABV: 6.11%
IBU: 38
Untappd Description: I did it all for the Wookie…Come on The Wookie…Come on…So you can take that cookie. And…Well you are gonna wanna drink it. Using the Force, we traveled through the Galaxy, combining one of your favorite desserts into a stout. Laugh it up Fuzzball.

Well this certainly has all the smells and aromas of cookies and cream (not Wookies and cream) as soon as you sniff the taster or crack open a can. (And thank god for that, could you imagine a Wookie smelling beer?) This has all the smell of cookies, cream, with a roasted stout background with a soft subtle background of light malt.

Appearance is just what you are and wanting – a Darth Vader cape and helmet black. A dark impenetrable darkness black. Like the soul of a man who tells you his favorite Star Wars character is Jar Jar Binks. There is a great head to this, nice and off cream, slightly tan to brown head with varied bubbles, and it left wonderful lacing on the glass.

This is an incredibly tasty stout, more pastry stout in taste than oatmeal stout, its so rich and creamy. From first sip you get hit with a Bowcaster Bolt force of chocolate oreo and cream. You get cookies, cream, oreo, chocolate, all right up front. Then you get that nice smoothness of a stout, the rich dark cascading flavors of malt. This is a fun beer to drink, because all the flavors mash and mesh so well together it gives you such a strong complex beer. There is so much to enjoy with this beer. It is pretty rich and creamy, not sure you could fully down a four pack in one sitting, but at least its not a sugar flavored sour bomb like some four packs I’ve recently picked up. The creaminess and richness of this just act as flavors, rather than fully encompassing the beer like those do. I like the way the beer works together, the textures and the tastes, all working together into one nice lovely beer. This was a great swirling of stout and pastry flavors that just work very well together. There’s no off flavors, there’s no aftertaste, nothing cloying, nothing acidic, everything is sweet but grounded, with a wonderful full and heavy mouthfeel that doesn’t come across as watery or thin. Full and complex, this is just simply a very enjoyable beer that might persuade you to join the Dark Side.

My Untappd Rating: ****.25
Global Average Untappd rating: 3.79 (as of 2.2.22)

The Book of Boba Fett …. or Star Wars Cinematic Universe

So…. now that I’m doing this so late in the day, I can go into a bit of the details on this episode I think. I’m really not going to go too spoiler heavy, but just in case, be forewarned right here – if you have not seen the episode, you might want to skip over this bit of the article.

[SPOILERS AHEAD]

Ok, good, you left, watched the show, and came back? We can proceed now? Ok, lets do it.

But, in the second back to back episode of The Book of Boba Fett, we are treated to nearly an entire diversion from the main show. This week did have some pertinent stuff happening to the greater overall storyline, but there was a lot more happening off planet and about periphery characters than to Boba Fett himself. Which, speaking of him – he is in this episode at least (an improvement over the previous week), but it amounts to about thirty seconds of screen time, and with no speaking lines… …so there is that.

Interestingly, I did enjoy the episode as an episode of STAR WARS…. but not so much when you think about it in the scope of the show ‘The Book of Boba Fett’. (At least the majority of this episode anyway, and the entirety of the previous week’s episode.) I think tonally the show is a bit of a mess and confusing, and I think they took the idea of the MCU (Marvel Cinematic Universe) and its interconnectedness and ramped it up to 1000%.

The Book of Boba Fett takes the idea of making a SWCU (Star Wars Cinematic Universe) which has always been pretty much in place; this idea of a large collectively canon that keeps everything in line, and a cohesive and coherent chronology; but here it starts interconnecting and interweaving portions of other stories and plots directly into this one. Where with the MCU (Marvel movies) you get characters popping up, and you get after credit / post credit scenes, but nothing so much as a full 50 minutes intercut into the story of another character.

I’ve heard the analogies of “some books give a chapter or two of different perspectives to random characters” and they say that doesn’t detract from the main character of the book. But I don’t feel like thats a true good comparison here. Firstly, if thats the case, its not in a seven chapter book, and its not going to be two chapters back to back right nearing the climax of the novel. And thats why I find the tonal structure of this show so weird. First few episodes leaned so heavily on post-Sarlacc pre-present day Boba Fett activities, and then switched to just having a full on interlude by other characters.

But… it was still a really good episode. And thus kinda my conflict on the episode. I did enjoy it, though I did think it was nearly 100 percent fanservice, I did enjoy it…. but, it just shows how tonally off this season is. And also shows how uninteresting of a character Boba Fett is. The best episodes of the season and they didn’t even include Fett in them (or just had him standing there). Fennec Shand does most of the talking and heavy lifting in the present day segments of the show, and Fett regularly comes off as incompetent, ignorant, or just not smart. So it really makes you wonder why they went this route with a seemingly autobiographical show of a character. But hey… at least next week we’ll most likely get to see Boba Fett riding a Rancor…. so there is that….

Pop Culture Themed Beers

As always with these articles, I like to link to all the various pop culture and nerd culture beer reviews we’ve done, and you can find them here below:

Star Wars:

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)

The Simpsons:

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)

A Christmas Story:

Pro Wrestling:

Matrix:

Matrix Monday

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:

Beer Review: Terpenes in Time (BAREBottle Brewing Co)

Seinfeld:

Other:

Thanks For Reading

Well this was a busy day, doing two reviews in one, and hitting Boneshire Brew Works for trivia. Hope everyone had a good and fun Groundhog Day.

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!

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Beer Review: This is The Whey (Bolero Snort Brewery)

BKline — Fri, 18 Dec 2020 15:48:40 +0000

So Tuesday night, while snorting around at Breski’s Beverage, filling out two mix-a-six packs, trying to get a good healthy sampling of beers to survive the Snowmageddon 2020 or “2020: The Season Finale”, I found this on the walk in cooler freeze shelf with some of the other Bolero Snort beers. Always been a huge fan of Bolero Snort. They are always one of the must stop at tents at the Atlantic City Music and Beerfest that me and my buddies go to every year…. ….except 2020….. *insert sad face and low whistle sound*…. Anyhoo…. they are always fun beers, good beers, and have some great names. I usually pick up one beer from them whenever doing a mix a six there; usually for the purposes of this blog, and because I love their beers. (I have several beers of theres with half-written reviews that I need to finish out, like the Hoofa beer – like Jimmy HOFFA but instead its HOOFA…. and Mue? instead of CLUE its MUE…. get it?). Anyway… you will most likely be seeing a few reviews of Bolero Snort in the near future, so if you enjoy their beers, or enjoy me making cow and bull related puns…. hold onto your antlers you are in for a treat! (Oh… no…. its already started.)

But enough of that. This isn’t about cow related punnery, this is about STAR WARS…. don’t you like STAR WARS? (Try to do that in your best RLM / Red Letter Media impersonation… if you know who they are; which you might, based on the Mr. Plinkett reviews of Episodes One, Two, and Three, you’ll understand what I meant there.)

The season finale of The Mandolin…. I mean…. The Mandalorian Season 2, just came out today, and just ended, and wrapped up the season. Have no fear, this review is spoiler free. As much as I really want to dive into it, and discuss the show and all the spoilers, I’m not going to, so have no fear… I won’t talk about how Darth Vader rises up from the dead and joins Darth Bane and Freedon Nodd to take over the galaxy, but luckily the Mandalorian with Jango Fett (who is also resurrected, though headless), get off two lucky shots killing them all in a fiery explosion aboard the Death Star III and saves the galaxy at the last second….. oh…. no…… I spoiled it all. I ruined everything!

This is the Way

So as we all know, Season 2 of the Mandalorian establishes that the big baddie is Moff Gideon, that he’s done evil things, he’s a Moff, he’s Giancarlo Esposito, ie. Gustavo Fring, ie. a suave dude you don’t want to **** with. This season, we’ve gotten to see a lot of cool things, and here I will drop a few spoilers for past episodes, so if you don’t want to read about things that aired several weeks ago then don’t read the next few sentences of my blog, and just skip down past the next .gif where you will be safe and spoiler free again. So…. here comes the spoilers, so tune out here. In Season 2, we’ve gotten to see that The Child or “Baby Yoda” now has a name – Gogru, we’ve gotten Ashoka coming back (as Rosario Dawson), we’ve gotten Thrawn’s name thrown out there, Boba Fett coming back with his ship Slave One, as well as seeing the Mandalorians like Bo-Katan and several others (one of whom is played by Mercedes Vernado aka Sasha Banks from WWE – who is also related to Snoop Dogg by the way), and overall lots of cool things have happened in this season. The finale is set to look like its going to be Mando, Gina Carrano’s character, Fett, and the Mandalorians taking on Moff Gideon to rescue Baby Yoda… err… Gogru. Ok… so, now heading back to non-spoiler territory now.

Awww…. look how cute Baby Yoda is…..

Ok, and we’re back into non-spoiler territory. Hopefully you are still reading this. As everyone knows who has done any reading on this blog, I am a huge Star Wars fan. (My youngest daughter is named Mara – named after Mara Jade; who ended up being Luke’s wife in the old Star Wars EU [Expanded Universe] before Disney “deleted it” to make their new Expanded Universe with the Sequel Trilogy and other movies, books, comics, and shows.) I have covered several Star Wars themed beers on the blog before, which you can see here (most are Mandalorian themed):

Actually, in fact, I’ve done a lot of pop culture related beer reviews, and Josh has done a few as well. I’ll link them all at the very bottom of this beer review, in case you want to see what all pop culture and nerd culture beers we’ve covered (everything from Space Balls, to Back to the Future, to Seinfeld, to Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles).

And there’s nothing really wrong with doing pop culture beer reviews right? I enjoy doing them, because then it gives me something to talk about on here, more than just saying, “Ok, this is a nice color…. this smells nice… I like how the hops work together….”

Don’t You Agree?

Craft beers and pop culture go hand in hand too. Due to naming, and trying to find market shares, a lot of breweries do themed names and borderline IP (intellectual property) theft to sell their beers. Which is actually a big debate and something I might cover at some point here on the blog. How much do craft breweries owe to these properties they steal from? Is using something like the Mandalorian and calling your beer “This is the Way” by Broken Goblet a bad thing? Is it IP theft? Are they indebted to Star Wars, Lucasfilm, etc? Honestly, I don’t know, and its a big debate and controversial topic to talk about. Theres a lot of factors on both sides. I enjoy doing pop culture and nerd culture beers and covering them, so in a way, I kind of feed off on this, so I guess I am a bit guilty of it all too. Like I said, who knows, maybe I’ll cover this in a big opinion piece sometime in the near future here on the blog. If I do, be sure to check it out please. (Shameless shill there.)

But, I think we’ve discussed enough about everything else other than the beer, and this is a beer review afterall, so lets get to the beer itself!

This is the Whey by Bolero Snort Brewery

Beer: This is the Whey
Brewery: Bolero Snort Brewery
Style: IPA – Imperial / Double
ABV: 8.4%
IBU: None
Untappd Description: The force is strong with this one. The next entry in our Steer Wars Saga, This is the Whey is our tribute to the gunslinger from Moondalore. Make no Fetts about it, this big Corellian vessel comes in at 8% packed with Galaxy, Bru-1, and Cryo Idaho-7, and is sure to make you feel like you’re covered in some Besko Armor drinking some intergalactic tropical juice!

Gotta love all those puns in that Untappd description! (Though…. I do want to point out – its BESKAR armor, nor BESKO armor…. but anyway….)

Appearance for this is similar to a New England IPA, more than just a regular IPA. Actually, I would say its more of an ‘in between the two’ type. Its golden to honeyed color, its darker, and a bit richer looking than a New England IPA, and its not as unfiltered or hazy, but it is darker, not opaque, but also not see through. It has a nice white foamy head, and great carbonation out of the can.

Aroma is very hop heavy, and an interesting combination of hops too, with Galaxy, Bru-1, and the new Cryo style of hop with Idaho-7. Cryo hops are newer, and are more concentrated hops basically. They are a way to get extreme, concentrated bittering oils out of hops, and are very high alpha acid. This is very strong hop nose because of this, a very heavy hop pine, tropical fruit, citrus, and smells very good. Borderline pungent, but in the right way. Super strong, but good.

Taste is certainly interesting on this bad boy, and I love it. I think the cryo hop use of Idaho-7 and Galaxy is really good. Galaxy is a fun hop and I love the profile on it. Its very citrus, between the Galaxy and the Idaho-7 hops (which are in concentrated form too), you get a very strong, hop presence, mostly citrus, a lot of pine, some peach, passion fruit, earthy notes. I also get a bit of pineapple, some stone fruit like apricot, which all might be from the Bru-1 hops, not 100% sure on that, I’m not too familiar with Bru-1 hops. There is a bit of a kick to this beer in the hop department, its not full juicy and dank like a New England IPA would be, but its not a full bitter West Coast style IPA either. I think its a nice middle ground between the two, and would probably appeal to fans of both styles. It is a bit strong at 8.4%, but you don’t outright taste it, but you can feel it creep up pretty quickly. This is still a smooth drink, and has a nice mouthfeel too, its not too heavy, its not thin or slick or watery, it tastes right, there’s no off flavors, nothing acidic, nothing cloying, nothing too bitter, nothing out of place with the flavors or the malts or hops, no bad aftertaste, you won’t be burping this up hours later, its a very well done, well crafted beer. The beer looks nice in a glass, it has good carbonation out of the can, it leaves nice lacing on the glass, it has an amazing aroma, especially if your a hophead, and it tastes like a fine IPA. A middle of the way IPA between New England IPA and West Coast IPA. Its strong at 8.4% so you can’t really full kill a 4 pack of this by yourself (well… I mean… I guess you could, if you want to… but I hope you’re safely tucked in at home watching The Mandalorian on TV in your pajamas and have already called it a night anyway), but its also not so strong as to fully knock you on your butt right out of the gate on one of these. This was a great pickup at Breski’s Beverage for me, I think it was the last one on their mix a six shelf too when I was there, and at 5.99$ for the can, it was definitely well priced. I fully, highly recommend everyone grabbing one of these if you see it out on shelves, either in four packs or in singles, not sure if its on draft, but if it is, I still recommend it that way too. The can art is also stellar, and I always love the Mandalorian themed can arts (like Tattered Flag’s The Pandalorian), and this fits that bill.

My Untappd Rating: ****
Global Untappd Rating: 3.96 (as of 12.18.20)

This is The Whey by Bolero Snort

See, just look at that can art, isn’t it beautiful? Its a Baby Yoda as a Baby Bull, and the Mandalorian is a Bull / Cow Mandalorian. Its great. There’s even little Millennium Falcons on it, and sound effect words on it too. Great beer, great can art. I do love Bolero Snort too, from the brewery and the workers to their presence at the AC Beerfest, to their pun beers, great stuff from them, make sure to check them out if you haven’t before.

Hopefully you all have gotten to watch The Mandalorian Season 2 finale now. I will be interested in hearing your comments and thoughts on it, be sure to leave them in the comment section here. Love hearing from you guys either way, especially about The Mandalorian and Star Wars and craft beer. Check out the reviews below of other Star Wars beers or other pop culture / nerd culture beers too. Thanks for reading everyone, stay safe and healthy during this pandemic, make sure to wash your hands, stay distant, mask up, etc., we’re getting near the end of it. I’m off to Tattered Flag in about an hour to do a canning day, so be sure to read about that in the near future too. I always enjoy my canning days there. (Nothing like getting to crack open beers and drink early in the day while “doing work”.) I was at Boneshire Brew Works yesterday, sitting out in the cold drinking with Drew, and we went back and watched Santa’s Slay, Silent Night Deadly Night (we watch this every year), and Silent Night Deadly Night II, and drank quite a few Other Half beers (so you can expect some beer reviews of those), and somehow I was still able to wake up at 7:30AM, despite only leaving his house at 2:40AM and getting gas. Tonight is also a Christmas type party with Ming and Don at their place, and I’m supposed to get up bright and early tomorrow, we’ll see how that goes. But, you will be getting lots of beer reviews in the near future, especially since I’m still furloughed until (at least) January 4th. We’re also 5 days away from Festivus everyone, so Happy Holidays is an expression we can now start using. Alright, see you guys hopefully at a brewery in the near future, and hopefully you’ll be back to read future articles here on The Beer Thrillers. Cheers!