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.

Other Boneshire Brew Works Articles

• Pigtoberfest 2021
• Boneshire Brew Works Expanding to Second Location
• Boneshire Brew Works 3rd Anniversary Celebration
• Beer Review: Pigtoberfest
• Beer Review: S’Mores LazaRIS
• Beer Review: Iscariot
• Beer Review: Tried and True (Mango)
• Beer Review: Dillston
• Beer Review: The Hog
• Beer Review: Harrishire
• Beer Review: Sunburst
• Beer Review: Road Less Traveled
• Beer Review: Blue Hippo
• Beer Review: Good Walk Spoiled
• Beer Review: Long Tongue Liar (Barrel Aged)
• Beer Review: AuZealand 2.0
• Beer Review: Caucus-Race 6.0
• Beer Review: Pandemic Pils
• Boneshire Brew Works Celebrates Their 5th Anniversary

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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Boneshire Brew Works is moving into Harrisburg. While always been a part of the Harrisburg beer scene, their physical tap room and brewery has been kind of on the periphery and outskirts of Harrisburg proper. The brewery itself is located on Derry Street next to the 717 Armory and Blue Smoke BBQ food truck, as part of a small outlet mall that includes Marino’s Pizza, Signal 5 Crossfit, and Everest Spice. The address being: Boneshire Brew Works, 7462 Derry St, Harrisburg, PA 17111.

But now, they are moving into the city proper. The city that they’ve helped and worked on so much through events like Harrisburg Beer Week and sip @ soma and 3rd in the Burg, and other great events like brewfests and Beers and Bacon. The city that has loved and embraced Boneshire Brew Works so much, is now fully accepting them into the capital itself.

As reported yesterday – Monday July 13th 2020 – on The Burg’s website, as well as on our Facebook page, and then later on PennLive and with an interview Alan Miller did with Breweries in PA – Boneshire Brew Works will be setting up a taproom on 3rd Street in Harrisburg.

As quoted from The Burg’s press release on the brewery’s expansion: “On Monday, Harristown Enterprises announced that Boneshire would open a tasting room in the SoMa neighborhood on S. 3^rd Street in space that had been the location of Sip@SoMa.

‘We are a small brewery that focuses on providing an opportunity for community gathering, and we think Boneshire and SoMa are a perfect fit,’ said Alan Miller, majority owner of Boneshire, which is based in Swatara Township.

In early 2019, Harristown opened the snug, 25-seat Sip@SoMa in a first-floor storefront as an interim measure until it could attract a brewery to the location. Since then, breweries from around PA have used the 12-tap system to serve their beer on a visiting, rotating basis, often in conjunction with 3^rd in the Burg, though the COVID-19 pandemic has put a halt to that undertaking.”

Harrisburg is a vibrant and large city with a diverse culture and many tourist opportunities and attractions. The capital of Pennsylvania, it sees many people coming from all over to visit annually. Located along the Susquehanna and near towns of Hershey and Hummelstown, it provides a lot of entertainment options for visitors. From museums to the waterfront, from bars to restaurants all over the city, there is much to see, eat, drink, and do in Harrisburg. Harrisburg currently has a few other craft breweries – ZeroDay Brewing and The Millworks are the two largest, but there is also a small craft brewery in the vegan restaurant – The Vegetable Hunter.

The sip @ soma location has been a prime target for craft beer and has been a vital part of the craft beer scene in the Harrisburg area. Sara Bozich, a regular planner, and part of the creation of Harrisburg Beer Week regularly (well, regularly pre-COVID-19) hosted ‘block parties’ there, offering a variety of craft breweries and craft beer – but one staple that typically was well represented at the block parties was Alan Miller’s Boneshire Brew Works.

According to Harristown Enterprises: “Boneshire expects to open its SoMa tasting room in spring 2021. It also will continue operating from its main location on Derry Street outside of Hummelstown.

‘Having a dynamic, local craft brewer like Boneshire take over the space is exactly what we’re looking for in the neighborhood,’ said Brad Jones, Harristown’s president and CEO.”

Alan Miller is very enthusiastic for the growth. As well as he should be. Expansion is the key to much of the craft beer scene. Growing, maintaining quality, growing, maintaining quality, is the key to success. You can look at other local breweries like Troegs Independent Craft Brewing or Tattered Flag Brewery and Distillery, and see how their growth has led to more growth. Troegs Brewing originally started in Harrisburg on Paxtang Street and has since moved to Hershey, just outside of HersheyPark on HersheyPark Road, growing to become one of the largest producers of beer in Pennsylvania (behind Yuengling Brewing and Yards Brewing). Likewise, Tattered Flag Brewery and Distillery has grown to several additional locations – Gettysburg, as well as the old Hershey Biergarten and soon to Lancaster. Growth can be difficult for some breweries, and there is usually a small bit of a ‘adjustment period’. Breweries like Rotunda Brewing Company expanded in recent history from a small little bottle shop and near home-brewery size equipment, to a 7 Barrel System, as well as opening a second brew pub in Hershey. There was a small window of time for them that was an ‘adjustment period’, but after that small blip and bump, they’ve maintained that quality they were known for before hand, and now providing it on a bigger scale, and to more people – which is ultimately the goal of all craft breweries and craft brewers. Alan being no exception to that.

Alan is an extremely smart brewer and knows what he is doing. I, personally, think he will have no difficulty with the adjustment and addition of the new taproom, due to open in Spring 2021. The new tap room won’t be adding any additional brewing size capacity to Boneshire Brew Works, but will be providing a second location to have their beers on tap. This will likely mean a quicker turn-over for their production though, so Alan will probably have to spend more time brewing to meet the demands of two locations as well as wherever else their kegs are shipped, and if they further their market by moving cans into beer distributors.

From The Burg’s press release, Alan had to say: “We love the feel and vibe of the SoMa area in Harrisburg, and we have been involved in the SoMa block party since day one and are excited to have a permanent place in the neighborhood.”

This is certainly an interesting time for brewers, not just in Pennsylvania, but the world over, as the coronavirus – COVID-19 is still working its way through the human population. A difficult time for brewers with a lot of uncertainties. Hemauer Brewing recently opened their doors during the pandemic, and Wolf Brewing Co, has had their opening pushed back a bit due to the pandemic as well. Likewise, Rubber Soul Brewing in Hummelstown which was due to open back in late May / early June, still has yet to open, and is looking to open tentatively late July / early August.

The tap room is typically described as ‘intimate’. Its small, and cozy, relaxed, ‘intimate’, but will feature a vibrant tap list. The seating is only 25, which is rather small, but will work well for Boneshire Brew Works. The current tap system has 12 taps, and will thus be able to cover the full spread of Boneshire Brew Works’ beer menu, as well as possibly other ‘guest taps’ if they so choose to do. (As per their licensing, Boneshire Brew Works can have guest taps for craft beer from any Pennsylvania brewery.)

The current location for Boneshire Brew Works (their brewery) is 7462 Derry Street Harrisburg PA. The tap room’s location will be 13 South 3rd Street Harrisburg PA.

For additional information, you can check out these sources:

• Boneshire to tap into city market with a tasting room in downtown Harrisburg (The Burg)
• Dauphin County brewer to open tasting room in Harrisburg (PennLive)
• Meet The Brewer Series – Breweries in PA’s interview with Alan Miller

For more articles from The Beer Thrillers on Boneshire Brew Works, check out:

• Boneshire Brew Works 3rd Anniversary Celebration
• Beer Reviews:
  * Beer Review: Sunburst
  * Beer Review: Dillston
  * Beer Review: Good Walk Spoiled
  * Beer Review: Road Less Traveled
  * Beer Review: AuZealand 2.0
  * Beer Review: Caucus Race 6.0
  * Beer Review: Harrishire (with Harris Family Brewery)
  * Beer Review: Tried and True (Mango)
  * Beer Review: Iscariot
  * Beer Review: S’mores Lazaris
  * Beer Review: The Hog
  * Beer Review: Blue Hippo
  * Beer Review: Pandemic Pils
  * Beer Review: Long Tongue Liar w/Cherries (Barrel Aged)

Brewery Openings and Expansions:

• Rotunda Brew Pub Opening in Hershey
• Grand Opening of Hemauer Brewing in Mechanicsburg
• A Sneak Peak at the New Rubber Soul Brewery in Hummelstown
• Midwest Coast Brewery Opening in Chicago
• Official BBQ and Burgers Becomes Pizza Boy’s Secondary Location in back of Rutherford

Definitely excited for the opening of this tap room. It will be great for the residents of Harrisburg, it also shows off the hard work Alan Miller and his co-owners / partners have been putting into Boneshire Brew Works, it will also be great for the craft beer scene in Harrisburg to feature another great craft brewery, and will be great for craft beer enthusiasts in Harrisburg; as well as be great for Boneshire Brew Works. Hopefully soon, in Spring 2021 I will be sitting and having a drink (or two, or three) with some of you at the new Boneshire Brew Works taproom!

Until then – cheers everyone!

-B. Kline