Braxton Brewing Company - The Beer Thrillers

Pairing Christmas Cookies with Beer

AmyMWolfe — Mon, 18 Dec 2023 02:30:00 +0000

Christmas Cookies….

Right away, I blame Scarlet, I hear Cookie Monster yelling “Coooookie” This is where the visualization changes from Cookie Monster chowing down on some cookies to me destroying some Christmas Cookies. You might have guessed it by this point, I also have a beer in hand. So let’s figure out the best way to enjoy the holidays with cookies and Beer!

Christmas Cookies and Beer Styles

But let’s be honest you are either making the Christmas cookies or you are baking the Christmas cookies. Let’s kick it off with The Classic Chocolate Chip Cookie. I’d grab a stout to wash down some Classics. I don’t just mean that because it is stout season! The sweetness from the chocolate chips will pair nicely with a full-bodied stout with incredibly rich and creamy flavor.

Wookies and Cream by Tall Tales Brewing Company

(See our beer review: Wookies and Cream by Tall Tales Brewing Company)

B-52 by Cox Brewing Company

I’ll just go down the list of the classic Christmas cookies I remember over the years. The next cookie I think of is any sort of sugar cookie! My Grandma used to make a recipe of her own that was a very soft sugar cookie. I think she actually called them sugar biscuits. These need to be paired with a Belgium blonde. My mouth is watering thinking about this combination again. Honestly a sugar cookie could pair decent with a wide selection of brews but this will bring some flavors out that you didn’t notice before.

(We didn’t do any reviews of Belgian Blondes, but Josh did do a review of a Belgian Dubbel – so we present: B-52 Belgian Dubbel (Bottle-Conditioned, 2017) – Cox Brewing Company (CBC)).

Scarlet Sunrise – Blackberry and Blueberry (Mellow Mink Brewing)

The next cookie I think of is the peanut butter blossom. My Aunt used to make these every year. She knew these were my favorite too. There are a couple different ways we could go with this one. We can get a little crazy and pair with any sort of fruited sour and it feels like a grown up PB&J.

(Some beer reviews we suggest: Scarlet Sunrise – Blackberry and Blueberry (Mellow Mink Brewing), Kettle Sour Series (Raspberry) (Natchez Brewing Company), and Sour Blueberry (Edmund’s Oast Brewing Company))

Chocolate Covered Pretzel (Blown Gasket) (Braxton Brewing Company)

I am the person that believes the best invention, besides beer, was the combination of peanut butter and chocolate. Obviously why this cookie is my favorite but also try it with a chocolatey stout or porter and it brings out more of the chocolate flavors.

(Some chocolatey beer reviews we recommend: Grand Cacao (Troegs Independent Brewing), German Chocolate Cake (Wicked Weed Brewing), Chocolate Covered Pretzel (Blown Gasket) (Braxton Brewing Company), Chocolate Confidential (Sudwerk Brewing Co.), and of course – Hershey’s Chocolate Porter (Yuengling Brewery).

They Burn Them All Away (Broken Goblet Brewing)

I kind of feel bad for even writing about this one but, the red-headed stepchild of cookies, the oatmeal raisin. I meant to grab a container of chocolate chip cookies at the bakery in the local grocery store but I accidently grabbed oatmeal raisin in my haste to get to Ben’s parent’s house for a picnic. I’ll never forget the pure look of heart break on his brother in law’s face at the picnic when he cracked open the container and realized they indeed oatmeal raisin and not chocolate chip like I announced. Ever since then it’s been a joke to make sure I get the right cookie.

An oatmeal raisin cookie needs the help of a Belgian quad. The golden almost molasses like flavor of most Belgian quads will bring out the natural raisin flavor. And it will pair nicely with the oatmeal flavor especially if it is an oatmeal raisin cookie has a bit more cinnamon flavor to it.

(A beer review to check out: They Burn Them All Away (Broken Goblet Brewing))
(Or for a Belgian Heavy / Belgian Dark: Mad Elf (Troegs Independent Brewing))

I am summing this up by making sure you know which beer to leave out for Santa with his cookies this year. Ditch the milk. Santa wants beer!

Drink more Beer
Amy

Amy’s Column Series

Since getting back to writing for the blog after a short hiatus, Amy has started up a weekly column style writing for the blog. You can find these articles here:

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The Battle of the Breweries (2021): HEELs Conference – Triple H Division

BKline — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 12:40:39 +0000

The Battle of the Breweries (2021)

This is the poll for the HEELs Conference – Triple H Division – Round One. You can vote once per day, and you can vote once per poll (there is a poll for each division in round one). Be sure to share and send to your friends and breweries to let everyone vote!

Voting runs until March 7th, 11:59PM (EST).

To read more about The Battle of the Breweries (2021) you can read the initial post here: The Battle of the Breweries (2021) – March Madness – The Beer Thrillers way.

[perfect_survey id=”7294″]

Any questions, concerns, or comments about the brackets, or tournament, or breweries in question, you can leave in the comment section or message us directly through our Contact Page.

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March Madness (2021) – The Beer Thrillers Way

BKline — Mon, 01 Mar 2021 04:30:00 +0000

The Battle of the Breweries (2021)

The Battle of the Breweries (2021) – VOTING LINKS

Since this is the landing page post – survey, I will keep all of the voting links here for quick reference and jumping point, and so they don’t get lost in all the muddle.

HEELs Conference:
* Triple H Division: Round One
* Ric Flair Division: Round One
FACEs Conference:
* Stone Cold Steve Austin Division: Round One
* The Rock Division: Round One

(Updated: 10AM – March 1st, 2021. Continue on for the original introduction to The Battle of the Breweries [2021] – March Madness tournament – article.)

The Battle of the Breweries (2021)

Who’s ready for some March Madness? Like everyone else, in March, that means we need to fill out some brackets! And we here at The Beer Thrillers are no different!

BUT….

Instead of filling out NCAA or college basketball brackets, we are doing our own take on it – The Battle of the Breweries (2021)!

The Battle of the Breweries (2021)

So how’s this going to work? Who all is invited? What all breweries are going to be in it? How many breweries? How’s voting going to work? Who decides whose in and whose out? Whats the seeding? Why is Rick such a jerk to Morty? Why is Jurassic Bark the saddest episode of Futurama ever? Why is it also B. Kline’s favorite episode? What does that say about him? Why is the sky blue?

Ok…. enough with the questions!

The procedure for this ‘tournament’ will be similar to most other March Madness style tournaments. Similar to the ones you’ve seen Untappd and Breweries in PA have done, but with a bit of a twist. Because we here at The Beer Thrillers have a terrible time making full fledged decisions, the list of competitors will be 48 instead of the normal 32.

How did I decide what breweries will be involved? Simple. Only breweries that I have physically visited in person. The voting is based on the brewery and their beers; but to be included on this list, I personally had to have been to one of their locations.

How is seeding decided? Thats also pretty simple, the seeding is based on global average Untappd ratings. So the decision of the seeding is out of my hands. Also, bonus, you can’t get mad at me for the seeding. “Why is X above Y? Why is Z below D?” Its all decided by Untappd.

So whats the tournament structure? One total grouping of 48 breweries (in lieu of teams), divided by two conferences of 24 each, which is divided further into a total of four divisions of 12 each. So break down is simple: 4 divisions of 12 each, with two divisions per conference, of 24 teams in each, for a total of 48 competitors / teams / breweries.

How did we decide on who is in what division? Simple – random number generator. I rolled the dice (a D4 to be exact, thank you to my old nerdy DnD days, I just ‘happened’ to have one of these lying about). Rolled the dice for each brewery to locate them into a division. If one division was understaffed and another overstaffed, I re-rolled until they were evened out.

Let’s Meet Our Competitors

So who all do we have facing off in this crazy free for all of brewing expertise? Quite an assembly of breweries actually. There are a heavy abundance of local (Central PA local) breweries but there is an assortment of breweries from my various travels and across a few states. We have a few breweries from the Rochester area of New York; some breweries from Maryland, a Delaware brewery, some from Ohio, one from Indiana, and one from Kentucky as well.

Surprisingly; it actually took a while to curate the list. At even 48 entries, I still had many more to include, and even removed a few to make it a bit more diverse. I wanted to try and make this as diverse as possible (so removed a local brewery for one out of state, etc.). Possibly in the future, maybe the 2022 iteration of this, or the 2023, who knows, it’ll expand to even more breweries.

This has taken up pretty much my entire night to create the list, and to roll the dice for their divisions, and then checking their Untappd scores to get them into the correct seedings. In the case of matching Untappd scores, I did make my own decision, and that was primarily based on my thoughts of their size, notoriety, branding; so there is a few judgment calls due to a few ties, but there isn’t too many of them.

Conferences and division names…. I had to decide on what to pick. I was going to go by hop names, but I saw at last second, that the Breweries in PA have done that this year, instead of their normal divisions based on geography, it appears they decided to use hop names for their divisions, so thats out. I debated doing Jedi and Sith for the conferences and then doing different Jedi or Sith Masters for the division names…. but… instead decided to go with WWF/E names due to WrestleMania 37 approaching.

So I present you two conferences. One is based on HEELs and one is based on FACEs. The names of the breweries are listed in the order of their seedings, and will have their location and their Untappd (global average) rating behind their names.

The Heels Conference

First up, is divisions one and two of the HEELS conference. Triple H and Ric Flair.

Division One: Triple H

Fourscore Beer Company (Gettysburg, PA) (4.09)
Urban Artifact (Cincinnati, OH) (3.90)
Mad Chef (East Petersburg, PA) (3.79)
Levity Brewing (Indiana, PA) (3.77)
Swiftwater Brewing Company (Rochester, NY) (3.77)
Braxton Brewing Company (Covington, KY) (3.75)
Sun King Brewery (Indianapolis, IN) (3.71)
Highway Manor (Camp Hill, PA) (3.70)
Gearhouse Brewing (Chambersburg, PA) (3.68)
ZeroDay Brewing (Harrisburg, PA) (3.69)
The Ministry of Brewing (Baltimore, MD) (3.64)
Black Forest Brewing (Ephrata, PA) (3.62)

Division Two: Ric Flair

Dewey Beer Company (Dewey Beach, DE) (4.08)
Rotunda Brewing Company (Annville, PA) (3.96)
Yellow Bridge Brewing (Pittsburgh, PA) (3.88)
Troegs Independent Brewing (Hershey, PA) (3.79)
Twisted Bine Brewing Company (Mount Joy, PA) (3.79)
Cox Brewing Company (Elizabethtown, PA) (3.71)
Chatty Monks (Reading, PA) (3.71)
Land-Grant Brewing Company (Columbus, OH) (3.70)
Saucony Creek Brewing Company (Kutztown, PA) (3.70)
Desperate Times Brewing (Carlisle, PA) (3.69)
Couch Brewery (Pittsburgh, PA) (3.60)

The Faces Conference

The faces conference is made up of two divisions led by Stone Cold Steve Austin and The Rock. First up, is Division Three, Stone Cold Steve Austin.

Division Three: Stone Cold Steve Austin

Ever Grain Brewing (Mechanicsburg, PA) (3.93)
Idiom Brewery (Frederick, MD) (3.90)
Breaker Brewing (Wilkes-Barre, PA) (3.85)
ShuBrew (Zelionople, PA) (3.85)
Wolf’s Ridge Brewing Company (Columbus, OH) (3.84)
Liquid Noise (Marysville, PA) (3.84)
Boneshire Brew Works (Harrisburg, PA) (3.83)
Rough Edges (Waynesboro, PA) (3.82)
Tattered Flag (Middletown, PA) (3.79)
Rubber Soul Brewing Company (Hummelstown, PA) (3.74)
Three Heads Brewing (Rochester, NY) (3.71)
Mount Gretna Craft Brewery (Palmyra, PA) (3.58)

Division Four: The Rock

Cushwa Brewing (Williamsport, MD) (4.11)
Jackie O’s Brewery (Athens, OH) (4.02)
Pizza Boy Brewing Company (Al’s of Hampden) (Enola, PA) (3.88)
Mellow Mink (Mechanicsburg, PA) (3.84)
Moo-Duck Brewing (Elizabethtown, PA) (3.83)
Logyard Brewing Company (Kane, PA) (3.78)
Molly Pitcher Brewing (Carlisle, PA) (3.75)
Olde Bedford Brewing Company (Bedford, PA) (3.75)
Taft’s Brewing Company (Taft’s Ale House) (Cincinnati, OH) (3.72)
Isle of Que Brewing (Selinsgrove, PA) (3.69)
The Church Brew Works (Pittsburgh, PA) (3.56)

Alright, that’s all 48 competitors. Tomorrow the brackets will be published and you will be allowed to vote on the first round matchups. Here’s where things get a bit screwy…. mainly because I don’t do math so good (sigh, sad subject, really, since I work at a job where I do math all day). Well, what really happened, is that I didn’t think through the breakdown. 32 breaks down easily for each round…. 48…. not so much. So…..

Week one will be divisions with 6 matches in each divisions. After that, the divisions will break for week two, and it will be by conference, with 6 matches in each conference. After this, we break apart the conferences, and do another 6 matches. This leaves us with 3 final competitors, for a triple threat for the ending.

So…. I kinda sorta walked myself into a corner…. and kinda… sorta…. walked my way out of it. Glad I chose to use wrestler themed people, so that the finale “Triple Threat” makes more sense.

*Smacks head* D’oh!

But anyway, there will be 7 days of voting for each round. With the final round taking the remainder of the month and ending on the 31st.

Voting

Each day you will be able to come to the site to make your votes in the polls. It will be set-up by IPS, so it limits you to voting just once per day per vote. You can vote as many times as you want per round, but only once per day.

Following each round, I will update the brackets and post them and make up the new polls for voting. Round one begins on March 1st, 2021 and will last until March 7th at Midnight, when it will then become the next round.

I suggest helping your breweries out and sharing the poll pages so that as many of your friends and brewery lovers can vote as well. Good luck to all of the competitors… err… breweries!

As always, please like us and follow us here and on our social media pages to stay up to date on The Beer Thrillers. We have plenty of content to check out, so be sure to stop by often to see what we have coming out. Beer reviews, brewery reviews, travelogues, events, news, and more!

Thanks for reading everyone!

Cheers!

-B. Kline

Beer Review: Chocolate Covered Pretzel (Blown Gasket) (Braxton Brewing Company)

BKline — Sun, 07 Feb 2021 14:02:00 +0000

Chocolate Covered Pretzel – a Blown Gasket variant – by Braxton Brewing Company as part of their “Braxton Labs” series.

Good happy snowy Super Bowl Sunday morning. Oops… “Big Game” Sunday. (Sits by his mailbox tapping his foot waiting for the cease and decease for using the term SUPER BOWL…. oops!)

Yet again another snowy day here in Central PA in 2021. Unlike previous years where we got relatively little snow, this year we’re actually getting the snow the weathermen and women have been calling for. Thank goodness…. (he says sarcastically). But with the snowy weather comes shoveling, and with shoveling comes snow shovel beer(s).

And I present you this morning’s snow shovel beer – a Blown Gasket variant by Braxton Brewing Company as part of their experimental brewing and experimental batches section of their brewery – Braxton Brew Labs.

I had stopped at Braxton Brewing Company when I was in Cincinnati on my trip. Braxton Brewing Company is just across the river in Covington Kentucky. I picked up a few four packs and six packs (Oktoberfest being one), and talking with the bartender he offered me a couple (two) crowlers (for free) (and without even mentioning the blog) to go. Was a fantastic time there and I absolutely loved the brewery. Beautiful building, fantastic atmosphere, amazing workers and all around high quality beers. I highly recommend the place if ever in the area, and talk to all the workers you can, they are all wonderful people.

For a quick recap of my time in Cincinnati you can check out the article here: Indy Trip Recap – Day Five – Cincinnati and Kentucky.

Make sure – if you get the chance – if / when visiting Braxton Brewing Company that you say “hi” to Adam the bartender, tell him I sent you. I can’t wait to come back and hang again for some beers. Extremely great guy and so very helpful too.

Braxton Brewing Company

Ok, so let’s dive in and go straight into the brewery behind the beer before getting to the beer review proper itself. As I’ve stated in several recent past beer reviews, I’m making a point to highlight the breweries behind the beers now. As a way to distinguish our beer reviews here on The Beer Thrillers, as well as to let people know the “behind the beer” and get to see who makes the delicious brews their imbibing in. Too rarely do some people know anything about who make their beers.

This is a great way to get some recognition to these breweries and workers who we review here on the blog and who make the fantastic beers we love. They deserve that recognition for all their hard work; and Braxton Brewing Company is certainly no exemption to that.

According to Untappd – Braxton Brewing Company is a regional brewery located in Covington Kentucky. I visited the brewery there in Covington. They also have a barrel house. Untapped says they have 647 unique beers, with a global average rating of 3.75 out of 253K ratings (as of 2.7.21). Their Untappd description reads: “From a humble start, a love for brewing has become an entrepreneurial obsession. Melding technology and tradition, at Braxton ideas are born and fermented.” They are a hop skip and a jump (just across the river) from Cincinnati Ohio.

You can follow them on their media pages here:

The brewery’s venue on Untappd can be found here. They are a verified venue on Untappd, so you can stay up to date on their beer menu. They also have the Braxton Labs in Newport Kentucky, the Braxton Barrel House in Fort Mitchell Kentucky, and Braxton Brewing Cincinnati in…. Cincinnati Ohio (shocker right?). All of their locations are verified venues.

Don’t Blow a Gasket

I had gotten a crowler of this and enjoyed it immensely, and only after doing some digging did I see that its not just an experimental brew, but its also a part of the series for Blown Gasket. (Pays to do some research sometimes when doing beer reviews huh?) I don’t think it makes much of a difference that its a variant of Blown Gasket, but in case, for anyone familiar with Blown Gasket and Braxton Brewing Company, I’ll give the specifics for the original here.

Beer: Blown Gasket
Brewery: Braxton Brewing Company
Style: Porter – American
ABV: 7.5%
IBU: 20
Untappd Description: This robust porter is a darker offering with a noticeably roasty aroma. Supportive notes may include bready, toffee-like, chocolate, and/or sweet aromas. A moderate hop aroma containing no fruity esters. Dark brown to almost black in color, with a beautiful tan head with excellent retention. The flavor profile is of moderately strong malt character, followed by roasty-dryness throughout to the finish. Medium hop bitterness, and low to moderate hop flavor to balance the roasted malts. This is a medium/medium full bodied beer.
Untappd Global Average Rating: 3.78 (as of 2.7.21)

I provide this here just to give some baseline information on the beer behind the beer, or the genesis of the beer I am reviewing. (Do with this knowledge as you will….)

Beer Review: Chocolate Covered Pretezel

Chocolate Covered Pretzel by Braxton Brewing Company (Braxton Brew Labs) – a variant of Blown Gasket

Ok… finally, about time I get down to the review? Ok, simmer down folks, here we go, (you know you could have just easily skipped to this right? Yea…. yea… yea….). Ok, first, lets get the specs out of the way, then dive into the beer itself.

Beer: Braxton Labs – Chocolate Covered Pretzel
Brewery: Braxton Brewing Company
Variant: Blown Gasket
Style: Porter – Other
ABV: 8%
IBU: None Listed
Untappd Description: (Blank)

What does a snowy day call for? Shoveling unfortunately, but what does shoveling call for? A deep, dark, tasty beer. And for me, that means stouts, porters, barleywines, brown ales, coffee beers, and anything minimum 8%. Gotta warm those cockles as you shovel in shorts right?

Breaking this down as I usually do – appearance (then aroma, then taste / overall discussion); let’s jump right into that appearance. As usual with porters, they can look very similar to stouts and be indistinguishable at times. Sometimes they can have a browner look, but this is a pure black near stout like porter. The picture doesn’t do the carbonation justice because I poured it and realized I didn’t have my phone on me for the picture so I had to go and retrieve it, but there was a nice lovely foamy head. An off white brown tinted foam head, and great carbonation. A thin quarter inch head with various and diverse bubbles. As I drank the several glasses of it (it was in a crowler afterall), it left lovely lacing on the glass. As per my usual definition of dark black beers – “Its Razor Ramon hair black.”

This has a nice rich, dense smell to it. Very bready, very heady, a fair bit malty. A nice chocolate undertone to it, like a baker’s chocolate, but its more background to the bready, and even earthy notes. There is a slight roast note to the aroma but its certainly muted and not overpowering and comes through with the breadyness not behind the chocolate.

This was a delightful beer to drink, especially starting early morning while shoveling on Super Bowl (errrr…. Big Game) Sunday, and getting to drink throughout the day. Its got a deep, full body to it, and nothing about it is watery or thin or light or airy, even though its “only” 8%, it feels full, rich, deep, and dark. It looks and tastes like a heavy hitter even though it only clocks in at 8%. Like getting hit by a 280 lb boxer but the dude only weighs 220…. which…. is still more impressive than being punched by a 140 first time boxer…. but you know what I mean. Its still got a good jab going for it. I think the chocolate is interesting in this. It seems its “in sips”. I dunno quite how to fully describe that, but first sip seems very heavy baker’s chocolate, but then you’ll drink and sip and not taste it again until sip number six, and then you get some muted hints of chocolate. Like somehow its not even throughout the beer, like its in swirls hidden here and there. Hard to describe that. Perhaps its my own taste buds, or perhaps its just how the process is with baker’s chocolate or a bitter chocolate – you don’t notice it until the previous bittering wears off? Not sure. But its not a detriment, just an interesting noticing on my part. (I could also be totally wrong about all of it, maybe my taste buds just don’t know what their doing, as if its their first day on the job or something, who knows.) There’s a very nice bready taste to this, a roasty note, some good malt flavor as well. I think it certainly nails the “pretzel” part of “chocolate covered pretzel”. It has that lovely cooked pretzel taste, with a bit of the baker’s chocolate to go over top of it. This isn’t a massively complex beer, but its far from a simple beer, and there is a lot of nice notes to it. The mouthfeel just feels right too, (see what I did there?), its not watery, its not thin, but its not too heavy, its just right. There is nothing cloying to it either, its smooth with the only bitterness coming from the baker’s chocolate and it isn’t unpleasant. This is definitely a wonderful and delicious beer, I would recommend it far more as a “sipper” and at room temperature than cold (despite my picture of it sitting in the snow), it got better after I drank a few sips outside while shoveling, and came back inside and let it warm up. A crowler is the perfect amount and size for this.

My Untappd Rating: ****.25
Global Untappd Rating: 3.86 (as of 2.7.21)

Super Bowl LV

So whose everyone got tonight? Tom Brady and the Buccaneers or Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs? The GOAT vs. The KID? The returning Super Bowl Champs vs. the elderly Tom Brady and a bunch of up and comers? Hopefully it should be a good game. My team – the Bengals – were long way out, (as usual for every year; I mean, our last playoff win was before the first text was ever sent), so I’m just interested in a good game.

Whose everyone taking money on? Any good bets or side bets or prop bets? I made a 5$ wager straight up (1 for 1) on The Bucs, and I made a 2$ bet (pays 7 to 1) on Tom Brady being named MVP. We’ll see how it all plays out. Fingers crossed that I become 19$ richer by the end of the game.

Let me know your thoughts or opinions on the game, the NFL Season of 2020 – 2021, Braxon Brewing Company, the beer, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Ohio, or whatever else is on your mind. Always love hearing from you guys.

And as always, make sure to hit the follow and subscribe. As well as check out our social media pages.

Thanks for reading everyone and stay safe out there with the snow and enjoy the Big Game tonight!

Cheers!

-B. Kline

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