Other Half

There’s one half…. and then there’s the Other Half….. (see what I did there?). And let me tell you, that Other Half, is some of the best beers that are wonderfully being distributed into Central PA finally. Its like a Christmas day everytime Breski’s gets their Other Half allotments. And Breski’s Beverage isn’t the only one to start getting them, their working their way around to some smaller shops and places too (like West Vault Connection in Hummelstown / Hershey, Brass Rail in Palmyra, The Fridge in Lancaster, and a few other places).

For those who don’t know, Other Half has been pumping out top notch New England IPAs for a long time now, and I mean – top notch.

Here is the Untappd statistics on Other Half:

• Regional Brewery
• Original Brewery location: Brooklyn, New York
• Over 4.09Million check-ins with 256,984 being unique
• 1309 unique beers
• Global average rating of 4.23 (as of 11.16.21)

Untappd Description:

In 2014, Sam Richardson, Matt Monahan and Andrew Burman founded Other Half Brewing Company, a local brewery in New York City with a simple mission: to create beers that they wanted to drink from a company that they wanted to be a part of. Their vision was to build a passionate team that brewed great beers in the state of New York—done so with effort and thoughtfulness—to represent the “Other Half” of the industry. Today, Other Half craft beers in their Brooklyn brewery and are dedicated to collaborating with breweries both in New York as well as across the world in an effort to constantly move the industry forward while elevating the craft. The Other Half team believes that local breweries play an important role in their communities which is why they partner with these other likeminded brewers and brands in local nabes across the country and the world—but always return to their home state of New York and their Brooklyn taproom.

Untappd: Other Half

We’ve covered them in a few other beer reviews here on the blog (I’ll link them at the bottom for you to check out).

Beer Review

Now that we know Other Half is amazing and makes some wonderful beers, lets get down to it and review this bad boy.

Beer: Cream on the Inside, Green on the Outside
Brewery: Other Half Brewing Co.
Style: IPA – Imperial / Double
ABV: 9.4%
IBU: None
Untappd Description: This beer is brewed with 2-row and 50% oats with a small hit of lactose for smoothness. We then furiously hopped it with Citra, Motueka, Riwaka and Galaxy hops at 8 lbs/bbl.

Not quite sure why this is just listed as IPA, because its hazy *AF* as the kids would say, and its very much a New England IPA. There’s very little hop bitterness, and its juicy, hazy, turbulent, and delicious. (Not that west coast IPAs aren’t delicious, but you get my understanding I believe.)

Ok, let’s break this down.

Aroma is bursting with hop flavors. As soon as you crack that can – WA-BAAAAAAM —- HOPS IN YO NOSE. Or something to that affect. But I mean, its a hop flavor and aroma punch right out the gate. You get a very juicy fruity hop nose as soon as you pour it. Its got a hoppy nose of lime, tropical fruit, passionfruit, and lemon.

Appearance is a lovely orange, very hazy, turbulent looking IPA (or New England IPA). Has a wonderful frothy foamy head with unique and varied bubbles. Excellent lacing on the glass as it pours down my gullet so easily. Just a beautiful hue all around to this brew.

Mmmhmmmm mmmhmmmm good. First sip down to the last is very good. No real sediment left at the bottom of the can either for that putrid “ugh what is this” crap that some New England IPAs can be famous for. You just get a very strong hop juiciness from this, with the ever so slightest bit of hop bitterness. It does have a little bit of ‘green’ to it, but its nothing exceptional or bad, or anything that will upset anyone. (Unless you are an adamant anti-IPA -ite, like anti-dentite). This is juicy, this is fruity, this is tropical, and this is so tasty. I get strong notes of lemon, tropical lime, passionfruit, peach, mango, some grapefruit (subtle, thank goodness for my particular tastebuds), some hop greenness, and a slight hop bite / bitterness. But all in all, this is just wonderful, its a well rounded, well crafted IPA. There is some lactose to ‘smooth’ out the edges, and it does that, but I dunno if it would even really be necessary (who knows, would be interesting to try a variant without it just to see). I could sit around all day drinking Other Half IPAs like this, but at 9.4% and with lactose (and also being lactose intolerant technically speaking), it would get to be a bit much. Other Half beers are fantastic, but I’m not sure they lend themselves to drinking pint after pint / can after after can of their IPAs due to the heaviness of the lactose, the New England style, etc. But I could damn well try and see. Had this with a friend who brought Sorbetto #40 by Ever Grain Brewing Co (I believe we will be seeing review of that beer shortly here on the blog… so be on the lookout…) and the sour of the one and the juiciness of this one really accompanied each other and made for a great two-banger.

My Untappd Rating: ****.5
Global Untappd Rating: 4.41 (as of 11.16.21)

I know Breski’s Beverage still has Other Half in their freezer, I say run, don’t walk… actually… drive… and not too fast, just right at the speed limit (don’t wanna be accused of telling people to break the law or anything) and get over there and pick some up. As of 8:30PM last night they had 4 packs and mix-a-six selections of their Other Half beers. So be sure to check them out.

Other Half on The Beer Thrillers

Check out our other Other Half (heh…) beer links:

• Beer Review: Space Broccoli (Other Half Brewing Co)
• Beer Review: All Together (Ever Grain Brewing Co and Other Half Brewing Co Collaboration)

Thanks For Reading

As always, I like to end an article post thanking everyone for taking the time to read us and liking us and following us on our social media pages. We have lots of big things coming, and being November, you know that means daily articles, so be sure to be checking in with us. Thursday and Friday we are taking a big road trip down through Maryland, Delaware, New Jersey, and Philly. So that should make for a few interesting articles.

We also have a new writer who should be posting her first article today or soon thereafter, so be on the lookout for that.

Cheers!

-B. Kline

Thank you for visiting our blog. Please make sure to follow, bookmark, subscribe, and make sure to comment and leave feedback and like the blog posts you read. It will help us to better tailor the blog to you, the readers, likes and make this a better blog for everyone.

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Another streaming session with my good friend Drew of Knights of Nostalgia means me drinking some fine craft beers and of course, that also then means, future beer reviews of said fine craft beers. And I couldn’t think of a finer craft beer I had that night than Adroit Theory’s ‘The Death of Civilization in Slow Motion I’ (Ghost 907).

My buddy and co-writer here at The Beer Thrillers – Josh Doncevic – absolutely loves and raves about Adroit Theory and is constantly pushing their beers. And I can see why! I’ve had a few in the past, but sadly not many, and hopefully now in the future I will be getting to try plenty more!

(See Josh’s Adroit Theory reviews here):

• Beer Review: Colonization (Ghost 779)
• Beer Review: Octagonal Stairway (Ghost 859)
• Beer Review: EBK – Gashadokuro (Ghost 782)

Lets Have a Discussion on Can Art….

First, lets have a discussion on can art. I think Adroit Theory is absolutely nailing it. (Here is an article I found from January 31st, 2015 about the can labels for Adroit Theory: Shawn Johnson Signs Can Labels for a Contest). If you are a fan of Warhammer 40K, or steampunk or futuristic dystopic landscape looking art, Mad Max, Fury Road, stuff like that, you’ll love these can labels. Here is a link to The Death of Civilization in Slow Motion I on Adroit Theory’s page, it gives some of the same information thats on the can label here; such as pairings, ingredients, percentages, etc. (It is for a different version of this beer, but the artwork and information mostly holds up.)

For those unaware, Warhammer 40K is a massive tabletop miniatures game that has been around since at least the 90s (back in the day when I used to play it at Omnidon’s in Hummelstown, and then when they moved to be Twilight Games in Paxtonia). My faction of choice was the Chaos Space Marines and the Chaos army in general with the Chaotic God of Korde. Warhammer 40K has gone on to be a massive book library with hundreds of books, as well as some video games, and I believe there is a movie or a Netflix TV show in the works.

Here is a sampling of artwork from Warhammer 40K courtesy of “Inside the Artwork of Warhammer 40K”:

For comparison sake, here is a small sampling of Adroit Theory artwork:

You can definitely see some interesting comparisons between the two. And I absolutely love it. Its gorgeous artwork and deserves all the praise it can get. I also love how Adroit Theory does dabble a bit into the pop cultural realm (they’ve sported GI Joe and Cobra beers this past summer over quarantine / COVID-19 as well as the above Cthulhu reference. Interesting note to point out, in the past I did a beer review about Azathoth – see above reference to Cthulhu for why I am mentioning this. You can find that review here: Beer Review: Azathoth (Edmund’s Oast Brewery)

But keeping this to a discussion on the can art, I have to continue my gushing and say about how much I love it. I can admit to being guilty and buying quite a few beers based on can labels and beer art – usually due to some pop cultural or nerd culture reference (and oh boy, is there a long list of them that I’ve reviewed here on The Beer Thrillers; I’ll post the full list of links at the bottom of this post), but I am also just as guilty of buying beers based on beautiful artwork as well. And this can be a hit or miss practice. I’ve been burnt many a time, as well as been uplifted and surprised by how good a beer is. Thankfully this provides a wonderful segue here, speaking of beautiful can art…. ….and beautiful can liquid…..

Beer Review: The Death of Civilization in Slow Motion I (Ghost 907)

Beer: The Death of Civilization in Slow Motion I (Ghost 907)
Brewery: Adroit Theory
Style: IPA – Imperial / Double New England
ABV: 8%
IBU: None
Untappd Description: A pillowy texture, slight bitterness, and an aroma of tropical fruit with Pineapple and Mango forward notes and Berry and Pine on the finish.

Appearance for this is a beautiful orange, golden glow, and very hazy. Holds up perfectly to the style. Nothing transparent or translucent here, this is pure golden, hazy, dank New England (D)IPA goodness. Wonderful head to it as well, nice carbonation, head retention, and lacing on the glass, with nice dispersed and varied bubbles.

Hmmmm hmmmm hmmm the aroma on this smells just perfectly wonderful. Like a beautiful fruity hoppy aromatic dream. You get a great hop nose-kicking aroma right as soon as you crack open the can, and it mixes in with mango, pineapple, and a wee bit of pine notes from the hops, edging and giving the tropical fruits something to combine with.

Good great Wilbur’s ghost this is a wonderfully smooth beer! It is delicious, tasty, smooth, all the main characteristics of a great New England (D)IPA. There is a wee bit of hop burn at the end, some nice hop bitterness with those pine notes, that makes this not a completely full juicy bomb, and thats just perfect. It compliments the overall hop experience so perfectly well. You get mango, pineapple, berry notes, and the pine notes from the hops, providing a very nice, smooth, fruity, flowery, fluffy like New England (D)IPA. This is (or should be) a standard for the New England IPA and DIPA and TIPA style, like textbook, “Oh you want to learn how to make a New England DIPA? Or you want to know what a really good New England DIPA tastes like? Well here you go!” Textbook definition excellence. The mouthfeel is on point, not too heavy, not watery, not thin, no cloying notes to stick to your tongue or mouth, just a well drinkable beer. The 8% ABV is very nice too; thats a good middle ground. Its not substantially high and its not terribly low either. (For comparison’s sake – Troegs Brewing’s Perpetual IPA – their flagship IPA – is a 7.5%, and Nugget Nectar – their flagship Amber Ale / Red Ale is a 7.5% as well.) So this is really only .5% higher than those two beers, and with how smooth this is, its probably a good thing it’s not much higher. Sometimes too smooth and high ABV just don’t go well together…. especially the next morning. This is a beautiful beer too, well crafted and well made, and an exceptionally terrific smelling beer. The hops work really well in this, and the flavor profile is perfect and on point. The mango, pineapple, pine, and berry are all superb and work so well in conjunction with each other that this is just so extremely tasty. Perfect for a video game session with a buddy.

My Untappd Rating: ****.25
Global Untappd Rating: 4.14 (as of 2.4.21)

Adroit Theory

Ah, don’t worry, I didn’t forget to include it. Previously, in my last beer review I did – Dunkel Shaun (by Great Barn Brewery) I mentioned that going forward, in each beer review, I will devote a section to the brewery behind the beer. In the above mentioned, previous, beer review, I did it before getting to the review, but due to my beautiful segue in this review, I figured I’d post it at the end. So here you have it.

The following stats all come from Untappd. Adroit Theory is located in Purcellville, Virginia. They are labeled a micro brewery and they have a total of 139 unique beers and just a few shy of 354K ratings. They have a global average rating of 4.04 (as of 2.4.21). Their Untappd description reads: “PUSHING BEER BOUNDARIES IN LOUDOUN COUNTY VIRGINIA Located in Purcellville, Virginia, Adroit Theory makes esoteric + style challenging beers with an emphasis on Hazy IPAs, Fruited Sours, Pastry Stouts, and Barrel Aging Projects. CONSUME LIFE x DRINK ART We typically have 16 beers on draft plus 10-20 options in bottles or cans. Be sure to check our constantly changing Tap List and our full Menu. Message of the Day: ​METAL + EVIL = DESTRUCTION.”

You can find their social media and website links below:

• Adroit Theory: Facebook
• Adroit Theory: Twitter
• Adroit Theory: Instagram
• Adroit Theory: Website

Thanks For Coming

Thanks for checking us out here at The Beer Thrillers. We really appreciate everyone reading our beer reviews, brewery reviews, travelogues, hiking adventures, book reviews, and all kinds of other news and notes we post here on the site and blog. If you have any questions or comments, be sure to leave us a comment here. You can also contact us through our FEEDBACK – CONTACT US page. And as always, be sure to like, follow, subscribe; here and on our social media pages.

Please be sure to follow us on our social media accounts – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Influence. Please be sure to also follow, like, subscribe to the blog here itself to keep updated. We love to hear from you guys, so be sure to leave a comment and let us know what you think

I’m off to Breski’s Beverage to take advantage of their mix – a – six double discount for the remainder of the week (leading up to the Super Bowl Sunday), as well as picking up the New Trail collaboration expedition pack. I’m sure you’ll see quite a few of these beers up here on the blog soon reviewed.

As always everyone, stay safe out there. (Here in Central PA it looks like their calling for another snowstorm Sunday or Monday or Tuesday, possibly giving us another foot of snow. So be careful!)

Cheers!

-B. Kline

Pop Culture Beer Reviews

As promised, here is all of our “pop culture” / “nerd culture” / etc. beer reviews:

Star Wars:

• Beer Review: The Pandalorian (Tattered Flag)
• Beer Review: Wookie Monster (Fourscore Beer Co)
• Beer Review: Out of Order: Blue Milk (RAR Brewing)
• Revenge of the Fifth / Cinco de Mayo
• May the Fourth Be With You
• Beer Review: This is Nut the Fluff You’re Looking For (Fourscore Beer Co)
• Beer Review: This is the Way (Broken Goblet Brewing)
• Beer Review: This is the Whey (Bolero Snort Brewery)
• Beer Review: Java the Stout (Jackie O’s Brewery)

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:

• Beer Review: I Voted for Kodos (Second Sin Brewing Company)
• Beer Review: I Voted for Kang (Second Sin Brewing Company)

Back to the Future:

• Beer Review: Back to Reality (Three 3s Brewing Co)

Scrooged:

• Beer Review: Scrooge IPA (Iron Hill Brewing)

A Christmas Story:

• Beer Review: The Soft Electric Glow of Sex (RAR Brewing)

Pro Wrestling:

• Beer Review: Broken Skull – Stone Cold Steve Austin’s IPA (El Segundo Brewing Company)
• Beer Review: Macho Man (Couch Brewery)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:

• Beer Review: Terpenes in Time (BAREBottle Brewing Co)

HP Lovecraft / Cthulhu:

• Beer Review: Azathoth (Edmund’s Oast Brewing Company)

Other:

• Beer Review: Super Villain (Urban Village Brewing Company)
• Beer Review: Pixels (Seminar Brewing)
• Beer Review: Villeinage (Elder Pine Brewing and Blending)

Seriously. F*CK 2020. I don’t think I’ll hear too many disagreements with this statement. F*CK it. 2020 has been everything everyone keeps saying it is: a train wreck, a dumpster fire, a dumpster fire full of dog excrement traveling on a train headed right for a train carrying a dumpster fire of ostrich excrement, it sucked, it blew, etc, etc, etc…..

This has been a crazy time for all of us. Terms like “unprecedented times” became the norm for news stations, hundreds of thousands of people dying to a pandemic level virus, ….a pandemic level virus!…., shut downs and lock downs and quarantines, civil unrest, altered sports leagues, massive economic changes, unemployment and furloughs from the shut downs and just loss of jobs due to the pandemic, all in all,…. yea…. F*CK 2020 and F*CK COVID-19.

This has been a hard time here for me, and for The Beer Thrillers in general as well, as I’m sure its been for a lot of you. Dealt with two lock down / shut downs by the government that closed my work and forced me into unemployment twice. (The latest of which, due to how horrible our unemployment system, I still haven’t received a penny for the three weeks I was unemployed – thankfully I’m back to work now.) A divorce amidst the pandemic and quarantine and lockdown.

But, it hasn’t been all bad (no year is all bad); I did get to do a lot more hiking. I did get to do a little bit more traveling due to now being single and having a lot more extra time, I got to hike lots of new places that I never did before, got to visit 57 (new to me) new breweries. And I got to do a lot more work on the blog and site here. Which has been a great bit of fun. My friend started his streaming and got do do that a lot with him, and we got to do some more podcasts with his podcast group.

(I will have a whole “End of 2020” and recap of the year, as well as a “Looking Forward to 2021” post coming soon, the site migration and things have kind of made things wonky with getting it all moved over and posts published up, due to us hitting our bandwidth wall on the old site and having to migrate, so some things got all garbled up.)

I went to Breski’s Beverage and had to pick up a four pack of this – and knew – I needed to make it the last beer of 2020 and the first beer of 2021. Thankfully it’s a fantastic beer and its not just a “cool name / bad beer” like some of the other cool name, cool can art, cool pop culture reference beers, I’ve had in the past. I also picked up the RBG beer as well as Breski’s.

So my 31st was pretty simple; being by myself, with no places open, and my first New Years Eve / New Years Day off in quite a while – due to the shut down of Pennsylvania. Early in the day I went to Breski’s and picked up the four packs. Despite the rain, I took my dog (Leela) to the Greenbelt walk off of Derry Street, stopped at Boneshire Brew Works for my last pint of 2020 at their location, and then stopped at Rubber Soul Brewery for take-out (pierogies…. *drools like Homer at thought of food*….) and then pretty much just went home, read, wrote, and stayed in my bed. My friend did an overnight stream on his site – Knights of Nostalgia – and I had that up on one screen and tuned in just for the last 2 minutes to a ball dropping ceremony on another screen. All in all – a lame New Years Eve. Which about sums up how 2020 was.

So I also started this post and beer review on December 31st, but with the bandwidth limits, and the problems of the migration, I didn’t get to finish it until January 1st. So this is a “two year project”. Hahahahaha…. oh I crack myself up. It was written and finished on January 1st, but with the bandwidth and everything, and having to re-upload media, I’m not sure when it’ll finally get published, hopefully soon into the new year.

I’m not too great and technically savvy, so this move of nearly 300 blog posts, and several pages, as well as a homepage, users, links, followers, and everything else, was a lot harder than I imagined it would be. I started everything on December 31st, and wanted it all set to go on January 1st, but noooooope….. that didn’t happen. Was really hoping everything would go smoothly into 2021…. but 2020…. said NOPE to that, and I’m thinking 2021 might have a rockier start than we all wanted it to have.

But anyway…. we have beer!

So let’s do it and drink!

Beer Review

Beer: F*CK 2020
Brewery: Abomination Brewing Company
Style: IPA – Imperial / Double New England
ABV: 9.1%
IBU: None
Untappd Description: “Fuck 2020” is a slightly amped up 9.1% version of our Fog series, double dry hopped with a blend of two of our most popular variants … Galaxy & Citra.

Abomination Brewing Company has had some amazing beers, and they have done a ton of collaborations with a lot of local Pennsylvania breweries. Rotunda Brewing Company, Tattered Flag, and stuff with multi-collaborations with Pilger Ruh Brewing, Snitz Creek Brewing, Wolf Brewing Co, etc. Untappd lists them as a micro brewery from North Haven, Connecticut. They have 159 unique beers on Untappd with a global average rating of 4.04 out of 140K+ ratings. Their Untappd description simply reads: “Crafting liquid chaos. #beermonster”

Starting off with appearance; this has a beautiful golden orange hue. A gorgeous looking New England IPA appearance, its got a nice dank hazy orange look, its not full of turbid and sediment, but its still dank and hazy looking, and its opaque and not see through. It had a thin white foamy head and great carbonation from the can.

Aroma is a lovely hoppy New England IPA nose. The nose comes through with the galaxy and citra very heavily, you get lots of tropical fruit, citrus, some peach, mango, and wee bits of passionfruit, guava, and grapefruit. It smells juicy, it smells delicious.

Whooo…. this is the way to go out of 2020! With a banger of a good beer and a way to say F*CK YOU 2020 with both middle fingers up like Stone Cold Steve Austin. This was just a delicious all around good beer. A perfect end note to 2020 and a wonderful start note to 2021 (drank one early in the day of 2020, had one right before midnight, and cracked open another one two minutes into the New Years). Galaxy and Citra hops are wonderful hops and work very well together. You get a very heavy dose of citrus, peach, mango, the tropical fruits, and there is so much more hidden and buried underneath that adds to those heavy hitter flavors – like the passionfruit, guava, and grapefruit. There’s a right balance to all of this. The mouth feel feels right on, not oily, slick, not watery or thin, no cloying; just a nice drinking NE IPA. This is is a consistent beer and reason for why the New England IPA style has caught on so much with craft beer drinkers. There’s a bit of hop bite, but its covered in all of the fruity wonderful flavors, there’s no bitter aftertaste, no bad off flavors, and its a really drinkable beer. Even the 9.1% ABV is hidden by how wonderful the flavors are. You don’t taste that ABV, and you don’t even notice it until you’re done. This isn’t a crushable beer where you could drink the whole four pack in one sitting, but you could have two, and be happy and content afterwards, especially with a really good meal to go along with it. This is a great ‘nap inducer’ as I like to call some of the mid-range double IPA area beers (8-9.5/10%), especially with a meal, it just fills the belly and makes you sleepy. This was the perfect way to end out 2020.

My Untappd Rating: ****.25
Global Average Untappd Rating: 4.34 (as of 1.1.21).

So this might be the first post of 2021, or it might not be; and it might be the first post on the new The Beer Thrillers page, or it might not be. Who knows with migration, work starting back up, moving domain hosts, moving links, uploading pictures (since the bandwidth put a halt to that), etc. There’s a lot of other posts that are in various states of being done, that also will be published soon too, once again, with the migration and start of the new year, who knows. Hopefully sooner rather than later. Been a little hectic here.

I hope everyone had a wonderful end to 2020. Hopefully despite everything, you still had a great 2020, and lets hope 2021 starts off so much better. Things are looking up. The vaccines are rolling out. Hopefully by the end of 2021 we are back to a level of normalcy. One can only hope. I want to get to some brewfests in 2021!

Cheers everyone!

-B. Kline

See some of our latest beer reviews here:

• Beer Review: Mutant Temple (Strange Roots Experimental Ales)
• Beer Review: B-52 Belgian Dubbel (Cox Brewing Company)
• Beer Review: The Soft Glow of Electric Sex (RAR Brewing)
• Beer Review: This is The Whey (Bolero Snort Brewery)
• Beer Review: Snow Tracks (New Trail Brewing Co.)

Please be sure to follow us on our social media accounts – Facebook, Facebook Group, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Influence. Please be sure to also follow, like, subscribe to the blog here itself to keep updated. We love to hear from you guys, so be sure to leave a comment and let us know what you think!

When I go hiking, I like to enjoy a good ‘hike’ beer, especially at the top or vista point of a beautiful hiking trail. In this case, it was Pinnacle Point in Kempton, Pennsylvania. (Just outside of Hamburg Pennsylvania.) (This beer was also covered in my travelogue about Pinnacle Overlook, Pinnacle Peak, and Pulpit Rock and the hike there, you can check that out here: Pinnacle Overlook, 1787 Brewing Company, and Schaylor Brewing.)

This is another case of beautiful can art. Also, since this was a trail beer, I didn’t have a glass, and drank it straight from the can; like a heathen, a barbarian, an outdoors man, a rogue hiker, a man’s man. …or well, just a person who didn’t feel like carrying around a glass, and hiking for four hours and eight miles carrying a glass that could break, especially while his hiking buddy is a four legged beast that best resembles a wolf on her best days….. (don’t worry Leela, I still love you).

So, this review will be forgoing the “appearance” section, though, I have seen pictures of it on Untappd, and it looks in the pictures I’ve seen, like a light straw colored IPA / saison looking beer, but I won’t go into details, since I did not see it with my own eyes.

For any people familiar with Pinnacle Overlook and the hike there; right before you get to the gorgeous vista of the Pinnacle Overlook, there is a giant cairn. Cairn works… but not really. Most people associate cairns with tombstones and what people would do to bury people in places they couldn’t dig the earth up or make a grave for, so they would dig as much as they could, and then cover them in rocks to keep prey from getting to the remains. But the true definition of cairn is: “a heap of stones set up as a landmark, a monument, a tombstone, etc.” (Dictionary.com Definition: Cairn.) (For more about graves…. you can read my beer review on Shallow Grave by Heretic Brewing …. yay for cheap plugs! I feel like Mick Foley!) Anyway, its right before you get to the overlook, its a giant stone and rock heaped pile. The very first time I went and hiked the trail, I almost thought – this was it. This giant pile, this cairn, this heap of rocks and stones, was it, and this was the “view” and the Pinnacle everyone was talking about. (Pinnacle being the height of something.) Thank goodness I walked past it and saw this gorgeous overlook….

Needless to say, this view is a lot better…. A LOT…. better than just a pile of stinking rocks (or non-stinking rocks). To get to this point, it was about a 3.5 mile hike. (Going back down, since I took a different route, and stopped at Pulpit Rocks, it was another 4.5-5 miles, making it 8-8.5 miles all told of just the mountain, plus getting to and from the car.) So, I camped out here a bit with my dog, Leela, which by now anyone reading the blog regularly has heard of quite a bit or seen in the background of pictures (she’s an 11 year old border collie that is commonly mistaken for an Australian Shepherd, named after Leela from Futurama). I didn’t bring food with, since I was going to visit 1787 Brewing Company in Hamburg afterwards, but I did enjoy my beer on the ledge with my faithful furball companion, and then did the treacherous, very rocky hike back down – which is the Appalachian Trail path.

All in all, if you are ever near Kempton or Hamburg area of Pennsylvania, and love beautiful views, where you can see and feel the turkey buzzards, hawks, and other large birds soaring right past your head, this is definitely a great hike and a beautiful view. From Hershey its roughly a 45-50 minute drive.

Beer: Mutant Temple
Brewery: Strange Roots Experimental Ales
Style: IPA – American
ABV: 5.3%
IBU: 5
Untappd Description: IPA dry hopped with Citra.

Since I’m not doing an appearance segment for this beer review, let me just say, I thought this cairn was the perfect picture opportunity for this beer. It looked alien, strange, mutant like, and would be a Hollywood esque temple location; like something filmed for a Star Wars planet or something. Also, the can art for Mutant Temple is phenomenal to, here it is:

Here also, I want to bring up Strange Roots Experimental Ales. According to Untappd, they are a micro brewery out of Gibsonia Pennsylvania (near Pittsburgh). They have 394 unique beers with over 102K ratings, and a global average rating of 3.86. The Untappd description reads: “Strange Roots exists at the intersection of farmhouse brewing tradition and creative, locally-driven experimentation. We’re passionate about celebrating our environment through the use of local ingredients, varying fermentation methods and micro flora, and strive to create unique artisan ales inspired by our surroundings here in the foothills of the Allegheny Mountains.”

Ok, now lets get back to the beer review.

(Skipping the appearance… sorry folks…. moving right along to aroma…) Coming out of the can you get a very citra hoppy aroma. Not surprising since this is a Citra dry hopped IPA. Citra has probably become the most used hop in America in the past two years, primarily for New England IPAs, and primarily because of that. Its a very juicy hop, and gives off a ton of lime, citrus, grapefruit, some peach, some mango, and tropical fruit notes. Both aromatically and in taste. Due to the proliferation of New England IPAs in the past two years, its market has exploded, usually used in conjunction with mosaic. (Cue up the Hallmark Christmas movies meme of Mosaic & Citra.) This is a strong IPA, but not as potent as most New England IPAs, and its definitely not a New England IPA, but it has a very strong citrus, lime, aroma; some notes of grapefruit and peach and mango.

Tasting this, (out of the can, not from a glass, just for perspective’s sake), this is definitely not a New England IPA; but a classic American / West Coast IPA. But its not full blown hop bitter West Coast IPA. Its nothing like Perpetual IPA, or Hop Slam, or something extremely high IBU or hop heavy. This is smoother, but not New England smooth, its not pure juice, but its still a juicer IPA than most West Coast styled ones. Theres a great deal of hop flavor , and some hop bitterness, but I think its smoothed because its dry hopped, especially with it being dry hopped with such a fruity hop like Citra. You get some earthy hop notes, a bit of pine, a wee bit of grassy-ness, to it, but overall the citra elements kick it into ultra drive on this, and you get a lot of the fruitier, more notable hop tastes from the citra; like lime, citrus, grapefruit, bit of peach, bit of mango, some tropical fruits, and the like, and this rounds it out and makes it a lot more tastier, seems to give it a lot more to the beer. I wouldn’t call it an extremely fruity or floral or juicy IPA or beer, but its got a lot of fruit forward flavors, its still definitely an IPA, there’s still the bite and the hop – ness to it, still some bitterness to it; still a “beer’s beer”. There is a nice body to it, and its got a good mouthfeel, it doesn’t feel too light or weak or watery. It’s also only 5.3% ABV, so thats really not bad, almost in the low regions by most beer standards nowadays. Most IPAs clock in the 6-7.5% range; and DIPAs then going from 7-9%. (Of course, then there’s also TIPAs and QIPAs even nowadays too.) I like the low ABV on this, especially for hiking, and despite picking it up at Breski’s as part of a mix-a-six, I could definitely dig this in a four pack and crush it. Would make for a great mowing beer, or working around the house, or shower beer, something where a nice beer would fit, but you don’t need or want to get hammered or pounded or anything. The Untappd description also lists it at only 5 IBU, but it does (still) have a hop bite and some bitterness. There’s no off flavors or after taste, nothing you’ll be burping up hours later, nothing off, or cloying, just a nice drinking beer. Great for hiking up a hill / mountain with your pooch!

My Untappd Rating: ****.25
Global Untappd Rating: 3.93 (as of 12.26.20)

Untappd actually has a checkin spot for Pinnacle Overlook, you can see it here: Pinnacle Overlook on Untappd. I love how for even far to reach hiking places and spots where not even WiFi exists, or I even get internet, there’s still Untappd check-in spots. Thank. Goodness.

Thank you all for reading. 2020 is winding down, and we’re getting near to the end of the year. January 4th will be soon here too, and hopefully Governor Wolfe will be updating the mandates, and letting us get back to drinking and eating indoors at breweries, pubs, restaurants, and bars. In the meantime, get out there and help support local breweries. Support your favorite places, and tip your favorite staff, they all need it! (I know as someone furloughed / laid off / unemployed because of this recent shut down, its a tough time and a tough season, especially with it being the holidays too.) So help out wherever and however you can.

As always, make sure you are taking all the precautions everyone. Stay safe out there, mask up, wash your hands, don’t lick doorknobs, etc.

Cheers everyone!

-B. Kline

Please be sure to follow us on our social media accounts – Facebook, Facebook Group, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Influence. Please be sure to also follow, like, subscribe to the blog here itself to keep updated. We love to hear from you guys, so be sure to leave a comment and let us know what you think!

Some recent beer reviews:

• Beer Review: The Soft Glow of Electric Sex (RAR Brewing)
• Beer Review: Snow Tracks (New Trail Brewing Co.)
• Beer Review: B-52 (2017) (Cox Brewing Company)
• Beer Review: I Voted for Kodos (Second Sin Brewing Company)
• Beer Review: I Voted for Kang (Second Sin Brewing Company)
• Beer Review: Java the Stout (Jackie O’s Brewery)
• Beer Review: This is the Whey (Bolero Snort Brewery)
• Beer Review: Space Broccoli (Other Half Brewing Co.)

This one comes flying in right into the “IP” (Intellectual Property) theft debates I’ve been having with a lot of friends, from both in and out of the industry, on my personal Facebook page. Hershey’s recently sued a brewery over their marketing of Jolly Ranchers used in a beer they made. Their lawsuit was for 8,500$, which was the amount the brewery made on the beer made and sold. IP Theft has been a big issue I’ve been thinking about a lot lately with the craft beer industry, and is something I’d like to do an article on, and the Hershey’s lawsuit has given a lot of ammunition to the idea of the article (perfect timing in a way…. well… not perfect if you are the brewery in question I suppose). This is an interesting topic, and I think there’s a lot of merit to both sides. Look at this beer in question – the quote is a direct quote from the movie, and the can / bottle logo for the beer and packaging for it is spot on too, so do you consider that IP Theft? RAR Brewing is no stranger to using pop culture, nerd culture, mainstream, etc, for their beers. Look at their lineups of the “Out of Order” series. One of which I reviewed – Beer Review: Out of Order: Blue Milk (RAR Brewing). Or take a look at another one I reviewed from RAR Brewing, Jon Voight’s Car. This one has an exact replica of George Castanza on the can label, as well as having the car in question in the background. You can see that review here – Beer Review: Jon Voight’s Car (RAR Brewing).

Here is the can and bottle label for “The Soft Glow of Electric Sex”:

It has the “fragile” box in the background, the lamp itself, and of course the iconic quote from the movie (which is the beer title). Where do you all stand on this – does this look like IP Theft to you? Is this fair ground? Is it just a cool and fun little cultural nod? A way to sell beers? I’d love to hear from all of you and your thoughts on this.

Like I said, I love diving into pop culture named and themed beers here for the blog. I have done – a TON – of them. (As with most of the pop culture beer reviews, I’ve included a section at the end of the review listing all of the other ones for you to easily find them, as well as tagged it so you can search through the blog itself easier for them). I’ve done beers from The Simpsons, Seinfeld, Star Wars, Back to the Future, Space Balls, etc. Josh has also done a few, with one recently being a play on the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles – Beer Review: Terpenes in Time (BAREBottle Brewing Co), and there is no shortage of beers out there to review. My most recent beer review (before this beer of course) was “This is the Whey” by Bolero Snort, a play on “This is the Way” which is a catchphrase from The Mandalorian. (Which, I also did a This is the Way beer review, by Broken Goblet). You can see those here: “Beer Review: This is the Whey (Bolero Snort)” and “Beer Review: This is the Way (Broken Goblet)“.

I have been wanting to get out a lot more articles than I have recently, and I apologize for that, life has taken a bit of a crazy turn in recent days. I figured with the local (Pennsylvania Mandates and Shutdown) that we had starting on December 12th and lasting until January 4th, I would be able to get out a lot of beer reviews, and other articles, and I wanted to do a lot of local ones. But sadly, my life has gone ‘full crazy’ right before the Christmas season. So I sadly haven’t gotten as much written as I have had wanted to do. I have gone through a bout of several health related things, some familial things, dealing with my own second unemployment of the year, and fighting with unemployment itself, as well as a host of other things. (Firstly, let me just say, I would never wish insomnia on the worst of my enemies, that is honestly one of the worst things in the world, and its not nearly as “productive” as you might think, writing with insomnia is no where near as easy as you would imagine.) I haven’t even gotten much reading done, something I figured with a snowstorm, snowy and cold weather, as well as lockdown, that I would, but sadly, I haven’t. I’ve found my hours becoming less and less productive and more and more just me staring at walls, more and more of me just trying to figure out whats going on, and working to get past a lot of blocks in the road. Hopefully this writing and getting this beer review out will help with that. Fingers crossed anyway. Tomorrow is Christmas afterall, and we all need to be in the festive spirit, even if I am quarantining and unable to see my family and being all alone for Christmas, I am keeping my head up high, and will be wishing all of you out there a Merry Christmas and a Happy Holidays.

Ok, so lets move on. Lets get past that crap, and get to why we’re here. A beer review about a beer named after a holiday staple and a holiday tradition. My daughters have grown up with A Christmas Story playing on loop in the background of our Christmas’s in the house starting on Christmas Eve when it first airs. Its how I’ve fallen asleep every Christmas since I was probably 16 or 18, whenever TBS first (legitimately) did start airing it.

There is so many classic scenes, many of which remind me of my own childhood. I think I learned most of the words I now use as an adult from listening to my dad assemble various Christmas gifts (one of which was a basketball hoop we got for Christmas one year, that the instructions said could be done with the simple tools around the house; apparently my dad didn’t have a dowel rod, and he made sure to write to Huffy and explain to them in three page – five hundred or so word essay – how a dowel rod was not a common thing around the household; …they promptly shipped him a dowel rod and a 5$ coupon). I think this is why A Christmas Story stands the test of time for so many people. Its an agglomeration of stories, of all the ways Christmas can get screwed up, that it fills us with our own memories, like nostalgia. We remember the Christmas’s where things went helter skelter. I recall the time my Grandparents had a Christmas tree with worms and we could hear them eating the tree. Or my parents “Christmas Bush”. Its much like Christmas Vacation and Home Alone. The mistakes, the missteps, the crazy, is why we love it; because it reminds us of the various Christmas’s where things went off the rails in our own lives. I have often thought about this with my own daughters. The trips we have taken where things didn’t go as planned, have become more memorable than the ones where they went perfectly planned. Like our trip this year to Monocacy where I got sick and we ended up making it a two day trip, rather than a four hour trip.

But lets move on, and get to the beer review shall we? Enough about A Christmas Story, and enough about my own crazy Christmas’s in my past. Lets review some beer!

Beer: The Soft Glow of Electric Sex
Brewery: RAR Brewing
Style: IPA – American
ABV: 7.6%
IBU: None
Untappd Description: Brewed with Mangos, Lactose, Citra, Amarillo, Ella, and Columbus. Tons of citrus and ripe mango juice flavors.

Appearance is a bright glowing orange. This is probably much closer to a New England IPA, but when first created for Untappd they didn’t really have the New England designation for their IPAs on there, otherwise I’d imagine this would fit it. This is hazy, its orange juice in appearance, has a nice foam head, and well carbonated with nice lacing on the glass as well.

Aroma is very heavy … very… very heavy mango. I love it. One of the few fruit flavors I really love, and its mango, and it works so well in IPAs (especially New England IPAs), that this is just wonderful. Theres a hint of peach to round it out, but its so much mango and so much upfront it just smells amazing.

This is delicious. Maybe for some it might be too much mango, I don’t know, but I love it. Its so heavy mango flavored, but that fits most New England IPAs, and I love it. Very heavy citrus, some lactose, some creamy smoothness to it, a nice slick mouthfeel, but the hops shine through wonderfully here. Citra, Amarillo, Columbus, and Ella hops are used, and they are all lead towards that juicy mango flavor, with some peach, some stone fruit, some zest and citrus, but at the end of the day its all mango flavor all the time. I think the peach rounds it out a fair bit, but overall its very subtle, like a hidden note you can only find after unlocking all the mango flavor. Its a well rounded New England IPA too, it has a little hop bite to it, but nothing substantial, nothing too acidic, nothing cloying, nothing poor or off putting with this. No off flavors. No bad aftertaste, etc. This was the very first RAR Brewing beer I had, and I traded for it back in January 2018. When I first started to get into doing some trading for beers or buying and having people mule beers. I had gotten this and I had gotten the Jon Voight’s Car beer. Fell in love with both, and I’ve enjoyed RAR Brewing ever since pretty much, though I think their Out of Order series has been taken over and changed a bit too much over recent years, and I think they lean a bit too much on the gimmicks for that series (they just released a whole slew of Home Alone themed Out of Order beers, with the can art and the beers being slightly different in each, some representing Kevin, Marv, The Wet Bandits, Pesci, and the Shovel Slayer), but ultimately I think RAR Brewing still makes some fine good beers and they aren’t lacking in quality. The internet can be a bit harsher on them with respects to their Out of Order series, but thats also the internet for you, and who reads the internet anyway…….. (…oh….). But anyway, back to this beer, it is a bold, bright, beautiful, tasty Mango flavor bomb, and a wonderful New England IPA. Its juicy, its tasty, slight hop bitterness, but full on hop flavor, no off flavors, nothing cloying, nice mouth feel, no aftertaste, this is just a fine well made beer, with a cool logo and name, and definitely an eye catcher. And perfect for Christmas Eve and watching A Christmas Story on loop for 24 hours!

My Untappd Rating: ****.25
Global Untappd Rating: 4.01 (as of 12.24.20)

Thinking about how this was one of the first beers I traded for, makes me think back to the early days of trading for me, when I first started getting into that. When I was at Breski’s Beverages just last week preparing for the big snow blizzard we got, I saw Zombie Dust and Alpha Space Station from 3 Floyd’s on the shelf for 3.50$ each, and I remember trading and buying that from people in a Facebook beer group who muled it back. Crazy to seeing it being a “shelfie” now. Just like seeing JREAMS making it up into the Central PA midstate area and in places like The Fridge, Breski’s, etc for their crowler machines. Definitely not complaining about that! That’s for sure!

Well thank you all for reading this, and thanks for checking out another Pop Culture beer and “IP Theft” potential beer. I could almost make that its own category now on the blog. Like I said at the top, would love to hear everyone’s thoughts and opinions on that, and what they think is acceptable or not. Just in general, I always love to hear from you guys, so be sure to leave comments, questions, etc, either here on the blog, or on our social media platforms like Facebook or Twitter. We recently hit 1K followers and likes on Facebook which is a pretty big deal and I love how its bringing all kinds of people together.

Also, AJ Brechbiel is likely to be writing some new posts for the blog again, so be sure to check out his stuff when he releases it. I’m eagerly looking forward to that.

Another note I wanna make, there is another beer that was released with the same title as this. “The Soft Electric Glow of Sex” by Turning Point Beer, which is a brewery from Texas, and I have done a beer review from them before (from a beer trade); that beer was: Beer Review: $#!+ Ton (Turning Point Beer) as well as a beer review of one they were collaborated with – Beer Review: Virtually Inseparable (Celestial Beerworks and Turning Point Beer). But anyway, they did the exact same name as this beer, but made it a stout, and with a very similar logo too:

Their beer is a 15.6% Stout. I would love to get my hands on it and try it out for a future beer review as well (…well… and just because I like to drink stouts, and because the beer sounds good).

If I wanted to be really proper with this beer, I should have went out and gotten the “leg lamp” beer glass to drink it in:

Maybe if I get that stout, I’ll make myself buy this glass to review it in. Who knows. I wanted to get a Festivus beer for yesterday (Dec. 23rd, 2020; Festivus), but sadly, wasn’t able to get one in time to do a review here on the blog for it. Next year!

Thank you everyone for reading. And I am hoping to get a lot more reviews and articles out from here to the end of the year. I feel like I have about a thousand beer reviews to do, and no time to do them, despite being stuck at home on quarantine. I have so many things I need to do from now until December 31st, 11:59:59, and not sure if I’ll get it all done. The pressure and the anxiety is mounting up, but the stuff’s not getting done. Fingers crossed it will. Thank you all for putting up with it, and for reading, and I hope you enjoyed the beer review! Cheers! As someone who just took a COVID test today, please stay safe out there, mask up, wash your hands, and take care of each other and your local breweries, they need it! Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays Everyone! Happy Festivus!

-B. Kline

Please be sure to follow us on our social media accounts – Facebook, Facebook Group, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Influence. Please be sure to also follow, like, subscribe to the blog here itself to keep updated. We love to hear from you guys, so be sure to leave a comment and let us know what you think!

The various pop culture / nerd culture beer reviews we’ve done here on The Beer Thrillers:

Star Wars:

• Beer Review: The Pandalorian (Tattered Flag)
• Beer Review: Wookie Monster (Fourscore Beer Co)
• Beer Review: Out of Order: Blue Milk (RAR Brewing)
• Revenge of the Fifth / Cinco de Mayo
• May the Fourth Be With You
• Beer Review: This is Nut the Fluff You’re Looking For (Fourscore Beer Co)
• Beer Review: This is the Way (Broken Goblet Brewing)
• Beer Review: This is the Whey (Bolero Snort Brewery)
• Beer Review: Java the Stout (Jackie O’s Brewery)

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:

• Beer Review: I Voted for Kodos (Second Sin Brewing Company)
• Beer Review: I Voted for Kang (Second Sin Brewing Company)

Back to the Future:

• Beer Review: Back to Reality (Three 3s Brewing Co)

Scrooged:

• Beer Review: Scrooge IPA (Iron Hill Brewing)

A Christmas Story:

• Beer Review: The Soft Electric Glow of Sex (RAR Brewing)

Pro Wrestling:

• Beer Review: Broken Skull – Stone Cold Steve Austin’s IPA (El Segundo Brewing Company)
• Beer Review: Macho Man (Couch Brewery)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:

• Beer Review: Terpenes in Time (BAREBottle Brewing Co)

Other:

• Beer Review: Super Villain (Urban Village Brewing Company)
• Beer Review: Pixels (Seminar Brewing)
• Beer Review: Villeinage (Elder Pine Brewing and Blending)

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!

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.

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):

• Beer Review: The Pandalorian (Tattered Flag)
• Beer Review: Wookie Monster (Fourscore Beer Co)
• Beer Review: Out of Order: Blue Milk (RAR Brewing)
• Revenge of the Fifth / Cinco de Mayo
• May the Fourth Be With You
• Beer Review: This is Nut the Fluff You’re Looking For (Fourscore Beer Co)
• Beer Review: This is the Way (Broken Goblet Brewing)
• Beer Review: Java the Stout (Jackie O’s Brewery)

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….”

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!

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)

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!

-B. Kline

Please be sure to follow us on our social media accounts – Facebook, Facebook Group, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Influence. Please be sure to also follow, like, subscribe to the blog here itself to keep updated. We love to hear from you guys, so be sure to leave a comment and let us know what you think!

The various pop culture / nerd culture beer reviews we’ve done here on The Beer Thrillers:

Star Wars:

• Beer Review: The Pandalorian (Tattered Flag)
• Beer Review: Wookie Monster (Fourscore Beer Co)
• Beer Review: Out of Order: Blue Milk (RAR Brewing)
• Revenge of the Fifth / Cinco de Mayo
• May the Fourth Be With You
• Beer Review: This is Nut the Fluff You’re Looking For (Fourscore Beer Co)
• Beer Review: This is the Way (Broken Goblet Brewing)
• Beer Review: This is the Whey (Bolero Snort Brewery)
• Beer Review: Java the Stout (Jackie O’s Brewery)

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:

• Beer Review: I Voted for Kodos (Second Sin Brewing Company)
• Beer Review: I Voted for Kang (Second Sin Brewing Company)

Back to the Future:

• Beer Review: Back to Reality (Three 3s Brewing Co)

Scrooged:

• Beer Review: Scrooge IPA (Iron Hill Brewing)

Pro Wrestling:

• Beer Review: Broken Skull – Stone Cold Steve Austin’s IPA (El Segundo Brewing Company)
• Beer Review: Macho Man (Couch Brewery)

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:

• Beer Review: Terpenes in Time (BAREBottle Brewing Co)

Other:

• Beer Review: Super Villain (Urban Village Brewing Company)
• Beer Review: Pixels (Seminar Brewing)
• Beer Review: Villeinage (Elder Pine Brewing and Blending)

Search for ‘Star Wars’ on The Beer Thrillers

I will be forthright here now too…. I’m not the hugest fan of New Trail. Don’t get me wrong – they make wonderful beers. Actually, their IPAs are typically top notch IPAs…. but… here’s where my problem with them kind of lies; every New England IPA (which is practically every IPA they make) is pretty much indistinguishable from the last one. IF they set a sampler flight in front of you of ten different taster glasses of ten different New England IPAs from New Trail Brewing, and then told you, and then asked you to spot differences between them…. you’d be real hard pressed to do so. And then, swerve, they tell you that three of the ten were the exact same beers, and you need to pick which ones out of 1-10 were the same beers, and which seven were unique beers…. again, I think you’d be hard pressed to do so. And thats going off visual and aroma and taste.

This isn’t really a knock on them. They make great beers, and they are good beers. I’ve only had a few times where I’ve been ‘meh’ to them, and then thats usually the rarity. But when it is a ‘meh’ its usually a ‘meh’ out of…. wasn’t that the same as X beer they made? Not because its ‘meh’ bad, or ‘meh’ boring, its more out of the idea of ‘meh’ the same. Like Hallmark movies….

This. This above pretty much sums up New Trail IPAs to me. Could I tell you the difference between Goggles, Hammock, Broken Heels, and Neither Here Nor There, Double Broken Heels, Rocksylvania, or any of the other dozens of NE-IPAs they’ve done? Nope, probably not. Shrug. Maybe this is because its now 5:12PM, and I’ve shoveled, walked the dog, and worked through a few ‘Snowmaggeddon beers’ (a few of which were 10%+ stouts, like the Lickinghole Cookies and Cream); maybe its also me being grumpy old man shaking his fist at the clouds, but I dunno, they all seem so much the same, so much repetitive, but still very good.

According to Untappd, New Trail Brewing Co, has 190 unique beers. Of those 190 unique beers – 50 are New England IPAs, 30 are Double New England IPAs, and 5 are Triple New England IPAs. Of the remaining 105 beers, 11 are Milkshake IPAs, 15 are American IPAs, 2 are Double American IPAs, 2 are Triple American IPAs, and 1 is a White IPA. So thats 190 unique beers and a total of 116 are IPA variants. Leaving a remainder of 74 non-IPA variations in beer. Thats not the worst thing ever, and if you know your strengths, play to them. I agree with that. But, I want to be a fair reviewer, and I’m working my way through a good Snowstorm buzz, and drinking now my second Snow Tracks, so I am trying to be fair and impartial. I have enjoyed all of the IPAs and NE-IPAs I’ve had from New Trail, but, at some point, originality has to factor into the beer review, and I feel like after so many iterations of “Same Beer but with X hop changed” you have to ding them for it. Maybe I’m crazy, I dunno. Online, in Facebook groups, such as Breweries in PA, and others, they are constantly touted as being great. Their beer names lend to some great photo ops (see myself for being a hack, doing just that), with hiking photos, hammock photos, twilight sunset photos, and snow related photos, etc.

So, last night at Breski’s I picked up the 4 pack of Snow Tracks, as well as two mix a six packs, I had also stopped at 2nd and Charles for books (both for Christmas and for myself), and stopped at Rubber Soul for food for the night. Everything I got from Breski’s is pictured above, as well as some others, both from the cellar and the fridge. Working my way through these as I shovel, do indoor stuff, like reading, watching JoJo Rabbit, writing, and just working myself a good buzz. Isn’t it funny though, how much easier it is to drink when with company? When hanging out with my friends, I can kill a four pack in no time, but by myself at home, its a little bit slower. Am I alone on this?

Anyway, enough blabbering, lets get to the review, because I need to walk across town to my parents to shovel their driveway and sidewalk…. because god knows their not going anywhere for the next three days, but it needs done tonight while its still snowing an inch to two inches every hour……… onward review:

Beer: Snow Tracks
Brewery: New Trail Brewing Co.
Style: IPA – New England
ABV: 6.7%
IBU: None
Untappd Description: Snow Tracks is a Hazy IPA, brewed with light wheats and honey malt. Impressionally hopped with Ekuanot, Mosaic, & Sabro. Expect big citrus and fruity notes complemented with light tropicals and dankness. Follow your path, or don’t and go make your own.

Ok, lets start off with the obvious – it looks like a New England IPA. And this isn’t another ding on New Trail here. This is what its supposed to look like. Look at all of the New England style IPAs we’ve reviewed here on the blog, both my reviews, as well as Josh’s, as well as reviews on Beer Advocate, or just people’s pics on Untappd. This. Looks. Like. A. New. England. IPA. And. Thats. A. Good. Thing. Don’t know why I typed it like that, but I did, so enjoy. This is orange, its bright, its cloudy, its hazy, it looks dank, its opaque, it has a small minimal head, but its carbonated. So far, it looks like a New England IPA.

And it smells like a New England IPA. It smells hoppy. It smells piney, earthy, citrus, it smells honey, it smells wheat, it smells pretty tasty. So far, its looking like pretty good odds this is a duck – errr – a New England IPA — it smells and looks like a New England IPA; but does it taste like one?

Oh ho! It does! It does taste like a New England IPA. Huzzah! We got ourselves a duck everyone! A New England IPA Duck! It looks, smells, and tastes just like a New England IPA! Now. Let me be outright clear here – there is nothing, NOTHING, (shouts it for the people in the back of the room who have their hearing aids turned off) N-O-T-H-I-N-G W-R-O-N-G with that. ….Nothing wrong with that. Capiche? Ok? Ok. BUT…. now, lets be forthright and honest again…. there’s nothing AMAZING about that either. Especially if you’ve had a varied amount from New Trail. Maybe I’m just not enough of a New Trail fanboy? Maybe I’m not constantly singing their praises on Breweries in PA’s Facebook group, or the various other PA style Facebook groups, or even Beer Facebook groups en large, but, this tastes good, but it gets a ‘meh’ from me for originality. Is it a good beer? Yes – check. Is it a well made beer? Yes – check. Is it a good New England IPA? Yes – check. Is it pretty much the same as the last four New England IPAs I’ve had from New Trail? Yes – check. Now, your mileage may vary on this. Is that a bad thing? Is it a good thing? Is it a horrible thing? Is it worth writing a blog post or a beer review about? Eh. I dunno, debatable I suppose. Do I like this beer? Yes. Do I ding them for the lack of originality? Yes. Should I do that? Maybe, maybe not. This is where I probably come off as a pretentious hypocritical DBag. (Can you tell I watched a Bill Burr Netflix special this morning?) Do I rag on other breweries for lack of originality? No, and I haven’t yet, but if I get ten beers from Boneshire that are the same style and they taste the same, I should, and hopefully, I do so in the future. Same with Tattered Flag. Or Rubber Soul. Or Troegs. I want to try and stay impartial. But, this is my twenty fifth beer from New Trail (out of their 190 beers), and I feel like most are the same. But, I digress, and will move on. Lets actually discuss the beer itself.

This is a piney, with some citrus, flavored New England IPA. Its smooth, with no hop bitterness or hop bite. This is rich and creamy, and its relatively low ABV too (6.7%), and no booze or heaviness in that way. The pine makes this a nice ‘winter IPA’. Its tasty, its a nice juicy hop bomb with lots of flavor of the pine and citrus and a really well done New England IPA. Juicy. Piney yet fruity / citrusy. Nice flavor. Nice mouthfeel. Nice aroma. Nice texture. Nice appearance. Its a well crafted New England IPA, that I may or may not have had thirty times over by now, who knows. Shrug. I hate to make this beer review sound like a hate fest, but the originality does bug me, and I know some of ‘into craft beer but not fully into craft beer’ friends get a bit annoyed by it too. “So whats the difference between THIS New England IPA and THAT New England IPA? Whys the one 6.7% and the other 6.8%, they both look the same and pretty much taste the same….” etc. But, in all honesty, this is a GOOD, New England IPA, just a bit boring in the sense that its been done to death. Maybe I’m just over the fad of New England IPAs in general? Or maybe I just don’t buy into the New Trail New England IPA hype train? I dunno. Shrug. I’ve enjoyed all of their New England IPAs, just not been ‘wow’d’ or blown away or mesmerized by them, and they all taste so similar as to tell much apart from each other. Shrug. I do hope you at least try it, I do recommend it so far as that goes, if you like New England IPAs, you will like this. Hopefully your mileage will vary better than mine did on this. Again – double shrug.

My Untappd Rating: ***.75
Global Untappd Rating: 3.97 (as of 12.16.20) (6:00PM)

Well, the snow is coming down a lot heavier now, and I’m bundling up as I write this, to prepare myself and Leela (my 11 year old boarder collie) for the trek across town just to shovel my parent’s sidewalk and driveway, knowing I will have to do the same thing in the morning again. Luckily, my hoodie from Boneshire has a bit in middle pocket to hold a can or bottle beer. Which I will need for this walk.

Cheers all! Stay safe in the snow and the pandemic!

-B. Kline

Like I said before, I can’t turn up a good pun beer, especially when its a Godfather themed beer pun. How can you resist when the name of ‘Growfather’ the hop cone looks great on the can and kind of works in a reverse way of the puppet look from the novel, the font is the same / near same as the book and movie, and its by a good brewery like Stickman Brews?

Its like the can made me an offer… and I couldn’t refuse it. (I know… I know… low hanging fruit, but I couldn’t turn it up.) This is just one of those iconic lines, like Vader telling Luke he’s his father (oh my god… spoilers!), like a little boy telling Bruce Willis he sees dead people… (The Fifth Element?), etc. Its constantly punned, constantly quoted, and done. I couldn’t refuse doing it either.

There’s nothing personal about doing the joke, its just strictly business. …oh no… I went and did it again, reaching out and hitting the lowest hanging fruit on the tree. Like picking the hops near the bottom of the vine instead of at the top. Ugh. Sorry…. maybe I’ll grab some coffee and come back and re-start this beer review….

Sigh. Oh, sigh. Well, lets move on, shall we? Maybe I can right this review and get it going correctly so my family doesn’t turn against me…

Well…. I’m done. Thats it. I give up. I just can’t do this review. I… just… this just keeps going on… and on… and on…. and on…

Ah hah! Gotcha. You thought I was going to keep the gag going didn’t you? That I would just keep continuing doing .gif /memes of The Godfather indefinitely didn’t you?

Alright, alright, alright. I’m done. Lets get to reviewing this beer shall we?

Beer: The Growfather
Brewery: Stickman Brews
Style: IPA – Imperial / Double New England
ABV: 8%
IBU: None
Untappd Description:

Just what you would expect from George Martorano, The GrowFather. This Double IPA is crazy dank, full of orange, citrus, and peach notes from all Pacific Northwest hops. Full bodied and smooth, with a silky mouthfeel from oats.
* Contains lactose

Stickman Brews is a micro brewery from Royersford Pennsylvania. They make some tremendous beers and their beer can art is usually stick figure drawings, typically done by Bartley Kaminiski. He does work for Pizza Boy, Hemauer, etc, and does a wonderful job. He also runs Hop Hedz Gear and does a lot of promotions and events for breweries and places. Great and funny dude too. Not sure if he did the work on this logo, but if he did, kudos and job well done.

As you can see from my picture (which I took in front of my hops even though they are done for the year, I didn’t take them down… until after I poured this glass, and then got to work on taking them down and chopping up the vines and composting them), this is a beautifully golden hued Double IPA in the hazy New England vein. Its opaque and hazy, its bright orange and golden, and it had a wonderful smallish head that poured out nicely and gave it a gorgeous froth top. Carbonation was on point for the can.

This has a wonderful hop aroma right out the gate, as soon as you crack it open and pour it. Pacific Northwest has some of the best hop smell and is a favorite hop for me. You get citrus, orange, and peach. Sometimes with the right conjunction with other hops you can really use Pacific Northwest to bring mango out too (from the other hop variety) and give it a wonderful peach / mango aroma and flavor. For this – (The Growfather) you get a lot of orange and peach with some citrus. There is no earthy, grassy, or piney hop notes, and its very heavy orange, peach, citrus. Gives it a very dank and powerful and hop dense aroma.

Oh this tastes just like a good New England double IPA should right out the gate. So bright and flavorful and tasty immediately. Hop explosion full of orange, peach, and citrus immediately hitting your tastbuds as soon as you take the first sip. This is smooth and easy to drink too. I crushed it while working on the hops, cutting down the vines and my hemp string, and cutting and chopping them up for mulching and composting. (I had already picked the hops, had just left the vines up a bit longer for nourishment.) This wasn’t overly strong, but it wasn’t light easy. But it was certainly smooth. You felt the 8% at the end, but not while drinking. The peach and orange and citrus really go well with the silky smoothness and it has no true hop bite, just a lot of hop flavor. It is dank and the aroma on this is just wonderful too. You get more peach and orange I feel than citrus, but that’s not a bad thing in my perspective for the beer. It is just a really well crafted double imperial IPA – New England style – beer, and it is really tasty, really smooth, really enjoyable. Summer time, winter time, fall time, spring time, this is a great beer year round.

My Untappd Rating: ****.25
Global Untappd Rating: 4.03 (as of 11.17.20)

Alright, the review is over, its time to stop, and smell the roses now…

Ok…. and on that note, thank you everyone, you’ve been great, this has been a wonderful evening, make sure to tip your waiter or bartender and drive home safely now!

Edit note: I started this review before leaving for the trip, and finished it now, so I updated the Untappd (global) rating to today’s date. I also want to let everyone know I am working on the full Indy trip articles and they will be coming out slowly. It is also still November, so I am still doing an article a day. Hopefully you enjoy. You can find the Indy articles below, as well as some recent beer reviews, and all of our social media pages. Thank you and cheers!

-B. Kline

The Trip to Indianapolis:

• The Trip to Indy
• The Trip to Indy – Day One Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Two Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Three Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Four Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Five Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Six Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Seven Recap
• Recap and Stats

Also, be sure to check out some of our other beer reviews in recent history:

• Beer Review: Dreams of Orgonon (Human Robot)
• Beer Review: Unicorns Stomping on Lanternflies (Saucony Creek Brewing Co)
• Beer Review: Griddle (Funk Brewing Company)
• Beer Review: Out of Order: Blue Milk (RAR Brewing)
• Beer Review: Up the Creek Extreme Ale (Thomas Creek Brewery)
• Beer Review: Hershey’s Chocolate Porter (Yuengling Brewery)
• Beer Review: Dropout (Rubber Soul Brewing)
• Beer Review: Pigtoberfest (Boneshire Brew Works)
• Beer Review: I Voted Today (Tired Hands)
• Beer Review: Super Villain (Urban Village Brewing Company)

You can check out the tabs at the top of each page to visit our BEER REVIEWS, BEER EDUCATION, TRAVELOGUES, etc. Be sure to check out all the latest beer reviews, as we’re pumping a lot out in recent time.

Also, tonight I will be on Knights of Nostalgia with Drew playing Konami games, so be sure to follow, watch, like, and check us out. We will be drinking, playing games, and talking it up, so make sure to watch!

Please be sure to follow us on our social media accounts – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Influence. Please be sure to also follow, like, subscribe to the blog here itself to keep updated. We love to hear from you guys, so be sure to leave a comment and let us know what you think!

Welcome back to round number two of the four rounds of four beers I had during the last streaming I did with Drew on Knights of Nostalgia. The first was Pixels by Seminar Brewing, this is the second, the third will be Great Notion Brewing’s Fruit Monster, and the fourth will be Elder Pine Brewing and Blending’s Villeinage. (Spoiler alert: all four beers were really good.)

Aslin Beer Company is one of the many great breweries along the East Coast. In the middle of the East Coast; Virginia, Maryland, D.C, West Virginia, Delaware area; Aslin Beer Company, Burley Oak Brewing Company, The Veil, The Answer, Adroit Theory, Dewey Beer Company, are often mentioned on “must visit” and “top breweries” and “great” lists; they are usually the sought after, the traded for (the Facebook group ISO / FT), and the breweries that people mule back from. So needless to say, it’s fantastic to see some of these breweries (notably Aslin Beer Company and Burley Oak Brewing Company) popping up in distribution (distro) in the area. Breski’s Beverage on Eisenhower Boulevard (outside of Harrisburg between Harrisburg and Middletown) has been getting some wonderful cans from both breweries, as well as many other notable breweries, and is always worth checking in to see what they currently have in stock.

The mix-a-six selection at Breski’s and similar places are phenomenal right now (…phenomenally tasting; horrible on your wallet however). Last Tuesday before stopping at Tattered Flag for their Taco Tuesday, I stopped at Breski’s and got two mix-a-six six-packs (and paid about 60$), but picked up some tremendous beers; like the Isolation Anniversary Beer, two Great Notion beers, a pilsner (Billsner) from Burley Oak, a Black is Beautiful from Non Sequitur, Stickman’s The Growfather (can’t resist a good Godfather pun), two from Stranger Root’s Experimental Ales, Alarmist, Atlantic, etc. All in all, a wonderful selection of beers that you will be seeing reviews of (at least nine out of the 12 anyway, and hopefully in a timely fashion).

So, since I have a ton of reviews to do, and limited time (don’t we all limited time afterall?) I better get right down to this and do this beer review shouldn’t I?

Ok…. lets do it!

Beer: Isolation Anniversary Beer
Brewery: Aslin Beer Company
Style: IPA – Imperial / Double Milkshake
ABV: 9.4%
IBU: None
Untappd Description: (Blank)

Always a little disappointing to see the description left blank (its nice to see notes from the brewers / brewery, or maybe a joke or pun, or some context behind the beer or the beer name, or why or how it was brewed, if it was a collaboration, if its someone’s favorite recipe, or something at least), but I think this beer doesn’t really need a description, as it stands on its own.

Appearance is similar to that of a New England IPA; its opaque, its hazy, its bright, and orange, and glowing, but its even thicker than a normal New England IPA looks. It has ‘floaters’ especially if you don’t roll it before opening it up and pouring it. Its very well carbonated and has a great foamy white head, with a good pour it has just the right amount of head, with a bad pour I could picture this filling a whole glass with just head. The bubbles on it are nice and it leaves a nice lacing in the glass. It’s turbid, busy, and active.

The nose on this is hoppy, juicy hoppy, citrusy hoppy, but also creamy and vanilla and lactose, like silky smooth creamy milk with lots of fruity, citrus, juice, hops in it. I get mango, peach, citrus, a bit of zest, and a small whiff of grapefruit hop notes in this blended with the vanilla sweetness and cream of the lactose.

First sip… wow. Second sip… double wow. This has a LOT going on. Which is not a fault or problem at all; granted sometimes it can be, but not in this case. This has a lot going on, but all in proportion to the beer itself and within its style and how the beer is supposed to be. It’s not going off into all kinds of different places with varied and confusing mixtures of flavors, or with off flavors, or with competing notes. This just has a lot going on within it, but all with a purpose, all within the style, and all just how you should want it. Its a milkshake, its a hop bomb, its juicy, its turbid, its hazy, its strong, its delicious. Most importantly…. its delicious. And… did I mention yet…. that its delicious? This was hands down my favorite of the night, and it was the boldest, most flavorful, and had the biggest wallop of flavors, notes, aromas, hop, juiciness, and outright drinkability. I could easily kill a four pack of these, and probably in short time too; its just that drinkable. Which is scary at its 9.4% ABV, but it doesn’t feel heavy, or boozy, or knocking you on your face and teeth skittering across the cement floor of the basement kind of alcoholic; its just crushable but at a higher ABV. This is like drinking a smooth, juicy, silky, creamy, orange juice with the fruity citrus juicy hops in for extra flavor. Just like with aroma, I got mostly mango and peach with the flavor, but also got citrus, some zest, and a teeny weensy bit of grapefruit. I do have to say, as much as I could crank down a four pack of this, as someone with lactose intolerance, thats probably not a great idea. These milkshake IPAs and milkshake sours and such with some having an insane amount of lactose in them (this one probably has a rather large amount in it) typically give me some ‘gastro’ issues next morning when I wake up. One or so don’t usually hurt too much, but after that it starts pushing it, especially with the very heavy lacto ones.

My Untappd Rating: ****.5
Global Untappd Rating: 3.98 (as of 10.25.20)

After wrapping up the beer review here, I wanted to do a bit more research on the beer for the blog, so I did a quick Google search (ASLIN ISOLATION ANNIVERSARY BEER) and the first site was their online ordering form for the beer, which you can find here: Order Isolation Anniversary Beer. It also came with a description for the beer which reads:

“🎉 ISOLATION ANNIVERSARY BEER 🎉 Today‘s the day we opened our (garage) door 5 years ago! 🍻In honor of the 1825 days that have passed since then, we bring you our Aslin ISOLATION ANNIVERSARY BEER. Soft ripe yellow peach, mango, and passionfruit unite with explosively juicy results, and a full-bodied, perfectly zippy taste that finishes off with woody resin notes from Cypress & Sugar Maple wood. This is juicy fruit flesh squeezed into a hazy DIPA!! We’re raising a glass of this to all of you for your incredible support that has helped bring us to YEAR 6. Hang tight, this is not the only drop in our 5th Anniversary series! 🎉 🍻”

Also came with a picture:

Hopefully that provides a bit of closure on the beer and fills in for the lack of a description on Untappd for everyone.

As always everyone, thanks for reading, and be sure to check back soon as I do the other two beers, as well as some recent travelogues (just did a recent hike with my faithful canine companion Leela to the Pinnacle Overlook in Hamburg and stopped at 1787 Brewing Company and Schaylor Brewing Company). As always, there is a ton to check out here on the blog, so be sure to be on the lookout, hit the subscribe and follow button, and always feel free to comment, we love to hear from you!

You can see my latest beer reviews here:

• Beer Review: Dreams of Orgonon (Human Robot)
• Beer Review: Unicorns Stomping on Lanternflies (Saucony Creek Brewing Co)
• Beer Review: Griddle (Funk Brewing Company)
• Beer Review: Out of Order: Blue Milk (RAR Brewing)
• Beer Review: Up the Creek Extreme Ale (Thomas Creek Brewery)
• Beer Review: Hershey’s Chocolate Porter (Yuengling Brewery)
• Beer Review: Dropout (Rubber Soul Brewing)

Please be sure to follow us on our social media accounts – Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Influence. Please be sure to also follow, like, subscribe to the blog here itself to keep updated. We love to hear from you guys, so be sure to leave a comment and let us know what you think!

Also, in recent news, the Great American Beer Festival (GABF) 2020 ended (their 34th edition; this year virtually rather than in person in Boulder, Colorado), and they’ve announced their winners. You can see what Pennsylvania Breweries won here. As well as the 2020 NAGBW Awards.

Cheers everyone, and stay safe and healthy out there with all the rises in COVID cases. Remember to mask up, remember to wash hands, and most importantly: remember to drink some great craft beers!

-B. Kline

As soon as I saw that Breski’s had the Stone Cold beer…. I was grabbing the keys and jumping in the car for the drive over. I picked up a four-pack of this, as well as a four-pack of the FVCK COVID beer which I did a beer review of previously. This is another one of those beers that falls into the category of ‘got it because of marketing’ over got it because of what hops are in it, or flavors, or adjuncts, or knowing the brewery’s reputation, etc. Like some bad beers I’ve had, like Trial by Wombat, or Jon Voight’s Car, where I got them because of can art or name of the beer – I got this because its the Stone Cold beer.

Early 2000s, high school me was a huge wrestling fan. We watched each RAW, each SmackDown, even the minor shows like Heat, Velocity, Metal, etc. We also watched TNA when they started up with the Wednesday PPVs and their Impact show. We watched WCW at its tail end when it ended and WWF bought them out in 2001. We were big fans of ROH as well, me and D. Scott were at Final Battle 2004. D. Scott, R. Dibeler, and myself have been to a couple of shows, the more notable ones being WWE Unforgiven 2003 and WWE Royal Rumble 2004. Stone Cold was one of our favorites, mine in particular, along with (sad to say now due to everything that’s happened – but – Chris Benoit), Taz, RVD, Chris Jericho, Eddie Guerrero, (Rory’s favorite was always Kane) – and that’s just listing the WWF/E wrestlers. Not getting into the indies or puroresu or lucha libre and stuff.

And this might surprise some…. but Stone Cold Steve Austin knows a little bit about drinking…..

Maybe…. just a little.

So what better beer to do a review of on National IPA day than the Stone Cold Steve Austin IPA beer?!

Beer: Broken Skull
Brewery: El Segundo Brewing Company
Style: IPA – American
ABV: 6.7%
IBU: 67
Untappd Description: Broken Skull IPA: A bad-ass 6.7% India Pale Ale designed by Steve Austin and ESBC for the working man & woman. It features Citra, Cascade, and Chinook hops to deliver big flavor with an easy finish. Now stop reading and start enjoying this awesome beer! Cheers! -Steve

According to their Untappd page, El Segundo Brewing Company (ESBC) is from El Segundo California, United States, and is a micro brewery. (I honestly thought they were from Texas, not California, so I learned something new by clicking their Untappd page.) They have 286 unique beers for a 3.87 global average rating (as of 8.6.20). Their Untappd Description reads: “El Segundo Brewing Company is the product of founder, Rob Croxall’s love and passion for beers. More than anything, Rob has a knack for hoppy beers. Being a brewer, he decided leave his longtime career in aerospace financing to establish his own microbrewery. Rob invested in the Los Angeles area. El Segundo Brewing Company specializes in hops that provide outstanding and unique bitter flavors of beers. The brewery focuses on its personal dry hopping brewing method that produces fine aromas. Rob’s great love for hops has become the motivation behind the success of El Segundo Brewing Company today.”

Lets jump right into this review and tackle the beer itself. Appearance is a clear, bubbly pilsner / light West Coast looking IPA. Not very dark, not very malty, completely clear minus the bubbles (very well carbonated), this honestly looks like it could have been a pilsner, or lager, or a lite beer – Miller or Coors – when poured out. Big foamy head to it that just kept bubbling up.

Aroma is light hoppy, and not a whole lot more. Which is pretty typical for an IPA; especially American / West Coast style, etc. There’s no adjuncts, nothing added to it, no ‘milkshake’ or ‘New England’ – ness to it, its a straight legit IPA, in the old vein. The hop combination of citra, cascade, and chinook is pretty distinguishable. I grow cascade and chinook hops at home, and I can pick out their aromas pretty distinctly. Citra is also another easy to pick out hop aroma and flavor, mainly because its name is a pretty big indicator. There is no other real aromas to this, its just hops and ‘beer is beer’ smell. No malt, no sweetness; just the citrus, grassy, slight lemon, a little bit of pine, that comes from the combination of hops in this.

Flavor… and taste…. is where this falls a bit flat. And no, the beer itself isn’t flat…. its just, there’s not a whole lot here. Its actually pretty bland. Me and D. Scott decided it tasted like a ‘starter IPA’. Do you have a friend who you want to start drinking IPAs, and want to move them away from Miller Lite, Coors Lite, and Yuengling Lager? Then this is the beer for you! And being an easily marketable beer – “The Stone Cold beer!” or “The Stone Cold IPA” it should be an easy pitch for you to get your buddy to drink it. There just sadly isn’t a whole lot going on here flavor wise. Its not bad, there’s no off flavors, nothing tastes horrible, no lingering after taste thats bad…. its just underwhelming. Its watery, its a bit thin, it tastes like hops in water, and not a whole lot much of anything else going on. The hops don’t even come off as that strong and don’t give you a complete kick or gut-punch hop flavor either. The hops give off a slight, very light, citrus flavor, like a lemon peel in water kind of thing, there is a little bit of grassy and earth notes and just a wee bit of a pine / pinecone hop taste, but none of it is severe, or even strong. That isn’t to say this is a horrible beer and you won’t like it, its a perfectly accessible and perfectly fine beer, for 12$ (a little bit less I think, maybe a little over 12.10$ with tax) a four pack, this is a very fine, crushable even (only 6.7% ABV and the light flavor makes it go down easier) beer, that you and a buddy can kill an evening playing video games and drinking this. So in that way it makes for a perfect beer for Stone Cold Steve Austin…. and that’s the bottom line…………….. Because Stone Cold Said So!

Kick.

Stunner.

Ultimately though, my opinion of this, if given the choice between this and the many other options out there, might be closer to Stacy Keibler’s:

My Untappd Rating: ***.25
Global Untappd Rating: 3.84 (as of 8.6.20)

I want to think some of that rating bump is namesake and marketing, but maybe others genuinely loved it or at least liked it better than I did. I dunno, if you’ve had it, leave me a comment and let me know what your thoughts were on it. Maybe I’m way off base. Maybe the cans we got were different or off. I dunno, let me know, I’d love to hear from you guys!

As always, thanks for reading everyone. Check out our Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram pages, you can find the links for them at the top and bottom of each page. We’re almost up to 200 Twitter Followers, so please click the follow and like buttons on each of our social media accounts, it adds up and really helps!

Cheers!

-B. Kline

And that’s the bottom line…. because Stone Cold Said So! Austin 3:16 says I just opened a cap of whoop ass on you! WHAT?! WHAT?! WHAT?!

Oh…. I could go on all day doing this! Better stop and have another beer. Cheers all!

Happy National IPA Day!

-B. Kline