Its that time again! A glorious barleywine loving time! This Friday – November 17th, 2023 – Figgy Pudding returns at The Alementary Brewery in Hackensack, New Jersey.

Figgy Pudding week is upon us! Our indomitable English barleywine is co-fermented with figs, prunes, apricots and dates before being aged for a year in the finest Jamaican rum barrels. The result is absolutely perfect for holiday parties and pairs delightfully with the foods of the season. As usual, this one is pretty limited since finding rum barrels of sufficient quality for this beauty is very challenging. The official release is Friday, 11/17. It isn’t required, but you can order your bottles in advance on our website if you’d prefer. We are also raising Blake and Mike’s personal stash for a re-release of the 2022 Figgy since you’ve all long since “accidentally” consumed them. Let’s get Figgy!

#digthefig#craftbeer#beer#alementary#njbeer#beerporn

The Alementary – Facebook Post

A Beer Thrillers Favorite

Figgy Pudding is one of our all time absolute favorite beers here at The Beer Thrillers – for many reasons. Firstly, its a wonderful and delicious beer, but secondly there’s a lot of sentimental reasons as well.

The Alementary was one of Amy and Ben’s first dates and we split a bottle of Figgy Pudding and spent nearly the entire evening at the brewery chatting and having a wonderful time together, getting to learn and grow and know each other.

We took a bottle to go, and kept it cellared, and after Amy got pregnant with Scarlet Emma, it ended up becoming her “push present”:

So we cracked it open there at the Harrisburg Hospital (don’t tell), and Amy got to enjoy her first few sips of beer in a very long time. (Don’t worry, I made sure the bottle didn’t go to waste. –Ben)

Our Instagram and Facebook post covered it:

Cheers to Scarlet Emma! We saved this bottle from our visit to @alementary and its aged just as long as she is (give or take a few months).

This is the one beer Amy waited and wanted her entire pregnancy, and she can now finally get a few sips of it.

Cheers Scarlet Emma! Can’t wait to take you home tomorrow!

#thealementary#thealementarybrewingcompany#thebeerthrillers#figgypudding#barleywine#aged#craftbeer#njbeer#baby#newbaby#pushbeer#pushgift#scarlet#scarletemma

The Beer Thrillers is in Harrisburg (Facebook Post)

The Alementary was so kind that they reached out to us and told us to stop by the brewery and they would gift us another bottle of Figgy Pudding, and so in January of this year we made the trek back out to Hackensack New Jersey and picked it up, getting to also watch the Bengals defeat the Bills in their playoff game at the brewery, and enjoy a nice beautiful snowy day in New Jersey – and it was Scarlet Emma’s first trip to the brewery as well!

We certainly know we’ll be coming back out to New Jersey soon to get this year’s vintage of Figgy Pudding and we cannot wait!

Cheers to Figgy Pudding, cheers to The Alementary, and cheers to all who get to try it. Its an extremely delicious beer!

See Also

• Holiday Weekend and Bomber Bottles

For More Information on The Alementary

The following information comes from Untappd. The Alementary is a micro brewery from Hackensack, New Jersey. They have 299 unique beers and over 66,000 ratings with a global average rating of 3.79 (as of 11.16.23). Their Untappd description reads: Our mission is simple: Create approachable and uncomplicated world-class beers in a brewery experience that gives our friends and neighbors a brewery that they are proud to call their own.

You can follow them at these social media pages:

• The Alementary – Official Website
• The Alementary – Twitter
• The Alementary – Facebook
• The Alementary – Instagram
• The Alementary – Untappd

Thank You For Reading

If you like this article, please check out our other many articles, including news, beer reviews, travelogues, maps, and much much more. We greatly appreciate everyone visiting the site!

Cheers.

Thanks again for reading everyone. Take some time to check out the site, we greatly appreciate it. We have affiliates and sponsors with Pretzels.com and Beer Drop.com, which can save you money on their products if you are interested. Check out our articles on them. Make sure to check out our beer reviews, brewery reviews, Amy’s weekly column, book reviews, hike reviews, and so much more.

As always, thank you everyone for reading! Leave your likes, comments, suggestions, questions, etc, in the comments section. Or use the Feedback – Contact Us – page, and we’ll get right back to you! You can also reach out to us at our direct e-mail address: thebeerthrillers@gmail.com

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.

We are working on a massive project here at The Beer Thrillers. We are creating a map of all of the breweries across the United States. State by state we are adding maps of all of the different states with every brewery in each state. (We will eventually get to the US Territories, as well as the Canadian Provinces, and possibly more countries; as well as doing some fun maps like a map of all the breweries we’ve been to, and other fun maps.) You can find the brewery maps here:

• MAPS OF BREWERIES

We are also working on a project of creating printable and downloadable PDFs and resources to be able to check and keep track of all of the breweries you’ve been to. So stay tuned for that project once we are finished with the Brewery Maps of the US States.

You can check out our different directories here: Beer Reviews, Hike Reviews, Book Reviews, Brewery News, Brewery Openings, Brewer Interviews, and Travelogues.

Please be sure to follow us on our social media accounts – Facebook, Facebook Group, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Influence. As well as our brand new Tumblr page. 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!

You can now find us on our Discord Server here: The Beer Thrillers (Discord Server). We’ve also joined LinkTree to keep track of all of our social media pages, as well as hot new articles we’ve written.

The Beer Thrillers on LinkTree can be found here: The Beer Thrillers LinkTree.

We have partnered with an affiliateship with Beer Drop.com. You can check out that partnership and receive great discounts, coupons, and more here: Beer Drop. Going here and logging in and ordering will help you receive your discounts and coupons as well as help support our page. Thank you for helping to support The Beer Thrillers and to help us maintain the site and blog and to keep it running.

The Beer Thrillers are a blog that prides itself on writing beer reviews, brewery reviews, travelogues, news (especially local to the Central PA brewery scene), as well as covering other topics of our interests – such as hiking, literature and books, board games, and video games which we sometimes stream with our friends over at Knights of Nostalgia. We are currently listed as #7 on FeedSpot’s “Top 100 Beer Blogs” and #8 on FeedSpot’s “Top 40 Pennsylvania Blogs”. (As of January 2023.) Thank you for reading our site today, please subscribe, follow, and bookmark. Please reach out to us if you are interested in working together. If you would like to donate to the blog you can here: Donate to The Beer Thrillers. Thank you!

You can also check out our partnership and affiliation with Pretzels.com, where ordering pretzels and using our affiliate code – AFFILIATE CODE IS THEBEERTHRILLERS20 – will help you get wonderful pretzels and help us maintain and keep this blog running. Thank you!

If you would like to reach out to us for product reviews, beer reviews, press release writing, and other media – please contact us at thebeerthrillers@gmail.com. Thank you.

(Thank you for reading. The opinions, thoughts, and expressions of each article posted on The Beer Thrillers represents the author of the content and only themselves. It does not express the opinions, beliefs, or ideas held by The Beer Thrillers or any company in which the author themselves work for. Each piece of written content is written by the creator(s) listed in the authorial section on each article unless otherwise noted. Their opinions, comments, and words on screen do not represent any company in which they work for and / or are affiliated with or any non – profits that they contribute to. Thank you.)

Technically this should be “Dropout 2020” by Rubber Soul rather than just Dropout. Its the same, but not the same, as the original Dropout that the original Rubber Soul made (back from when they were in Salisbury Maryland with a different head brewer). For ease and brevity of the blog I have it listed as just DROPOUT, and don’t think I really need to include the 2020. I will be interested to see if going forward if Rubber Soul makes new entries on Untappd for “Dropout (2021)” and “Dropout (2022)” etc. They also did this with Garage Racer calling it Garage Racer (2020).

So, brief backstory on this, Rubber Soul was a brewery out of Salisbury Maryland with ties to the midstate area of Central Pennsylvania. So a lot of their beers were kegged and sent up to local bars in the area. They went bankrupt roughly two years ago, and a LLC bought them, and then subsequently bought the old borough building in Hummelstown and spent the majority of 2020 (and some of 2019) turning it into their new brewery. The LLC bought all of their old equipment and recipes, but did not retain the same brewer, instead getting a new brewer, and moving from Salisbury MD to Hummelstown PA.

You can read my two articles on their opening:

• A Sneak Peak at the Rubber Soul Brewery
• Grand Opening of Rubber Soul

This was their first ‘add-on’ from their original tap list, which not quite a week in, they already had kicked a keg (or two or however many they had to replace one of their beers) which is pretty impressive.

Last night after getting done at work at 7PM, driving home, I decided to head over to Rubber Soul for dinner and then a block up to Tony’s house to watch the Bills – Titans game. How often do you get to watch Tuesday night football? Especially with your buddy whose a Bills fan. So I decided why not!

Firstly, let me say, I had the stromboli with it, and that was one of the most delicious ‘boli’s I’ve ever had. I don’t normally order stromboli, but I picked the short rib poutine but unfortunately they were out of it (sold out during the day) so I decided on the stromboli. My dad had it the night we were there when I met him and my mom there for dinner, and he said it was delicious, so I figured why not.

Enough about food (who cares about food anyway right?), lets get to the beer:

Beer: Dropout (2020)
Brewery: Rubber Soul Brewing Co
Style: IPA – Imperial / Double
ABV: 8.2%
IBU: 70
Untappd Description: Double IPA. This hop forward double IPA has a big presence of grapefruit and flowery spice. A clean finish with a little bite. Hopped with citra mosaic and cascade.

The original Rubber Soul Dropout has the following statistics:
ABV: 8%
IBU: 100
Untappd Description: We’ve taken a classic Big IPA and modified it to epic, or rather, citric proportions. Thoroughly loaded with Citra hops and German specialty malts like Vienna and CaraFoam, the roasty middle of this otherwise pungent power pale will have you screaming “Dropout!” wherever you are.

I wish I could say I could give an honest comparison between the two, but its been four years (four years ago in June) since I last had the original Dropout. My Untappd notes for it say: “Bitter but very flavorful”.

That’s not the same case for the newest version of this. So, lets get into it, and break it down.

Appearance is a nice darker hued NE-IPA looking drink. A cross between a West Coast IPA and a New England IPA in appearance. Its somewhat hazy, not fully opaque, but far from translucent. It looks like an IPA, but just a bit darker / cloudier than a normal IPA, and there’s nothing wrong or bad about this. It has a very nice look and is a well done appearance for a new IPA and new brewery. It had a wonderful foamy head to it with nice bubbles.

Nose is a strong juicy hoppy IPA. The citra hops really sparkle here and take front and center stage. This has a wonderful IPA aroma to it, strong, scented, powerful, slight malt notes, but strong hop presence in the nose. Fun beer to smell before taking that first delicious sip.

First sip…. very good. Second sip…. very good…. third sip…. oh look, who are we kidding. The beer is good, from first to last sip, and its super quaffable making you wanna get a second drink before you know it. There is a bit of a large variety of hop notes to this new version of Dropout, and ‘bitterness’ is not one of them. This is very juicy, dank, and it is most importantly delicious. There is a citrus flavor to the hops, there’s a lot of grapefruit flavor as well. I got a little spice on this, but not much, very subtle, and almost as if you need to look for it. The hops leave this with a really nice floral, grapefruit, juicy, dank, citrusy, with a hint of earthy undertones, and then there’s the light subtle hint of the spice, and some malt backbone to this, that all really blends together into a very drinkable, delicious brew. I’m usually not a huge fan of grapefruit tastes but this doesn’t border on that ‘ugh grapefruit’ and more of a ‘oh, this is nice’ grapefruit, no bitterness, no pungent-ness, no over powering grapefruit or too bright grapefruit, this is blending, mellow, but tasteful. Sitting in the brewery, reading, and eating, this went down incredibly smooth and easy. The 70 IBU leaves a bit of a bite but not really noticeable, as the juiciness of the beer really smooths that out and overpowers the hop bite. So for those fans of New England IPAs, this will be more on their side than the traditional West Coast IPA side. As a Double IPA (DIPA) it is a bit higher ABV – 8.2%, but its not too noticeable, and even after two (with food) its not too strong to knock you on your ass, which is always a definite plus. A crowler of this would be just the right amount for a good night watching a football game…. even if it is on a Tuesday due to COVID.

My Untappd Rating: ****
Global Untappd Rating: 4.01 (as of 10.14.20)

After the two beers and ‘boli at the brewery, walked the block up to Tony’s and watched the Bills – Titans game. He certainly didn’t enjoy the game (as a Bills fan), and afterwards we got to watch the exciting final of the Braves – Dodgers game (Braves nearly blew that one!). I had a crowler of the Garage Racer (2020) while watching the game, and that’s another very fine and enjoyable beer from Rubber Soul.

I am certainly going to be enjoying having them in town, a mile walk to the brewery and back, is perfect. It’ll let me feel like I’m being productive and healthful with the walk, plus enjoy some great beer and food. Win. Win. Win.

Look for a new review from Josh tomorrow – and shocker everyone – it’s not Adroit Theory. Its great having him back reviewing again, you can check out his latest review here: Beer Review: The Octagonal Stairway (Adroit Theory and Pig Destroyer Collaboration).

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)

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