Dan - The Beer Thrillers

Broken Chair Brewery Has Announced They Will Be Closing

B. Kline — Wed, 19 Jun 2024 00:00:32 +0000

Broken Chair Brewery Logo

Broken Chair Brewery Has Announced They Will Be Closing

In more sad news, Broken Chair Brewery – out of West Reading, Pennsylvania; has announced that they will be closing (no later than the end of August 2024). In a heartfelt post on their social media just an hour ago, they announced that as they will be easing into retirement, they have decided to close down the brewery.

Broken Chair Brewery has been a staple of West Reading Pennsylvania since 2017. Located at 424 Penn Ave, West Reading, PA 19611 the small but mighty brewery has been churning out amazing beers since 2017 and has garnered quite a bit of a reputation, love, and community following them. Located on the same street as Pagoda Brewing (formerly known as Chatty Monks Brewing), as well as the recently closed Willow Creek Brewery, and The Barley Mow, and Beer Wall on Penn; they carved out a niche as a wonderful brewery to hit in the city.

The Announcement

An exterior shot of Broken Chair Brewery (photo courtesy of Broken Chair Brewing)

Just an hour ago, Broken Chair Brewery made this announcement via their social media:

Dear friends of Broken Chair Brewery,

We are writing to let you know that we have had a tremendous time selling beer and good times in West Reading, but it is time for us to start slowing down and get ready for retirement. Broken Chair Brewery will be closing at the end of August depending on how much beer we have.

This decision was not made lightly. Despite the incredible journey and the many successes we have shared, a recent job promotion in my full time job and actually wanting to start slowing down has made this necessary. The business would need to expand to keep being successful and would need further investment. I just do not have the time and do not want to further invest this close to my retirement. I want to express my deepest gratitude to everyone who has been part of this journey. Whether you’ve been with us since the beginning or have only recently discovered our brews, your support has been vital to our story.

I want to thank our dedicated staff which has been with us for several years. Their hard work is what made our brewery. A business is only as strong as its staff, and we had the best. I will miss every one of them.

To our beloved customers, thank you for the enthusiasm and loyalty you have shown. Your appreciation for our craft has been a constant source of motivation. We hope that our paths will cross again in the future, maybe at a beer fest.

To my family who made this dream a reality I want to give my love and sincere thanks. I am not the easiest person to deal with and you rose to that challenge and kept me in line when it needed to be done. I know you are looking forward to other endeavors and rewards in the future.

We invite you all to visit us for one last toast before we close. It would be a joy to share a final round of cheers with the community that has made Broken Chair Brewery more than just a brewery, but a family.

Thank you once again for all the memories and good times. Although we are closing this chapter, the experiences we shared will always be cherished.

Cheers,

Todd, Joan, Dan

– Facebook Post: Broken Chair Brewery

More Information on Broken Chair Brewery

The following comes via Untappd.

Broken Chair Brewery is a micro brewery from West Reading, Pennsylvania. They have 88 unique beers and over 16,000 ratings, with a global average rating of 3.67 (as of 6.18.24). Their Untappd description reads: “Broken Chair Brewery, like most small businesses started in a garage. After getting tired of settling for beers that were extreme in taste, flavor and hoppiness we wanted to create beers that everyone could enjoy. We wanted to make a large variety of beers so that everyone could find a beer they could drink. It took a lot of trial and error and sometimes pouring the beer down the drain until we had beers that we liked. After years of brewing we decided to take our beer to the next level. It took several months to find a place to do this. We knew we wanted to be in West Reading because it is welcoming to small businesses and the community around Penn Avenue is also very supportive. The community is friendly and wiling to get involved in their neighborhood. The tasting room is all brick that we found under a layer of stucco. This was a wonderful surprise that allowed us to keep the patch work tile floor that was there from the tile shop that was previously in the building. The environment is warm and relaxing. When you walk to the back you can see the brewery through a glass paneled door. The brewery is all stainless steel with a small 2 BBL brewing system. This small brewing system allows us to make a variety of different beers and the ability to rotate different beers when one has kicked.”

You can find them at these social media platforms:

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Some Changes to The Beer Thrillers

BKline — Mon, 04 May 2020 02:35:00 +0000

This is going up kind of late, mainly because I only got home from Gettysburg after 9PM with my daughters, this was meant to go out earlier in the day, but so it goes. This is just a quick ‘informative’ blog posting, about the blog moreso than anything else.

As you might have noticed, there’s been a few changes and some new faces here at The Beer Thrillers. Don’t worry, I’m still here (B. Kline), and somewhere out there J. Doncevic is still lurking around. But as you saw yesterday, we have two other new writers.

Firstly, Karl Larson (ihackbeer) is going to be writing for us periodically, mostly about brewing, home brewing, commercial brewing, and various informative pieces about beer, history, brewing, etc. He comes with an extreme wealth of knowledge, and it is such a privilege to have him writing for us. He is an award winning home brewer (gold medal winner), he is also a BJCP judge, as well as having brewed commercially for both Boneshire Brew Works and (currently) for Newfangled Brew Works. You can follow him on Twitter at: @ihackbeer. You can view Karl’s first post here: Brewing a Traditional Lithuanian Farmhouse Beer – Keptinis.

Our other new writer is Andrew Parys (A. Parys) (aka thesugarfoot). A local to Central Pennsylvania like myself and Josh (J. Doncevic) and Karl, he is an avid craft beer enthusiast and brewery traveler as well. He has been part of the extended Beer Thrillers family doing a podcast here or there with D. Scott and Esteban and myself over at “So a Mexican and a Scott Walk Into a Bar…” Saturday featured his first article for us, a thought-piece about what makes a good “quarantine” brewery during these ‘crazy’ times: What Makes a Great Quarantine Brewery? I suggest you head over there, read it and leave a comment!

Also, speaking of podcasts (and the ilk), I’m looking at possibly trying to do beer specific podcasts in the near future for The Beer Thrillers, as well as possible YouTube videos and reviews done that way as well. So stay tuned for that. As always, I am still doing sporadic podcasts with D. Scott, Dan, A. Parys, Esteban, and a host of others through their pop-culture series – So a Mexican and a Scott Walk Into a Bar…

As for the blog itself, we are celebrating one year this month. And we are most likely going to be moving to a full page and new host and having things look a lot more formal, professional, and nicer by the end of the month (fingers crossed). With that, there might be a few moving parts and some construction, but it should be quick and minimal (hopefully). The site’s links might change too, but if they do, I will set-up redirects so it should be no trouble to find us.

I also have had two other people from our Facebook group – the Central PA Whalerz (that me and Josh are members of) express interest writing for us, so you might be getting some more new faces as well. Hopefully we can poke and prod and get Mr. J. Doncevic to write us something new as well. Also, Let Us Drink Beer Blog is still guest writing with us (as well as we are for them) giving us about a monthly article about the beer scene down in the Atlanta Georgia area.

As far as the coming days go, this month, since I am still furloughed, for the foreseeable future (who knows how slow / fast things will begin to open up), and since its our One-Year anniversary, I am looking to make sure we get a blog post (or two!) every day. Tomorrow, being May 4th, I’d like to do a Star Wars themed one. Went down to Gettysburg today with my girls, but unfortunately struck out at Fourscore Beer Co (their Star Wars themed beer – Wookie Monster; sold out Saturday night). (Hint hint if anyone has one their willing to part with, to message / comment / PM me / DM me / etc.)

Then following that up we have Cinco De Mayo or Revenge of the Fifth, which I will take a look at some Mexican Lagers or Cervezas . So stay tuned for those articles.

If you are new to the blog, you can follow us on the various social media outlets. And I will take this opportunity to toot our own horn, and plug our statistics. I am amazed at how well, how fast, and how great the community has been in supporting us, in less than a full year. Thank you all so very much for your support! I will list our social media accounts next, as well as with the followers for each, just for people to get a scope of how far we’ve come and grown over this year!

As of May 3rd (10PM):

Facebook: 550 Likes / 583 Followers
Twitter: 159 Followers
Instagram: 106 Followers
WordPress: 53 Followers / 11 E-Mail Followers

We are currently #9 on FeedSpot’s Top 100 Beer Blogs. (Where it lists our Domain Authority as 76 and our Alexa Rank as 4.3K.)

So again, I would just like to say thank you so much for supporting us, especially amidst these crazy and troubling and unprecedented times. We have a lot more in store for the future so be sure to stick around and check us out!

Thank you everyone! Cheers!

-B. Kline
The Beer Thrillers Staff: Ben, Josh, Karl, Andrew
The Extended Beer Thrillers Staff: Let Us Drink Beer, Drew, Dan, Esteban

Beer Review: Spundae (Spring House Brewing Company)

BKline — Tue, 17 Sep 2019 02:29:31 +0000

Spundae by Spring House Brewing Company. My friend picked it up at the distributor and so we gave it a try.

So this wasn’t meant to become a beer review, but I figured I’d do it anyway. I might do a few of the others from Saturday night as well. There is some backstory to a couple of pieces to this blog post, so I’ll work through them all.

So starting off with some background on Spring House Brewing Company. Once I got kind of fully “into” craft beer, roughly 7-8 years or so ago…. or maybe its been 8-9 years ago…. or even possibly 10 years ago? Who knows, I’m getting old, and it was a while ago, I know that much. Outside of the Hershey/Harrisburg area, Spring House Brewing Company was one of the first breweries I visited/tried. Myself, my three daughters, and Sara, went and did the Turkey Hill Experience thing, and the parking garage was right near the brewery. I convinced her that if we did something for the kids, I needed something for me, and since it was dinner time and they offered food, we ‘might as well’ hit the brewery. She amazingly agreed, and this kind of set precedent for most of our trips with the girls (dinner/lunch would be at breweries, for the good food, and to help keep dad from going insane).

We went to their tap room on Hazel Street. The food was really good, all four of them were happy, and I got a flight, which came with something like 10-12 beers. And I enjoyed all of them. We had a good time, and I would say I would list Spring House pretty prominently and pretty high up.

A year or two later we went to their brewery off of King Street (I might be getting to the two locations backwards, and sadly Google Maps is deciding not to load anything for me at the moment, in fact, even the blog is being slow, so maybe my internet, or my laptop, or whatever is hating me). We went on St. Patty’s day as kind of a dinner date, and had a fantastic Shepherd’s Pie and got some of their bombers on a discount blowout. Again, had a great time.

Sadly though, since then, I’ve only been back to the taproom on Hazel St once, and it was quick, nearly an in-and-out with a friend while visiting the Lancaster area. And so over the years, the only chance I’ve really had at trying Spring House has been in bars, at a tap takeover or two, or rarely/occasionally a few cans I’ve picked up at places like Breski’s Beverage or Brass Rail Deli. Every fall I always have looked forward to Braaaaiiins and Big Gruesome. Both are two of my favorite fall time beers. Braaaaiiins is my possibly my favorite pumpkin beer, and Big Gruesome is a really good stout.

But overall throughout the years, I think I’ve fallen ‘out of love’ with Spring House. I still look forward to Braaaiiins and Big Gruesome, but not as much, and many of their one-offs, and other rotationals that I’ve had throughout the years have left me feeling rather ‘meh’.

So, this brings me to the backstory of Saturday then. Worked 11-7 Saturday, and went right down the road to my friend’s house. J.Scott or JDS or J.D.Scott or D.Scott, whatever he chooses to go with, might be helping out with writing some blog posts here as well. Likewise, we (him and I) will be hosting a podcast where we play some old school NES and SNES games and other related things (maybe old school Game Boy games on emulator or Sega, or what have you), while doing the podcast we will be drinking and talking and chatting about nerd culture (like we mostly do when just hanging out at The Warwick, or Boneshire Brewery, or Chick’s Tavern, or his house, or wherever). So be sure to be on the lookout for all of that (I’ll be posting links here in the blog to whenever we upload a new podcast).

So getting back to Saturday, we started off drinking several craft beers from a local distributor that Dan and D. Scott picked up. A Key Lime Pie from D9 (Confectioner: Key Lime Pie), a few from DuClaw, the Spundae from Spring House, and a Red Velvet Cake one from Spring House. I might get around to doing some beer reviews of these if I find the time/energy (I still have a ton of other blog posts/articles to do). But I really did like the D9: Confectioner: Key Lime Pie, so I might do a beer review on that one. We sat around outside for a while killing the craft beers, talking, trying to get a fire going, before going inside, and working on Naturdays and Natty Daddys (well, we had a few of them outside as well), and then we started watching Terror in Beverly Hill…. which, anytime you can watch a movie starring FRANK Stallone… you jump on that opportunity. Believe me. You won’t be disappointed.

So needless to say the night wasn’t mean to be spent as part of a way to do a blog post, but since I had a beer, and I have some time to write it up, and took some thoughts of it on my phone, and remember my discussions with Dan and D.Scott about it, I’ll give it a review. (Yay to more content right?)

Ok, onto the actual beer review (which is presumably why your here):

Spundae, a limited time only Milkshake IPA by Spring House Brewing Company.

Beer: Spundae
Brewery: Spring House Brewing Company
Style: IPA – Milkshake
ABV: 6.8%
IBU: None
Untappd Write-Up: Introducing Spundae, our newest milkshake IPA to hit our lineup. Its brewed with real cherry puree, set on vanilla beans, and double dry hopped with potent citra leaves. Get this limited release draft while it lasts, dessert doesnt hang around forever.

….Well….. this is an interesting beer. Obviously my pic isn’t the best, and was mostly just a quick Untappd pic rather than a full on meant to happen for beer reviewing purposes “beer photography” picture. You can see the coloring in the glass that D.Scott was drinking out of. (Gave a taster’s worth for Dan and D.Scott, while I drank out of the can.)

Let’s break this one down….

Aroma is a mixture of all kinds of things. Firstly, its very cherry smelling. Like cough syrup cherry. Maraschino cherry. Overly tart, overly sweet, overly everything cherry. The “not good cherry”. There is a bit of a hop smell but its so diluted by the cherry. There is some kind of other flavors that could be vanilla beans, could be the hops, could be the “cherry puree”, which I’m not really sure what that is. I’m thinking its just straight maraschino cherry syrup they use for ice cream. I don’t know what exactly puree would entail in this instance, and I’d rather it be the actual cherry than puree I think, given how this tastes.

Appearance is very pink hue. As you can see in the picture, it kind of resembles the Crimson Pistil IPA that Troegs did, the hibiscus IPA. The coloring is a little off-putting, especially given the aroma before hand. So already I am kind of anticipating a cherry bomb on this. There’s even a bit of floaters in it and some sediment , at that was with a pour. Firstly, when I even poured just a small sample for both Dan and D.Scott, doing a correct pour, both of their pint glasses foamed way up with a massive amount of head, especially in contrast to how much I poured.

The taste was pretty much what I anticipated, given aroma and appearance, and both Dan and D.Scott agreed immediately on this. Its sour, tart, and not at all like a milkshake IPA. No smoothness. No vanilla. No sugary taste to it. Just a very heavy, tart/sour cheap cherry taste. Like cough syrup gone sour.

Its not a complete waste or drain pour, and its not completely horrible. It is cloying, it is heavy on the mouthfeel, and it doesn’t exactly fit the description. Its not the best or the worst though either. Maybe unpleasant is the best way to describe it? “Not preferable ?” I’ve certainly had far worse in my life, and the Natty Daddy’s later on weren’t much better, but then again, I knew that going in with those. This had at least some expectation to it, and a single was 4.99$ D.Scott told me, so only 2$ cheaper than the entire six-pack of Natty Daddy’s. So it should be obviously a lot better, especially given what it was, who made it, etc. This was more of a disappointment than it was anything, and I think a bit of an indictment about where Spring House has gone in recent year(s)/month(s). As I’ve heard numerous complaints and issues and arguments surrounding their beers in recent times. Which is very sad and disheartening.

My Untappd Rating: ***.25
Global Untappd Rating: 3.19 (as of 9.16.19)

(And sadly, I feel like I might be a bit generous with the 3.25 and it might really deserve a 3-***).

In blog news, we’ve been selected and added to the Top 100 Beer Blogs on the internet. Though we’re not exactly in the Top 100, (we are listed at #120), it is an honor, especially since I only started this blog in late May (so just a bit under 4 months). For comparison’s sake Breweries in PA is ranked #37. So given the “youth” of this blog, I think we’re doing pretty good.

You can check out the listing here: Top 100 Best Beer Blogs.

Certainly check it out, and spread the word about our blog, would love to crack the Top 100 soon!

Be sure to like, subscribe, follow, and comment on our posts. Share and tell your friends as well. We greatly appreciate it here at The Beer Thrillers!

Until next time, bottoms up!

-B. Kline