Festivus - The Beer Thrillers https://thebeerthrillers.com Central PA beer enthusiasts and beer bloggers. Homebrewers, brewery workers, and all around beer lovers. Thu, 25 Jan 2024 15:55:00 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.8.2 https://i0.wp.com/thebeerthrillers.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/06/cropped-The-Beer-Thrillers-December-2022-Logo.jpg?fit=32%2C32&ssl=1 Festivus - The Beer Thrillers https://thebeerthrillers.com 32 32 187558884 Beer Review: Treats of Strength (Icarus Brewing) https://thebeerthrillers.com/2023/12/23/beer-review-treats-of-strength-icarus-brewing/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=beer-review-treats-of-strength-icarus-brewing Sat, 23 Dec 2023 18:00:00 +0000 https://thebeerthrillers.com/?p=13378 Happy Festivus

Its a Festivus for the Rest of Us! Happy Festivus everyone! How are you celebrating this tremendous holiday? Hopefully with some wonderful craft beer!

Today I’m taking a look at Treats of Strength by Icarus Brewing. As you can see in the background is the LEGO Seinfeld set.

Got this for the first time two years ago, and have been getting it each year since for Festivus. At the first time we had to do some finagling with Icarus Brewing’s in person shipping, and then had to get them from friends of friends.

For more Festivus beer fun – check out our Airing of Grievances review here: (Beer Review: Airing of Grievances (Black Flag Brewing Co.))

And now as Festivus rolls on, we come to the feats of strength.

And now, as Festivus rolls on, we come to the beer review.

Beer Review: Treats of Strength (Icarus Brewing)

Feats of Strength by Icarus Brewing (photo taken last year on a snow shovel day)

Beer: Treats of Strength
Brewery: Icarus Brewing
Style: Stout – Imperial / Double Pastry
ABV: 12.4%
IBU: N / A
Untappd Description: Traditional Chocolate Nutella Babka inspired Pastry stout brewed with Two Row Barley, Pale Chocolate Malt, Oated and Wheated. Conditioned on Organic Cacao Nibs and Hazelnut Flour for an extended period.

Let’s Rumble!

Lets deep dive into this delicious beer. First up is always appearance, and this beer is certainly a beauty. No grievances here yet. This is jet black – black like Razor Ramon’s hair, black as in black hole black. The head is a nice light brown, pillowy, foamy head with varied bubble sizes. Head retention is on point, and it leaves wonderful lacing on the glass as I sipped.

Aroma is a wonderful chocolate, like we’re just inhaling a dessert. All the rich, warm, decadent dessert notes you would expert from a pastry stout shine through – chocolate, cocoa nibs, vanilla, hazelnut, nutella; it all kind of makes a medley of a wonderful aroma for your nose when you sniff into the glass.

This is a very rich, decadent and delicious beer. Its also as Josh would say “A big damn beer” clocking in at 12.4% ABV, and ready to give you the liquid courage you need to best your old man at Feats of Strength. There’s no tinsel to this beer to distract you – its just pure dessert in a glass, you can tell its a pastry stout through and through. So gather around the Festivus pole and lets enjoy this sipper of a beer. This is full body, with a good heavy mouthfeel, a bit thick, slightly syrupy but not cloying and very minimal on the aspect of syrup. The chocolate / cocoa nibs shine through the best. The hazelnut is there like a hidden surprise peeking out as you sit back, relax after telling everyone all of your grievances, and enjoy yourself a big beer. This is a great Festivus – December 23rd – or winter beer, maybe even a Christmas beer if your into that kind of thing. Start a yule log or a fire going, put your feet up, and slowly sip this one long into the night. Its even perfect after a long shift at work where you only get home at nearly 11 PM at night after dealing with lots of humans all day (not that I would know or anything). If you love big stouts (12.4% ABV after all) that are heavy hitters, with not a ton of booze flavor, but a lot of real beer flavor – than get to Icarus Brewing and pick up some Treats of Strength to give you the strength and courage you need to defeat your dad in the Feats of Strength!

My Untappd Rating: ****.25
Global Untappd Rating: 4.05 (as of 12.23.23)

Treats of Strength – Festivus 2023

Airing of Grievances, Feats of Strength, and a Festivus Miracle

This was supposed to be a beer review I was gonna do two years ago in 2021. For whatever reason, I didn’t get around to it in 2021, and was too busy with Scarlet just having been born, and everything else in 2022. So here it is in 2023. (Check out – Airing of Grievances by Black Flag Brewing.)

So thats the Festivus Miracle – I finally wrote the review. On our Facebook page – we currently have a thread about craft beer ‘airing of grievances’ so you can check that out and add your grievance(s) to our growing list.

This is an article from Mental Floss about 9 things you didn’t know about Festivus:

For feats of strength – moving lots of kegs and pallets and pallets of beer today equals my feats of strength, so I’m enjoying relaxing and having a nice beer.

Cheers All and Thanks for Reading!

All of Our Nerd Content

Here’s all of our nerd content, served up best in one single place. Enjoy!

I know ya’ll here for the nerd reviews. So check out our other nerd reviews below:

Star Wars:

Futurama

Lord of the Rings:

Magic the Gathering:

Zelda:

Rick and Morty:

Space Balls:

Game of Thrones:

The Simpsons:

Back to the Future:

Scrooged:

Groundhog Day:

A Christmas Story:

The Peanuts:

Pro Wrestling:

Soccer:

Stephen King:

World Cup:

Phillies:

Philadelphia Eagles:

Matrix:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:

HP Lovecraft / Cthulhu:

The Shining:

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Seinfeld:

The Muppets:

Other:

 

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.

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]]> 13881 Beer Review: Airing of Grievances (Black Flag Brewing Co.) https://thebeerthrillers.com/2021/12/23/beer-review-airing-of-grievances-black-flag-brewing-co/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=beer-review-airing-of-grievances-black-flag-brewing-co Thu, 23 Dec 2021 16:52:10 +0000 https://thebeerthrillers.com/?p=8474
Airing of Grievances by Black Flag Brewing Company in Columbia Maryland

Happy Festivus

Happy Festivus everyone! Its finally here!

Happy Festivus

Its always a joyous time of year, to get together with friends, and family, and celebrate Festivus! December 23rd is the day to honor the rest of us, with the best holiday thats ever happened – Festivus. Its the time to spend with family, friends; to gather around your table and enjoy a small feast, set up an aluminum pole with a good strength to weight ratio, and to air all of those grievances you’ve had with everyone… before you select one person for your feats of strength.

So grab your aluminum pole, get your friends together, air your grievances, call H&H Bagel and tell them you’re on strike, and await a Festivus miracle – because who knows, you might be called out for the feats of strength and you might need it.

Airing of Grievances

What are some of your grievances you need to air? With family and friends? Or with the beer industry? Or with life in general? COVID-19 is still getting a large share of my grievances in 2021. Especially this new Omicron variant. Human beings are definitely getting a large amount of my grievances as well. The craft beer’s misogynistic worldview that is slowly changing (but not fast enough) is a large grievance for many in the industry (myself included). The lack of diversification. Etc. Etc. Etc.

So what are yours?

Black Flag Brewing Company

Black Flag Brewing Company has been on my radar for a long time now. Known for using pop cultural and nerd culture references for a while, they first hit my radar when they did a Final Fantasy series a while back, particularly their ‘Black Mage’ beer. We first got to check them out back in October when we did our travels through Columbia Maryland after the Brewfest for MS.

You can read more about our travels that day here: Going Hysteric Through Columbia Maryland – Brewfest for MS, Hysteria Brewing Company, Sapwoods Brewing, and Black Flag Brewing.

So leading up to this week, we had a couple of choice places to go and get some ‘Festivus’ or ‘Seinfeld’ style beers. Second Sin Brewing in Bristol released a Seinfeld themed beer – “Cherry Seinfeld”. And Icarus Brewing released a Feats of Strength stylized beer called ‘Treats of Strength’. And of course, Black Flag released ‘Airing of Grievances’. I did the online ordering of Icarus Brewing Company’s ‘Treats of Strength’ along with their Festivus glass – and it got delivered to a friend’s cousin’s house. Unfortunately, I won’t be able to get it from them until after Christmas break. But don’t worry – we’ll definitely be doing a review of it.

What we decided to do, was go do a tour of Maryland again. Which you can read here: Ambling Around Annapolis Rocks, Frederick, and Columbia Maryland: Annapolis Rocks, Attaboy Beer, Idiom Brewing, Steinhardt Brewing, Smoketown Creekside, The Brewer’s Art Tavern, and Black Flag Brewing.

I also got to pick up the new Star Wars themed beer – “Let the Haze Flow Through You” while at Black Flag as well (though, the other Star Wars themed beer – “This Isn’t the Haze You’re Looking For” was sold out), so it was certainly a double win, and a wonderful trip. (I can guarantee you will see a beer review of that on the blog as well, don’t you worry.)

But enough preambling, let’s discuss the brewery itself.

The back wall at Black Flag Brewing Company

Black Flag Brewing Company is a micro brewery from Columbia, Maryland. (An hour and 30 to hour and 45 minutes south of Harrisburg Pennsylvania.) According to Untappd it has 432 unique beers with a total of 157,180 ratings, and a global average rating of 3.87 as of 12.23.21. They have no brewery description listed on Untappd.

They are known for a lot of unique and nerdy beer names, such as ‘Nerd Herder’, ‘Black Mage’, ‘Airing of Grievances’, ‘Z. Morris’, ‘K. Kapowski’, ‘Let the Haze Flow Through You’, etc. They definitely have a ‘geeky’ or ‘nerd – chic’ (or ‘geek – chic’ or whatever cool modern hipster naming they use nowadays) vibe to their brewery. I’ve gotten to get to the brewery twice now, and have enjoyed all of the beers, and definitely dig the vibe. The first time we went was a late Saturday night, and loved sitting at the bar, and the second time we went was on a Thursday during the dinner hours and got a table and it was a jumping full bar. Both were great experiences, and both times we left with beer to take back to PA.

Beer Review

Alright, alright, arlight. Lets finally get to the beer review… its why you’re probably here anyway right?

So lets do it then!

Airing of Grievances by Black Flag Brewing Co.

Beer: Airing of Grievances
Brewery: Black Flag Brewing Co.
Style: Stout – Imperial / Double
ABV: 9%
IBU: None
Untappd Description: This amped up version of our classics gingerbread stout features deep chocolate and coffee notes inherent to the malt build with a robust addition of nutmeg, gingerbread, and milk sugar to give ample flavor.

This smells like you just kicked over and stomped on some poor little kid’s gingerbread house. Or you just bit the head off your little sister’s gingerbread man and play – acted like it had no head and was now a headless zombie wandering around the countryside looking to zombify the townsfolk on Christmas morning…. ….not that I would ever have done anything like that. Just saying…. But anyway, yes, the aroma on this bad boy is strong nutmeg, strong cinnamon, strong stout notes,

Appearance is a dark black, a Nietzsche ‘staring into the void’ black, a ‘Razor Ramon hair’ black. Black as my ex-wife’s soul black. (Oooh… that might be a bit too dark, huh? Maybe thats somebody’s grievance to air this year… aha! See how I segued that right back to the beer? Boom! Nailed it…. moving on….) This is a dark, creamy looking stout, with a very full heavy brown to tannish head. The bubbles are varied and interspersed, and it left lovely lacing down the glass. Even when I had it as a taster in the brewery it had a lovely head to it, and looked overall creamy.

This one is gonna hit you strong and hard and fast with that nutmeg and ginger and cinnamon. You are getting a hammer to the face Thor style with strong waves of gingerbread house goodness. It might be a bit too intense for some, and it is a bit heavy. There’s also a bit of a coffee bitterness to this that underlies it all as well, so that really seems to kick up the ante on the ginger and cinnamon and nutmeg, making this a bit strong for some. The milk sugar does add a creaminess to this, a light, softening to it, but the nutmeg, ginger, and coffee really hits hard and strong and powers through it. The stout base is very good, its strong, and its a heavy hitter, but at 9% its not too powerful as to kill you on the booziness or make your head swim. There is nothing cloying or too sweet, nothing off putting, and the mouthfeel is just right, a heavy dense beer with no papery watery-ness to it. There’s no off flavors or anything off putting. No horrible aftertaste, but you will get strong ‘ginger burps’ from this (and possibly even hiccups as my friend did). This is the perfect beer to cozy up to on a cold Festivus night after you’ve defeated the weakest family member in a feat of strength, and you’ve aired all of your grievances with everyone, and finally kicked them all out of your wretched home, to get to sit down and relax. Possibly watch the newest Matrix movie on HBO Max (which will most likely get added to your grievance list for 2022), or watch the Thursday Night football game, or just avoid all human contact due to the Omicron variant running rampant. No matter how you celebrate Festivus this year, this would be a welcomed addition to it, as its a terrific and wonderful stout. I imagine it would pair perfectly with cookies and hurt feelings (due to the grievances being aired). Just make sure that pole has a strong strength to weight ratio. As you might need it if you kill a four pack of these bad boys on your own.

My Untappd Rating: ****
Global Average Untappd Rating: 3.79 (as of 12.23.21)

Lets Celebrate

So what’s everyone doing today to celebrate Festivus? I’m wrapping this article up (11:29AM), and will soon be heading out to finish getting the last second stuff for my daughter’s stockings. (Already got their gifts, have no fear, I won’t be reaching for a doll, and fighting a man for it, and coming to the conclusion that there has to be another way…). What brewery or beer shenanigans is everyone getting up into?

In the meantime, enjoy some of these Festivus related GIFs. (I had to include them in the article. Had. To. Just. Plain. Out. Had. To. Its like a law or something. Seinfeld and Festivus by extension was made for GIFs at a time when there really wasn’t even GIFs. Oh, to go back to the 90s and watch Seinfeld again as a young teen and fall in love with it, before the internet was what it is now. Back in the days of AOL dial-up sounding like a beached whale getting stepped on, or before AIM and leaving some kind of ridiculous ‘BRB’ message, etc.)

Anyway, I present to you some Festivus GIFs:

Its a Festivus Miracle! A bunch of Festivus related GIFs!

Icarus Festivus

For those curious about the Icarus Festivus beer I mentioned earlier – Treats of Strength – my friend’s cousin has picked it up, along with the Festivus glass. They will be returning after Christmas, so I should be able to get my grubby little hands on it sometime before the new year, and will hopefully have a review of it up before then. (Crazy to think that just tomorrow will be December 24th – Christmas Eve – already, and after that Christmas, then a week until News Year Eve / New Years Day).

Anyway, here is a picture Icarus Brewing posted today to celebrate Festivus:

Icarus Brewing – Treats of Strength

Want More Seinfeld?

Want more Seinfeld? (Don’t we all! And obviously Netflix did considering the huge deal they signed just to have it on their network!) Want to know some background history on Festivus? Well here you go.

This is an article from Mental Floss about 9 things you didn’t know about Festivus:

Our review of a Seinfeld related beer:

Happy for Christmas, or are you a Scrooge? Here’s two more Christmas themed beers we’ve reviewed:

For More Pop Culture / Nerd Culture / Popular Beer Names

Looking for more interesting beer names? References to something obscure and different? Well, we’ve covered plenty here on The Beer Thrillers. Check them out below:

Star Wars:

Rick and Morty:

Space Balls:

Game of Thrones:

The Simpsons:

Back to the Future:

Scrooged:

A Christmas Story:

Pro Wrestling:

Matrix:

Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles:

Seinfeld:

Other:

Thanks For Reading

As always, thank you everyone for reading. Do you have comments, suggestions, questions? Airing of grievances? Issues with the blog? Is the site working good? Something you’d like to see us review, write about, read, etc? Let us know in the comments section here on the blog. Also be sure to check out all of our social media pages (listed below).

I’m heading out to do some last second Christmas shopping, and to celebrate Festivus. I would like to wish everyone a very happy holidays, a wonderful Happy Festivus, a Merry Christmas, and everything else. I should have a post tomorrow night that will be Christmas related (you’ll have to wait and see!). And I’m back to work on Christmas day, but I might be posting something in the morning. Who knows. We’ll see.

Until then, I hope you are able to defeat your challenger(s) in the feats of strength today, so you can end Festivus.


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.

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!

Airing of Grievances (taster at the brewery, and can at home)

]]> 8474 Beer Review: Scrooge IPA (Iron Hill Brewery) https://thebeerthrillers.com/2019/12/24/beer-review-scrooge-ipa-iron-hill-brewery/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=beer-review-scrooge-ipa-iron-hill-brewery Wed, 25 Dec 2019 02:40:16 +0000 https://thebeerthrillers.com/?p=1786
Scrooge IPA by Iron Hill Brewery and Restaurant

The Holidays are a time for fun, merriment, joy, mirth, family, friends, and…. to the Beer Thrillers; just as importantly – beer. So starting right off, on this day in between days – Christmas Eve – let us here at The Beer Thrillers say Happy Holidays. December 23rd kicks off one of my favorite holidays – Festivus. Just type Festivus into Google and find yourself fully immersed in it, with the pole running up the left hand side, a bevy of Seinfeld quotes, and all the wonders therein lies.

Cosmo Kramer wishes you a Happy Festivus

For those not in the know, or not fans of Seinfeld (which coincidentally celebrated its 30th anniversary of its season 1 this year…. shows how old I am now!), Festivus was a holiday made up by George Castanza’s dad. The original Festivus aired on The Strike episode back in 1997, and was immediately one of the most beloved episodes, and ever since it has gone on to become practically its own cult following, even by those who aren’t fans of Seinfeld or even watched it.

A Festivus infographic

Its a holiday that eludes commercialism, instead of a Christmas tree you have a Festivus pole, just a bland aluminum pole with no glitz or glitter or glamour.

The biggest traditions of Festivus is the “Airing of Grievances” and the “Feats of Strength” followed by a Festivus dinner and possibly Festivus miracles! The Airing of Grievances is when you get to tell those, all of those, around you all of your grievances against them… that you’ve kept bottled up since last Festivus. And now you can finally tell them whats what and let them know how you truly feel. Following this is the Feats of Strength, where people get to call out other people and wrestle to see who is victorious. It is often a chance for fathers to compete against their sons.

The Origins of Festivus

So my Festivus miracle for you is a new beer review on Christmas Eve! Having done my due duty of work (and even some overtime) come home to write this blog about one of the beers I had the following night at Iron Hill Brewery and Restaurant in downtown Hershey.

A perfectly apropos name for this time of year – Scrooged IPA was one of the several beers I tried at the brewery / restaurant.

Scrooged IPA by Iron Hill

Beer: Scrooged IPA
Brewery: Iron Hill Brewery and Restaurant (Hershey, Pennsylvania)
Style: IPA – American
ABV: 6.2%
IBU: 60
Untappd Write-Up: American-style IPA brewed with a generous amount of hops for a pronounced hop flavor and bitterness that matches the beer’s namesake.

Bill Murray in Scrooged

What a good beer name for Festivus and Christmas Eve. We all know some scrooges in our lives; bitter, angry, upset at the world folks, not unlike a very bitter and piney IPA – am-I-right?

What a wonderful segue into the beer review huh? Ahh, this is how writers write. I feel like Hemmingway would be so proud. So to keep him proud, lets keep it quick and to the point and discuss this bitter IPA.

Bill Murray from Scrooged

Appearance is light yellow, clear, normal IPA beer coloring. This foam head, nothing crazy there, and not a whole lot of lacing from this either. This is what exactly its supposed to – a beer, specifically an IPA. Can never fault a beer when it looks exactly like what its supposed to.

Aroma is piney and earthy hops. You can smell that this is a full on old school, West Coast style IPA. It has a pine and bit of citrus smell, it has an earthy undertone, that you can just tell is going to be bitter and nothing like New England IPAs with their lactose and everything.

From first sip you definitely get that – all of that hop and West Coast IPA style – right upfront. You get west coast IPA beer taste immediately, old school IPA, with the bitter hops and the full flavor of pine, citrus, and bitterness. This does its namesake proud with the bittering but not to the point of being a hop bomb or too much and taking away from the beer. You still get notes of citrus, orange rinds, coriander a bit, but lots of pine notes and an earth undertone to it. There is no doubt as you drink this that its anything but an IPA and especially a west coast style. It fits the style perfectly. Its ABV is low, at 6.2% so its not going to hit you too strong, and the IBU is a good solid 60 so you certainly feel those hops at work on this one.

Now, I don’t know if anyone cares about Untappd ratings or not…

Bill Murray acting it up in Scrooged

Oh… ok, since you care, let me tell you.

My Untappd Rating: ***.25
Global Untappd Rating: 3.68 (as of 12.24.19)

For those of you unfamiliar with the GIFs they come from the movie Scrooged (1988) starring Bill Murray. A retelling of A Christmas Carol. Its certainly a classic, and one of the many movies that Drew and Esteban and co discuss on their Christmas movies podcast. Which you can listen here: WTF Did I Just Watch: Christmas Movies.

Hopefully you enjoyed this ‘interesting’ beer review, filled with pictures of Festivus and gifs of Scrooged. Given the name of the beer when I was out at Iron Hill I knew I had to do a beer review on the blog here of it, and knew I had to incorporate the elements of the Holidays. Perhaps in the future this will become a regular feature where at the various holidays I review holiday themed beer and give some thoughts and reviews on it. Who knows, hopefully they’ll be many (many, many, many, many, many) more Christmas’s here at The Beer Thrillers blog for many reviews to come. Fingers crossed. As long as you all keep liking and reading the blog, I’ll keep posting to it.

You can expect a slew of Tree House beer reviews in the coming days. First up will be Sap which I’ll be having at Christmas dinner. After that, I have Doppleganger, Haze, Julius, and Autumn to enjoy and review. These all come courtesy of Dan Arndt who along with his fiance was up north and brought them back down to me. So major kudos and thank you’s go his way.

As always, if you enjoyed this beer review, make sure to check out some of our other recent reviews: The Hog by Boneshire Brew Works, My Watch Has Ended by Brewery Ommegang, Ice Dreamz by Pizza Boy, and a beer flight of scratches by Troegs Brewing; also check out J. Doncevic’s reviews of Colonization by Adroit Theory, and Envie by Parish Brewing, and check out our contributor Let Us Drink Beer’s review of Koki Bunni.

At this time of the year, we here at The Beer Thrillers wish all of our readers a very Happy and Hoppy Holidays. Be it Festivus, Hanukah, Christmas, Kwanzaa, The Festival of Lights, or any other way you enjoy celebrating with friends and family, we wish you the very best. May your 2019 end happily and your 2020 begin even better!

Cheers!

-B. Kline

The Scrooged IPA by Iron Hill Brewery and Restaurant from Hershey Pennsylvania
]]> 1786 Beer Review: The Hog (Boneshire Brew Works) https://thebeerthrillers.com/2019/12/22/beer-review-the-hog-boneshire-brew-works/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=beer-review-the-hog-boneshire-brew-works Sun, 22 Dec 2019 15:47:43 +0000 https://thebeerthrillers.com/?p=1764
The Hog by Boneshire Brew Works, in collaboration with their muggers of the year (2018 – 2019) Mike Luckovich and Dan Ploch.

This will be as much a review about The Hog by Boneshire Brew Works as it will be a review of Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker……….. I kid…. I kid…. I promise I won’t get into Star Wars too much here (well, maybe until the end of the post). We’ll see how it goes, play it by ear (or the Force ?).

But to set up why I’m even mentioning Star Wars, lets just say that Thursday (Dec. 19, 2019) was unofficially Star Wars day for me. Thursday being my day off (my Saturday; for now) was perfect. The Mandalorian released episode 7 “The Reckoning” on Wednesday, so I watched that first thing in the morning, then spent most of the day reading “Resistance Reborn” (my book review of it here: GoodReads – Resistance Reborn) and getting hyped for “The Rise of Skywalker”. We were set up with tickets for the first showing at 6PM at the Regal Cinema, so after picking Tony up, stopping at Rutter’s for gas, we had to pre-game before the movie, and what better place than Boneshire to pre-game for Star Wars?

Mug club members of the year – Mike Luckovich (left) and Daniel Ploch (right) with their brew – The Hog.

So what is The Hog? As I’m sure you’re far more interested in reading about the beer (the actual point of the beer review) than my thoughts on Star Wars (…or are you?) or what led to me getting to the brewery; lets get into this delicious beer and how it was made.

Checking to make sure everything is A-O-K

First off, given Boneshire Brew Works and their logo, its about time we had a beer called The Hog. Its perfectly apropos and was a very fitting beer for the brewery and for all involved.

This was a collaboration beer between Boneshire Brew Works (Alan Miller) and the two muggers of the year from their mug club – Daniel Ploch and Mike Luckovich. If you’ve ever visited the brewery, you’ve seen them. Their regulars, and that might be an understatement. As most breweries do – Boneshire Brew Works does a mug club; and there is always perks of being a mug club member (bigger pours, cheaper drafts, special events, special contests, cheaper merchandise, etc.) and at Boneshire the two muggers (mug club members) of the year got to join Alan Miller for a collaboration brew. This was said product of that collaboration.

Mike Luckovich working away at his collaboration – The Hog

In a bit of a first for Boneshire, this is a Triple IPA. Boneshire Brew Works is definitely known for some wonderful IPAs; you can see find reviews on many of them here on the blog.

Boneshire Brew Works IPAs on The Beer Thrillers:

And this is just barely scratching the surface of their amazing IPAs. Not even listed here is Green Machine (and double dry hopped Green Machine) which is probably their most recognizable IPA and possibly their best one.

Dan Ploch stirring the wort of The Hog

But The Hog is their first Triple IPA. They’ve done numerous variants; New England IPAs, Double New England IPAs, West Coast IPAs, Double West Coast IPAs, and Black or RYE IPAs. But this is a big boy here, and its a strong one with a hell of a kick to it.

Mike Luckovich preparing for The Hog

Dan Ploch and Mike Luckovich put a lot of hard work, and care, into making this beer with Alan. And obviously; it goes without saying, Alan put a tremendous amount of hard work and care into the beer, just like he does with all of his creations at Boneshire Brew Works. You can tell he passionately cares about the beer, the brewing process, and his brewery. And certainly all of his hard work has been paying off. He has a staple of favorites and a packed house most nights of regulars with them bringing in many new guests, and many new guests learning about Boneshire Brew Works and checking the place out. (Which, let me put a little footnote in here – if you haven’t checked the place out. Please do so. Cannot recommend the brewery and the beer more. You won’t be disappointed.)

The Hog by Boneshire Brew Works

Beer: The Hog
Brewery: Boneshire Brew Works
Style: IPA – Triple
ABV: 9.8%
IBU: 51
Untappd Write-Up: Our collaboration with Muggers of the year 2018-2019. Mike Luckovich and Dan Ploch dreamed up this big hoppy fruit forward IPA. Brewed with Simcoe, Amarillo, Zythos, and Citra hops.

Pretty apt description here; this is a big hoppy fruit forward IPA. Its a big smash-up of fruit and citrus style hops in a powerful triple IPA with a big ABV that gets you going on this bad boy.

Appearance is a beautiful New England IPA. Its golden hued, its a little hazy, its translucent, and its bright and bold. It has a good shine and an ephemeral quality to it. This may sound like a bit of a contradiction, but its both opaque and slightly transparent. Not completely see-through, not completely clear, but as you drink, it becomes noticeably clearer and more translucent and you can see the bar behind it. It starts off super hazy from the pour out of the tap and it settles down some. It has a tremendous head with various bubbles and a nice white foam, that crests down as you drink. Leaving good lacing on the glass. No extreme sediment, no hop bits, no pulp, nothing standing out in a bad way here.

Aroma is a straight up right undercut of hop explosions nailing you. Maybe not an undercut… maybe a good crossface right through the nose. This has all of the hop notes you want in a big fruit hop beer.

Lets break down the hops used:

  • Simcoe

Simcoe is often compared to Cascade, sometimes called “Cascade on steroids”. It is described as being both fruity and earthy. It can carry notes of berry, apricot, passion fruit, and citrus, but also has pronounced aromas of pine and woodsy earth. Flavor and aroma is quite complex and unique. Simcoe is a dual-purpose hop. It is most often used in bittering additions and creates a clean, smooth bitterness along the same lines as what you would expect from magnum hops. But, unlike Magnum it holds more potential when it comes to flavor and aroma. It can impart some spicy, fruity, and earthy notes through aroma and dry hopping additions

  • Amarillo

Distinct flowery, spicy, tropical; citrus-like with qualities of orange and lemon, like Cascade but much stronger. Considered a Cascade type hop. Dual-purpose aroma and flavoring hop with low enough Co-Humulone levels to allow good bittering properties also. Often it is used in dry-hopping to augment the lemon/orange citrus character in the beer. This citrus quality makes this a particularly good variety for the wheat styles. The myrcene oils that produce the grapefruit/orange character are so high that overuse of the hop can also create a somewhat metallic flavor.

  • Zythos

It features notes and aromas of tangerine, grapefruit, pine and even pineapple. Its high alpha acid content means it can be useful for bittering but is largely intended to shine as an aroma hop.

  • Citra

Citra lends a wide range of delicate fruity characteristics including wonderful aromas and flavors of lime, grapefruit, bright orange, mango, lychee, and gooseberry. Citra is considered a flavoring/aroma hop. It does have the requisite high alpha acid and low co-humolone to make a good bittering hop, but in most cases brewers have found its bitterness too harsh.

Ok, now that we got the hops out of the way, you can see how the aroma (and flavor / taste) is so extremely fruity and hoppy. These hops are loaded into this beer and are all very fruit and citrus forward. You get heavy notes of mango, tangerine, lime, orange, lemon, with small hoints of pine, little earthyness, and it all wraps up nicely.

Enough looking at it and smelling it, lets get to drinking it. This is one delicious beer! It is extremely citrus, extremely hoppy, extremely fruit, extremely strong and powerful, and extremely delicious. I think the over usage of the word extremely here is needed. (And hey, I’m fresh off of watching The Rise of Skywalker, so extreme seems to be a right word choice). You immediately get the fruit and citrus hop notes, you are bombarded right off the bat – like from a Star Destroyer in space – of mango, orange, tangerine, lemon, lime, zest, lychee, and other fruit notes. It all kind of swirls around and hits you. There is some btitering to the hops, you get some pine notes, a little bit of earthyness, but all in all its a clean NEIPA style triple IPA. Its smooth, definitely has the feel (mouth feel, appearance, taste) of being New England style; just with a much heavy handed boozyness with the 9.8% ABV. The ABV does sneak up on you though. I think a good comparison beer for this would be Troeg’s Nimble Giant, where you don’t feel the ABV and then it kind of hits you… especially after your second or third of these; which with how smooth and how tasty it is, they go down so easily. It would be too easy to sit back on a football Sunday and kill a good number of cans of this.

This is a strong, bold, powerful, delicious Triple IPA, and Boneshire Brew Works through Alan Miller, and the collaborators Daniel Ploch and Mike Luckovich did a fantastic and wonderful job of crafting this brew. I would certainly love to see it enter ‘regular rotation’ rather than be a bullpen beer.

My Untappd Rating: ****.25 (hard to choose between ****.25 and ****.50 but settled for .25; I think after future refreshings of this, I will probably go with .50)
Global Untappd Rating: 4.34 (as of 12.21.19)

As the Winter Solstice brings the night to a close, and I wrap up this beer review; which took me longer to write than it should have; this was a fantastic beer, and a good strong first-day-of-winter Triple IPA. With the holidays upon us, we should soon be treated to Boneshire Brew Works’ Holiday Reserve 2019 (annual beer but different each year). Definitely looking forward to that to round out the year.

Sooooo…. after watching The Rise of Skywalker with Tony, drove him home, dropped him off, I was supposed to head over to Drew’s to hangout while they did their podcast on Christmas / holiday horror movies. But I got called to my parents to help them with a few things and unfortunately I didn’t have the energy at 10-10:30 after stopping at home to then go back out (20minute drive) to his house. My friend Dan and his fiance Kat were fresh home from a trip up north where they stopped at Tree House, Dan was nice enough to pick up me a few cans – Sap, Julius, Haze, Doppleganger, and Autumn. So you can definitely be sure to get some reviews on these bad boys – as lets be honest here – who doesn’t love Tree House?

For those interested in hearing the Christmas / holiday horror podcasts; you can check them out here:

The podcast is “So a Mexican and a Scot Walk Into a Bar” and you can view their full listing here: So a Mexican and a Scot Walk Into a Bar. I have been featured on a few of their podcasts now – The Irishman, The Mandalorian, Breaking Bad / El Camino Pt. 1 and Pt. 2. I typically discuss beer while discussing the movies. For the Breaking Bad pocast I brought with me Boneshire beer and for the Mandalorian and Irishman podcasts I brought Pizza Boy beer, and we also sampled some Troegs as well.

STAR WARS AHEAD

Since I started off this post about seeing Star Wars, and this being such a cultural phenomena, and Star Wars being one of my biggest joys and loves, and a huge factor into things, I can’t not use this space to discuss it. So if you have no interest in Star Wars, you can stop reading here (or skip to the bottom where I give credits, and a few last second blog comments, and my sources) or if you want to see my thoughts on Star Wars and Rise of Skywalker, you can continue. I will keep it spoiler free.

As I said, I’ll keep this spoiler free, which for the movie makes it hard to review, so this won’t be the biggest review you’ll read. At some point, somewhere, I’ll post up on my thoughts in full on it, and I’ll probably link it here in the blog. Likewise, most certainly, we’ll be doing a podcast on the movie, and it will be spoiler heavy, and you can listen to that then as well.

Star Wars: The Rise of Skywalker – Episode IX

I…. well… I didn’t hate it. Its certainly no The Last Jedi (take that however you want, but let it be known, I am not a fan of it). This is certainly not a masterpiece movie, and its probably not the final movie of the series that we needed. I will say; and this isn’t a spoiler, unless you’ve avoided movie posters, and all trailers and pictures of the movie – Emperor Palpatine’s return is…. so meh. It reeks of desperation, and it reeks of ‘we need a new bad guy!’. I know there has been some hints and things about the Emperor in the new canon’s EU (Expanded Universe) – through books like Aftermath trilogy and the comics Shattered Empire, but even then it didn’t really hint at his return, and kind of made it all seem like it was a set-up for Snoke. Who we saw in The Last Jedi is not the big main baddie. So Emperor Palpatine’s return is very meh and very lackluster.

I will say, I’m also not a fan of exactly how Kylo Ren / Ben Solo has been handled, but I think he was done very well here. Rey is super over-powered in this movie, moreso than in the previous two, and if you watch the movie, I know the explanation they’ll give, but its not really one I buy. I think another disappointing character becomes Finn. Who potentially had a very cool backstory and arc – a stormtrooper who defects, and becomes good, but that gets all kind of shunted to the side to make him just a sidekick. Poe certainly becomes a main character; far more than in The Force Awakens here. Leia is handled well… considering the real life issues of Carrie Fisher’s passing away. So there was certain limitations in how they could handle her character, and I think they did it very nicely.

At the end of this though, I think the biggest takeaway though, is that its not a good wrap of the entire saga. The whole 9 movie saga feels ‘changed’ and not for the better because of how the Sequel Trilogy (ST) impacts both the Original Trilogy (OT) and the Prequel Trilogy (PT). I know the PT had a lot of flaws and problems, but I never thought it undermined or made the OT worse. Whereas the ST feels like it made the OT worse; and undermines a lot of it. Mainly Anakin / Vader’s descent, fall, rise, and redemption. It also seems to undermine Luke in the grand scheme of those things as well. It also makes the sacrifice of our beloved characters in the OT more meaningless; and not because of their being a new war, but because its the SAME war over again, and because their characters reverted – Han – or were ruined – Luke – or underutilized – Chewie / R2-D2; only Leia really gets usage and remains primarily unscathed (as far as character persona).

I will say the movie felt impressive, and looked impressive. It was a Marvel superhero formulaic movie, mixed with a big (BIG) budget blockbuster and thrown in some Star Wars. This might be the future and new wave of Star Wars; I dunno, maybe I’m an old curmudgeon, but I’m not a fan of it. I do love The Mandalorian, and I did love Rogue One, but this trilogy just didn’t do anything for me. The lack of cohesion, the undoing of TFA by TLJ and then the undoing of TLJ by TRoS, just…. its flattening and its disappointing and depressing. Especially given that this is the complete wrap-up of 40 some years and 9 movies and so much more.

My movie ranks for Star Wars now goes:

5 – 4 – R1 – 6 – 3 – 7 – Solo – 9 – 1 – 2 – 8

Obviously thats subjective, so take it with a grain of salt, and some of those could be interchanged. And with future viewings might change too. Your mileage will obviously vary. If you want to discuss it more, I will answer questions / thoughts in comments (or we can move to private then if you want to discuss spoilers). Please, I’d love to hear your thoughts on the movie, so be sure to leave some thoughts or comments here on the blog, I’d love to hear it!

—END STAR WARS—

Ok, back to blog stuff and this post stuff. Be sure if you check out The Hog at Boneshire Brew Works, you check in at The Wall along the back leading to the bathroom, that is where you will most likely see Mike Luckovich, and by the corner of the bar is where you will most likely see Dan Ploch. Tell them good job and congrats.

Hop sources are:

You can check out Boneshire Brew Works here on Untappd: Boneshire Brew Works. And make sure you check out The Hog on Untappd. And check out The Wall location on Untappd to see the collaborators.

As always, thanks for reading, be sure to leave a comment – on either the beer, or Star Wars, or Rise of Skywalker, or whatever, be sure to click follow, like, rate, all that good stuff. And we would as always, ever so gladly appreciate you following us on Twitter and Facebook and passing this on and sharing it. Hopefully you all enjoy reading this as much as we do writing it and drinking it.

In the coming weeks you can expect some end of year re-caps and beer reviews and brewery things, as well as our trip out to Mellow Mink this thursday (Dec. 26th). So be on the lookout for that as well. Me and Josh will be making that trip, so we will both most likely be writing something up. Sorry this review took a while writing and getting out there, started the title of it Thursday night, did a little writing Friday amongst the thousands of errands I ran, wrote the bulk of it Saturday night (Winter Solstice) after work, but finished it this morning (Sunday the 22nd). But its done and out there, so hopefully you enjoy.

Also, check out our buddies at Let Us Drink Beer’s blog where they interviewed beer bloggers, writers, journalists, podcasters, and YouTubers from around the country – (myself included) – and asked them what their drinking for Christmas. You can find the article here: What Craft Beer Enthusiasts Are Drinking For Christmas.

As always everyone, cheers, and enjoy your holidays, tomorrow is Festivus afterall. Can’t wait to hear some airing of grievances and seeing some feats of strength.

Cheers all!

-B. Kline

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