Happy Mothers Day

Lets first start this off with doing a big shout out to all the mothers out there. We wouldn’t be here without them. (Quite literally.) So we here at The Beer Thrillers acknowledge and congratulate all the mothers – we know its not easy. (Ask my mom, she would gladly tell you horror stories of raising…. not me of course, my sister. I was an angel. Perfect child. Clearly the favorite. My sister on the other hand…. *shivers*.)

Every year around this time my grandmother’s peony bush blooms out front. So I cut off some of the flowers, and cut off some similar flowers (this year I cut a few branches of the dogwood and some azalea flowers) and took them out to grammy’s grave. Peonies bloom around early – middle of May and don’t last super long, but have wonderful beautiful flowers and a great aroma. You can read more on them here at Wikipedia: Peony. (Quick fun fact: The peony is named after Paeon [also spelled Paean], a student of Asclepius, the Greek god of medicine and healing. In Greek mythology, when Asclepius became jealous of his pupil, Zeus saved Paeon from the wrath of Asclepius by turning him into the peony flower.)

Yesterday we celebrated Mothers Day at my parents house and I brought my girls over. As per tradition whenever we all get together, we typically play some form of board game or card game. The girls love Organ Attack so we played that with my mom.

Organ Attack was created by the writer of The Awkward Yeti, Nick Seluk. I reviewed one of his comic books here: Book Review: The Heart and Brain (The Awkard Yeti) (by Nick Seluk). The card game is fun, and gets my daughters all in a fiery mood fighting each other to remove and eliminate their organs. It is a fun game, that does help the girls learn a little bit about anatomy (like what diseases target what organs, what the organs do, etc.). There is some awkward moments though, like giving my mom cancer – something that she has survived three different forms. But in true champion and warrior form, we turn it all into jokes and my mom laughs, especially when she got to play the Medicine card on it and remove it. She even joked that it was easier than chemotherapy again.

All in all, mothers day was a lot of fun (well technically Mothers Day Eve, but it was our mothers day). Can’t beat a day spent with family, playing games, delivering flowers, little things like this in life is what’s nice. Like Kurt Vonnegut would say quoting his uncle (Bernard Vonnegut): “If this isn’t nice, what is?”

Boneshire Brew Works

Anyone familiar with the blog knows that Boneshire Brew Works is my local go to brewery. Its about four minutes from home and all but within walking distance. (Rubber Soul is another, also within walking distance.) Needless to say we have covered many beer reviews by them: Sunburst, Pigtoberfest, Dillston, Harrishire, Fall Hippo, Blue Hippo, AuZealand 2.0, Tried and True (Mango), Caucus Race 6.0, The Hog, Long Tongue Liar, Pandemic Pils, Iscariot, Road Less Traveled, Good Walk Spoiled, S’Mores, LazaRIS, and reviewed the flight of Shire variants; we’ve also covered them in various news articles: Boneshire Brew Works Celebrates 5th Anniversary, Pigtoberfest 2021, Boneshire Brew Works Expands With Second Location, Boneshire Brew Works Celebrates 3 Years, Brewery Hopping – 12.27.19, and Breweries around Harrisburg Area (2019).

Soooo….. yea….. I would say we’ve covered quite a few of their brews here on the blog.

And all for good reason – they make some really wonderful beers. Grace (this beer) included. So when I heard they were releasing a special barrel aged beer – and that it was named Grace – I couldn’t slap my money down fast enough for this beaut. It was first released for sale for us mug club members, and then went on sale to the public after that. It was 20$ for the bottle.

From Untappd – Boneshire Brew Works is a microbrewery from Harrisburg, Pennsylvania. They have 189 unique beers. They have 41,401 ratings with a global average rating of 3.84 (as of 5.8.22). Their Untappd description reads: “Welcome to Boneshire Brew Works. We are located in Harrisburg, Pennsylvania on Derry Street. Soon you will be able to have our beer and sodas throughout Central Pennsylvania, as they are already flowing in our tasting room. Follow us for updates on beer releases, events, and brewery happenings through your favorite social media site.”

Beer Review

Beer: Grace
Brewery: Boneshire Brew Works
Style: Wild Ale – American
ABV: 7.5% / 6%
IBU: No IBU
Untappd Description: We brewed this beer several years ago and put it to sleep in American Chardonnay barrels with 2 strains of Brettanomyces. This beer is very complex with orange marmalade, subtle coriander spice, dry oakiness, heavy Brett funk and slight sourness.

This is a beautiful, beautiful, beautiful beer. Lovely in appearance, aroma, taste, everything, it just nails it. As per always with my beer reviews, I do it in the order of – appearance, aroma, taste. (Or at least I try to remember to do it that way. No guarantees.) [But have no fears, for this review I am.]

Starting off with the appearance – like I said, its beautiful. Its got a light reddish golden like hue. It has a very striking resemblance to some wines of the lighter scale. its fluorescent in a way, and completely clear. No sediment, no floaties, no deposits. Nice carbonation, slight small head that retains for a fair bit.

Aroma is an interesting mix of wine, Belgian, saison, and a mixture of other notes. Notes of the coriander spice, the grape, the oak, and lots of the chardonnay, gives off the heavy wine like impressions, but the coriander spice and the Brett aroma also gives off strong Belgian and Wilde Ale / Saison impressions as well; making this a wonderfully complex beer.

This is a deliciously tart, mildly puckering, wine like beer, designed for a classier age (not like those blasters they use in uncivilized times). It is a gorgeous looking beer, looks very wine like, and has just a wonderful appearance straight from the bottle to the glass, and undoing wax sealed bottles is always fun. (Really, there’s gotta be an easy way to unseal waxed and sealed bottles, but I haven’t found it yet.) The carbonation on this was nice, and the overall appearance is a medley of wine and Belgian styles, so I dig that. The bottle says its 6% ABV, but the Untappd listing for it says its 7.5%. This has a very complex overall taste to it. Its got a lot of wine attributes and tastes; you get a heavy dosage of oak, grape, Brett, funk, tart, with a dryness, and then you get some subtle notes of coriander spice, orange and orange marmalade, The tartness and dryness to the beer really holds it up well and keeps the medley of different flavors in a very nice sipping beer; this is a perfect dinner beer to share with someone over a nice course meal. This isn’t mean to be a sessionable or poundable beer that you have with your buddies while watching the Phillies blow another game or something similar, this is meant to be a lovely dinner beer, with candlelight, nice music, steak, mashed potatoes, garlic green beans, etc. Thats what makes it so enjoyable too, knowing the work and craftsmanship that went into this beer, making it such a delicious, well rounded beer, adds to the overall enjoyment of the beer itself; knowing that it was worked on hard, that it was barrel aged, that time was spent on this beer, all adds to its overall quality and flavor. Its the small enjoyable things like this – knowing that someone cares about their work and craft – that makes the moments and beer like this so much better. All in all, the flavors work so well, the aroma is lovely, the appearance of the beer is wonderful, and everything about this beer is just great.

My Untappd Rating: ****.5
Global Average Untappd Rating: 3.95 (as of 5.8.22)

Grandma’s and Mothers

Its so nice to get to celebrate Mothers Day and thank my mom for all she has done for me, for my girls, for my sister, and as a teacher all she has done for everyone else. My Grandma (Grammy) Grace was just as much a mother figure helping raise me as I grew up, and so was my Great Grandma – Florence Speck. All three of these women are / and were – such tough as nails ladies, who never gave up. My great grandma passed away at 99, after a long fight of dementia and alzheimers, my mom has survived several fights against cancer.

Its a nice nod to my Grammy that I got to do a beer review with a beer with her name. I think she would have been tickled pink by that. I got to do one for my Great Grandma as well – Florence by Hill Farmstead. I know she would have laughed about that, she loved stealing my dad’s beers when he still lived at home with them and going to college.

So let me just say one last time – Happy Mothers Day to all the moms out there who are doing such a wonderful job.

Thanks For Reading

Thanks for reading everyone. I know this was a bit of a longer winded review, but nice thing is you can always just scroll by my extra crap and get right to the beer review if you’d like. I tend to meander, my apologies for that. I do enjoy everyone indulging me though on all that, especially a beer like this.

I hope you enjoyed the review, and if you have any comments, questions, or anything else, let me know in the comments or contact us through the contact page or e-mail us at thebeerthrillers@gmail.com. We love to hear from you all!

Thanks for reading, Happy Mothers Day, and cheers everyone!

-B. Kline

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.

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!

Well, I haven’t heard anything negative or anything after the first book review, so I’m plowing forward and jumping into the second book review here for the blog (well, third overall, but second non – beer related). Going to make some changes to the book reviewing process this time around (and going forward) similar to how the beer reviews are setup. Like a scientific process if you will.

Changes to the Book Reviews

Similar to how the beer reviews on the blog here have a set style to them, where I give some background information, some lead up to the review, the information on the beer (provided by Untappd), and recently I also added a section devoted to the brewery behind the beer; I will do the same for the book reviews now on the site.

I’ll give a little prelude to the review itself, like why I chose this book, how I came about having it to read it, etc. Any contextual information, etc. Then go into a bit of a background on the author, any of his or her other works, if I’ve read him or her before, etc. Followed by the blurb of the book (provided by GoodReads or Amazon), and from there go into my actual review.

My actual reviews will follow a somewhat similar pattern, but not always be the exact same. For my beer reviews I usually broke it down into paragraphs of “appearance, aroma, taste”, where with the book reviews I might break it down into some paragraphs that might follow from one review to the next, but not always. Especially in different genres or when reviewing fiction vs. non-fiction.

The Background

So let’s get right to it; whats the background of the book and how I came to read it. Well, I finished the previous book (Wit’s End by James Geary) and was looking for a quick book to read on my bookshelf, and one in the vein of philosophy, and non-fiction, and deep thinking books. Or at least a book that would make me think, but also be a quick read. These are the ones that always make me feel smarter than I am (not a hard task by any means) because their borderline deep, and I can read them fast. So I feel good about myself.

I had picked this up at the Barnes and Nobles in Camp Hill, without reading it or really looking at it, just knowing Machiavelli and interested in reading a biography of him. Giving me a gift card to a bookstore is dangerous, and I shouldn’t be allowed in a bookstore without adult supervision. I’ll walk in with a 25$ gift card, and walk out 300$ less in my wallet. Guaranteed.

Niccolò Machiavelli has always been a figure and a person of interest for me. Little is known about him and he just has this air of mystery, enigma, and a convoluted history due to how his name is used in modern times. Could he really be as ruthless as he seems due to ‘The Prince’? Could he be as cutthroat as we’ve made him out to be? Is Machiavelli the essence of Machiavellian or Machiavellianism?

Machiavelli

What all do we know about Niccolò Machiavelli? Not a whole whole lot really. But, you know you must an interesting person to say the least, when they eponymous your name. Specifically with the way Machiavellianism or Machiavellian is used in modern times. Before going into the book in question, a little background on Machiavelli, as per his Wikipedia page:

Niccolò di Bernardo dei Machiavelli (/ˌmækiəˈvɛli/, also US: /ˌmɑːk-/; Italian: [nikkoˈlɔ mmakjaˈvɛlli]; 3 May 1469 – 21 June 1527) was an Italian Renaissance diplomat, philosopher and writer, best known for The Prince (Il Principe), written in 1513.^[5] He has often been called the father of modern political philosophy and political science.^[6]

For many years he served as a senior official in the Florentine Republic with responsibilities in diplomatic and military affairs. He wrote comedies, carnival songs, and poetry. His personal correspondence is of high importance to historians and scholars.^[7] He worked as secretary to the Second Chancery of the Republic of Florence from 1498 to 1512, when the Medici were out of power.

Machiavelli’s name came to evoke unscrupulous acts of the sort he advised most famously in The Prince.^[8] Machiavelli considered political battles, not through a lens of morality, but as though they are a board game with established rules. His experience showed him that politics have always been played with deception, treachery and crime.^[9] He also notably said that a ruler who is establishing a kingdom or a republic, and is criticized for his deeds, including violence, should be excused when the intention and the result is beneficial.^[10][11][12] Machiavelli’s Prince was much read as a manuscript long before it was published in 1532 and the reaction was mixed. Some considered it a straightforward description of the evil means used by bad rulers; others read in it evil recommendations to tyrants to help them maintain their power.^[13]

The term Machiavellian often connotes political deceit, deviousness, and realpolitik. Even though Machiavelli has become most famous for his work on principalities, scholars also give attention to the exhortations in his other works of political philosophy. While much less well known than The Prince, the Discourses on Livy (composed c. 1517) is often said to have paved the way of modern republicanism.^[14]

Niccolo Machiavelli (Wikipedia)

Machiavelli is best known for his two works – The Prince and Discourses on Livy. He also wrote (his own, and in no relation to Sun Tzu’s) The Art of War. It is assumed much of The Prince is based on the life of Cesare Borgia, son of Pope Alexander VI. Mario Puzo‘s last novel (slightly unfinished at his death, but finished after his death) was about the Borgia family – Pope Alexander VI, Lucrezia, Cesare, Giovanni, and Machiavelli also played a small role as a side character in the novel. The book was called ‘The Family‘.

Patrick Boucheron

GoodReads doesn’t have a whole lot of information about the author Patrick Boucheron. But he does have his own Wikipedia page – Patrick Boucheron. From his Wikipedia page:

Patrick Boucheron (born 1965) is a French historian. He previously taught medieval history at the École normale supérieure and the University of Paris. He is a professor of history at the Collège de France. He is the author of 12 books and or the editor of 5 books. His 2017 book, Histoire mondiale de la France (Global History of France), compiled work by 122 historians and became an unexpected bestseller, with more than 110 000 copies sold.^[1] From 2017 to 2020, he hosted Dates in World History, a TV program of 10 episodes which explored different important dates in world history.

Patrick Boucheron (Wikipedia)

Most of his works are currently only in French, although he has two published in English (with the use of a translator). His English published works include: France in the World: A New Global History, and Machiavelli: The Man Who Taught the People What They Have to Fear.

Book Review: Machiavelli – The Man Who Taught the People What They Have to Fear

First, before going into the review, I’m going to provide the background information (basically the back of the book blurb) provided by GoodReads. Similar to the beer reviews on the blog here, where I would give the Untappd description and various other stats (ABV, IBU, style, etc.).

GoodReads blurb: “In a series of poignant vignettes, a preeminent historian makes a compelling case for Machiavelli as an unjustly maligned figure with valuable political insights that resonate as strongly today as they did in his time.

Whenever a tempestuous period in history begins, Machiavelli is summoned, because he is known as one for philosophizing in dark times. In fact, since his death in 1527, we have never ceased to read him to pull ourselves out of torpors. But what do we really know about this man apart from the term invented by his detractors to refer to that political evil, Machiavellianism?

It was Machiavelli’s luck to be disappointed by every statesman he encountered throughout his life–that was why he had to write The Prince. If the book endeavors to dissociate political action from common morality, the question still remains today, not why, but for whom Machiavelli wrote. For princes, or for those who want to resist them? Is the art of governing to take power or to keep it? And what is “the people?” Can they govern themselves? Beyond cynical advice for the powerful, Machiavelli meditates profoundly on the idea of popular sovereignty, because the people know best who oppresses them.

With verve and a delightful erudition, Patrick Boucheron sheds light on the life and works of this unclassifiable visionary, illustrating how we can continue to use him as a guide in times of crisis.”

This is a very quick read. Each chapter is roughly two to three pages, and also includes a picture, typically a full page picture (sometimes less). There was blank spaces for segment breaks, as well as some chapters. Its only 159 pages, counting index, preface, and photo credits. Its also not the full height and width of a hardcover but obviously larger than a mass market paperback.

While I say this, it doesn’t necessarily take a way from the book and the work done; but it also leaves you feeling like its just a series of vignettes and is kind of “dumbed down” almost in a way. Like this is much more for the layman and the person who goes, “Oooh, Machiavelli, I’d like to read about him” ……which is I guess what trapped me and lured me in when I saw the book on the shelf at Barnes and Nobles. And lord help us, we all know I’m a layman, I am far from professional or any real critic or anything.

I was looking for a bit more background information on Machiavelli, as I feel this is always a lacking area in the common knowledge of him as a person. His philosophy is fleshed out, and has been gone over and over and over by hundreds (if not thousands or even tens of thousands) of scholars, but there’s a bit of a dearth in knowledge of who he is, and how he came to be. There is some in this, there’s a modicum of background tidbits and pieces and some juxtapositions of that with his landscape (ie. the city states of Italy).

Speaking of Italy, this is a fascinating time in the history of Italy. The city states of Italy in the late 1300s, 1400s, and 1500s is a fascinating look at politics and fighting between small governments, whilst there are these much bigger and powerful monarchies hanging around (France, England, Germany, etc.). Its like a smaller version of Risk, and is setting up the stage for how a larger game of Risk would be played with Europe come World War I (and World War II).

The underlying theme that runs current through the thirty small chapters is that Machiavelli is much aligned and isn’t the “cutthroat monster” we have been pretty much led to believe by historians and history itself, by the way his name is used eponymously and how he is portrayed in fiction and even by scholars themselves. As the cover shows, (a grafitti’d Machiavelli, with devil horns), Machiavelli is believed and portrayed as this cutthroat man who believed “the ends always justify the means” and almost a “anything goes” attitude towards princes, and kings, and those in power; as a form of keeping their power, and making sure the government they are in control of continues on.

Whilst the work does give a general rough chronological outline of his biography, the overall theme is still about the timelessness to Machiavelli. That he speaks to the future (and our present) as much as he spoke to the people of his time. Boucheron believes he speaks more to our present and our future than he actually did to the people of Italy in the 1500s. That he is a classic and timeless read that one must do regardless of what century he finds himself in.

The opening preface makes quite a bit of reference to Donald Trump, George Orwell and his 1984, and how reading classics like 1984 and The Prince in context to our current times helps us establish our thoughts and opinions of the current climate (political, and otherwise) that we find ourselves in. Using the past and future as a way to establish our own thoughts on our own present.

Machiavelli did have a lot to teach about fear, its usage, its power, its conception, its control, its psychological importance, etc. He had as much to teach us about it as he did the Princes and the rulers. And as Boucheron showcases here, he had much more to show us – the common folk, the peasants, the non – rulers – about fear than he did the Cesare Borgias and Medicis of the world. And that is why we still read (and still need to read) Machiavelli in today’s world, and in today’s context.

My LibraryThing rating: ***3/4
My GoodReads rating: ****
Global Average GoodReads Rating: 3.68 (as of 4.7.21)

Thank you everyone for reading my second non – beer related article here on the blog, and the second non – beer related book review. Below is a list of the other current book reviews I’ve done here on the blog (one is a beer related book). Hopefully people appreciate these non – beer related articles. Hopefully can expand this to much more, as well as start writing much more on the beer side of things as well. So there is plenty here for people to see of all types and interests. Thanks for reading and hope you have a tremendous day!

Cheers.

-B. Kline

Our other Book Reviews:

• Wit’s End (James Geary)
• For the Love of Beer (Dr. Alison E. Feeney)

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!

Get out of work Saturday at 8PM. Frustrated, annoyed with how the day ran out at work, I quickly zipped from Grantville to Marysville, arriving at the new Liquid Noise Brewing at 8:20PM. Circling the lot once…. twice…. thrice…. I finally find a parking spot.

Having read the Facebook post, I have wallet and card in hand. I go through the sliding door and present my ID to the guy standing there. He says something. I can’t hear him over the band and I stare blankly at him. He repeats it, louder now – “Sorry, we’re at max capacity.” I kind of blink and say something to the effect of “Oh”. …. “Oh crap.” …. “Wow.” He nods. I turn and leave. Figuring out what I’m gonna do or how long I’m willing to wait, I plug some time in at the Dollar General next to the brewery, pacing through the ran down aisles with stuff laying all about. I come back out five-six minutes later to see a handwritten piece of paper on the door “Sorry, max capacity. No entries.”

Knowing the band ends at 9PM, I figure maybe I could get in after that (their open to 10PM), so I decide to head over to Pizza Boy’s in Hampden/Enola, which according to trusted Google Maps is 10 minutes away. I zip over there, and enjoy two brewskies before heading back to Liquid Noise and getting in.

But this isn’t an article about Liquid Noise. This is a beer review about Hill Farmstead’s Florence. The first of two beers I had at Pizza Boy while waiting. And this is downright a delicious beer fully worthy of a beer review. ….I mean….why else would I be writing this then right?

Firstly, anytime you can find Hill Farmstead on tap in Central PA you gotta jump on it. No questions asked, its such a rare treat, and such a wonderful treat, you need to get as much as you can and as quickly as you can since you have no idea how long it’ll last. And surprisingly this lasted from Wednesday or Thursday to Saturday (and presumably into Sunday, since I didn’t kick it). I remember past times when Al would put Hill Farmstead on tap on a Tuesday, and the kegs would be kicked by Tuesday evening. So I was definitely surprised this was still on tap Saturday evening.

And I was so glad it was!

Much like the name has significant meaning and background to the Hill Farmstead Brewery, the name Florence does for me as well. My great grandmother (paternal side) was Florence Speck. A feisty woman who lived to be 99 years old. Born Florence Edith Yeagley on July 13, 1905, and sadly passing away on January 5th, 2005. She lived a rough life on a farm growing up, with a mean father who often beat her and her siblings for not “doing enough around the farm” despite being under the age of 10. She had my grandmother as well as four other children, her youngest she was pregnant with while my grandmother was pregnant with my aunt. Before I was born, in the 70s, while her husband was driving (she never learned to drive and never had a driver’s license) they were in a horrible car accident, killing two people in the other vehicle. Her legs were broken, and while in the hospital, her husband (my great grandfather) stricken with guilt hung himself. She wasn’t even able to make it to his funeral. Years later, sadly dementia and alzheimer’s struck, and for the last several years every party she thought was her 99th birthday party, and in the cruelest sense of irony, when it was finally her 99th birthday party, she had no idea everyone was there, celebrating for her.

She was the sweetest, kindest, fiestiest great grandma one could ever had. When my father was in college and stilled live with my grandmother (and whom my great grandmother lived with) she would regularly steal his beer. Always knowing where his hidden stash was, and knowing he couldn’t say anything or do anything about it because my grandfather was so against alcohol. She was an incredible knitter and quilter making beautiful quilts for all of her children, grand children, and great grandchildren.

So, just like how Hill Farmstead has significant history, reasoning, and background in naming their beer after their great aunt, I have some significance in drinking a pint in fond memory of my own Florence. And while sitting alone at Pizza Boy, drinking this, I recalled all the great memories of my dear Florence, just like I imagine the brewers / owners of Hill Farmstead do whenever they drink a bottle of this as well.

With any labor of love, especially one in honor of someone, you know there is going to be an extra level of craftsmanship involved. And this is certainly no exception. And I will do my best to provide it with a fantastic beer review that it deserves. And with a fine beer comes a fine review (hopefully, fingers crossed, I’ll let you be the judge of that).

Beer: Florence
Brewery: Hill Farmstead Brewery
Dated: 8.22.19
Style: Farmhouse Ale – Saison
ABV: 5.2%
IBU: None
Untappd Write-Up: Florence (1915-1967) was our grandfather’s sister, and Hill Farmstead Brewery rests upon the land that was once home to her and her 13 siblings. In her honor, this Belgian inspired Wheat ale is crafted from American malted barley, Organic Vermont wheat, European and American hops, our distinctive farmhouse yeast and water from our well. It is unfiltered and naturally carbonated. Soft, cloudy, and fresh, this is the ale that I dream to have shared with Florence.

I got to try this on tap / draft at Pizza Boy – Al’s of Hampden. Normally this comes in the large bomber style bottles. I will have to pick up a bottle of this to try it that way as well (as well as to keep a bottle of it for the office shelf).

Appearance is a light yellow golden sun coloring. Its bright, its yellow, and its lovely looking. It looks like a farmhouse ale, a saison, or berliner weisse. There is a thin head to it with nice carbonation that left beautiful lacing on the glass. The head had good retention and small thin bubbles. The bright yellow sparkled in the lighting on the patio area of Al’s. It’s cloudy, obviously unfiltered, and not transparent at all.

Aroma was full of various notes. Wheaty, hoppy, yeasty, notes of the tartness, you can smell the tart, you can smell the wheat, you can smell the hops, the distinct house yeast strain of Hill Farmstead, you can smell the grain, the well water. All extremely distinctive and noticeable. Some slight spice notes, like coriander, almost witbier esque. There is quite a bit of a Belgian nose to this, with the coriander and other spices note. Belgians have such a distinctive and quantifiable nose to them and this is certainly no exception.

First sip is an exquisite joy. You get saison. You get Belgian. You get witbier. You get wheat blonde. You get so much and more, all straight out of the gate, first sip, explosion, 0 to 60 in .00001 seconds. You immediately get a rich, full beer in the first sip. You pick up the Belgian in-house yeast strain, the organic wheat native to their farm, all with the underlying tart funkyness that comes with the saison. Slight tartness. Whole lotta farmhouse. You pick up some of the Belgian spices, coriander, orange rind, you get some deep wheat, barley, and a great water backbone to it. Nothing thin or light about this. Its full bodied, unfiltered, and its powerful. For only 5.2% you get a ton of taste. Remember folks – ABV does not equate taste. Low ABV can be still full of high octane taste, and with some (lesser) breweries high ABV doesn’t mean full taste or body either. (Sadly.) But thats not the case here, this is low ABV and high taste. A perfect combination to let you enjoy a TON of these bad boys while hanging around a farm, just taking in the view, and talking about old times with older family members. This would be the perfect backporch sipper with family listening to old family stories, of a great grandma or a great aunt, their tales of growing up on a farm, getting up at 6AM to milk the cows, feed the chickens, get the eggs, etc.

This beer is why you hear so much about Hill Farmstead Brewery. Why its a top destination and even more so a top brewery. Why they are so proclaimed and why people are so enamored with them. You can tell the level of care and love that goes into their beers just by sipping this beer, by reading its description, by seeing the presentation of the bottle.

My Untappd Rating: ****.25
Global Untappd Rating: 4.22 (as of 1.30.20)

Today is my last day off (Thursdays are my Sundays, Wednesdays are my Saturdays), so I will probably do the next of the Tree House beers before going to D. Scott’s to do the next podcast tonight. So far in the Tree House Series, I have done Sap, Autumn, and Haze. This evening I’ll (hopefully, fingers crossed) do Julius, and perhaps tomorrow will do my final one – Doppelganger.

I also welcome you to check out some other recent articles we’ve done – like our massive Brewery Review / Visit to Mellow Mink and the subsequent beer review of Scarlet Sunrise: Blackberry and Blueberry.

Also, in sad news, I did a recent article about Crystal Ball Brewing’s (from York, PA) closing. Sadly it seems we’re due for more of these happenings in the upcoming year. I hate to seee breweries close, people lose money, dreams, and jobs, but sadly it seems we’re heading for this in a fair bit of time.

I was just at Boneshire Brew Works last night playing Rad 80’s Trivia with my sister and brother-in-law to celebrate his birthday (so shout out to Amado, happy birthday). They had a new stout on, and I might be doing a review of that soon. Or Pink Hippo, another new beer of theirs. Or maybe both. But either way, you can check out some beer reviews of theirs I have done: The Hog, Dillston, Harrishire, Tried and True (Mango), and Iscariot.

I might also do a small write-up about the Hummelstown Winter Fling that me and Lily (my 10 year old daughter) went to, where I got to try some beers, and the Liquid Noise goings-on Saturday night. But I might save that, since talking with Brad Moyer, we might be doing a bigger, more in-depth article, so I might just wait for that.

Either way, lots of stuff going on here at The Beer Thrillers, so please be sure to like, subscribe, follow us, and follow us on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, and Pinterest.

Cheers everyone!

-B. Kline