“Go West, young man, and grow up with the country.”

Horace Greeley (Hints Toward Reforms) [1850]

Go west ‘young Yuengling’ and grow up the brewery. In news today, America’s oldest active brewery, Pennsylvania native from Pottsville Pennsylvania, D.G. Yuengling & Son Inc. is expanding westward – into Texas. The aim is for the expansion to be completed by year’s end of 2021.

Currently Yuengling has a 22 state shipment and footprint, mostly along the East Coast of the United States. They have production facilities in Pennsylvania (Pottsville) and Florida (Tampa Bay area). This move would ensure they expand their reach, with the millions that live in Texas and neighboring areas.

“We have heard from consumers all over the country who are excited to enjoy our beer, which is why we’re proud to announce that Texas will be the first western state we’ll be expanding to,” said Wendy Yuengling, Chief Administrative Officer and 6^th generation family member, D.G. Yuengling & Son, Inc. “We are working hard to ensure our recipes and brewing traditions will be followed to our high-quality standards. We have passionate Yuengling fans in Texas, so we are excited to finally bring them the goods.”

ABC27 News

Yuengling Is Growing

In 2020 D.G. Yuengling & Son Inc. and Molson Coors launched a joint long-term brewing relationship – The Yuengling Company. (September, 2020). This is their first expansion since this relationship was announced. In 2019, Yuengling first released their collaboration with Hershey’s Chocolate Company – the Hershey’s Chocolate Porter (Yuengling). It was first released draft only to select bars, restaurants, and breweries in 2019, and then released in bottles and draft in 2020; it has come to some acclaim among many beer drinkers, Hershey’s fans, and Yuengling fans, although those in the craft beer industry have stated that the beer comes up a bit short of most craft brewery offerings, but have said they still enjoyed the beer ‘for what it is’.

(SEE OUR BEER REVIEW OF THE YUENGLING HERSHEY’S CHOCOLATE PORTER)

The beer will be brewed locally, in Fort Worth, at the Molson Coors brewery located there. The brewery opened on September 26th, 1969. Its located at 7001 South Fwy, Fort Worth Texas, 76134. And this will be the third production facility or Yuengling Brewing.

Gavin Hattersley, the President and CEO of Molson Coors said: ““We are excited to take the first step in our long-brewing partnership, a step that will provide tremendous growth opportunity for Yuengling and Molson Coors. By brewing Yuengling’s iconic beer at our world-class Ft. Worth facility, we are going to make a lot of Texans happy.”

No word on what all brands and beers and styles will be brewed at the location. Most likely the Traditional Lager will be brewed there. Amongst more than likely others of their celebrated list (such as their Black and Tan, Oktoberfest, and numerous other offerings).

Check Out Our Related Brewery News and Articles

Yuengling Beer Reviews:

• Beer Review: Hershey’s Chocolate Porter (Yuengling Brewery)

Brewery Openings:

• A Sneak Preview of Rubber Soul Brewing (Hummelstown)
• Midwest Coast Brewing Opens (Chicago)
• Rally Point – Cox Brewing Taproom Opens (Elizabethtown)
• Boneshire Brew Works to Open Second Taproom in Harrisburg (Harrisburg)
• Irv’s Pub Rebranded as Rotunda Brewing Pub (Hershey)
• Official BBQ (Pizza Boy Secondary Location) (Rutherford)
• Pilger Ruh Brewing Needs Your Help (Pottsville)
• Highway Manor Brewing Co. (Camp Hill)
• Grand Opening: Rubber Soul Brewing Company (Hummelstown)
• Tap Room Opening: Howling Henry’s Brewery (Hummelstown)
• Levity Brewing is Expanding and Adding A Second Tap Room
• Little Fish Brewing is Expanding into Dayton

Brewery Closings:

• Stoudt’s Brewing Closing
• Crystal Ball Brewing Closes
• Voodoo Brewery Lancaster Closes
• Spigot Brewing Closes
• Full Pint Brewing Closes
• Night Shift Brewing Cancels Expansion
• Mikkeller Brewing NYC Closes Permanently
• River Bend Hop Farm and Brewery Closing

Brewery Tours:

• Brewery Tour: Mellow Mink Brewery (Mechanicsburg, Pennsylvania)
• Brewery Tour: Couch Brewery (Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania)

Thank you for reading everyone, and I hope you stick around, make sure you check out our numerous articles on brewery openings, closings, as well as brewery news in general. You can find the brewery news section on the right hand sidebar. Also make sure to check out our beer reviews (like the Yuengling Hershey’s Beer) as well as many others.

As always, stay safe during these tough times with COVID-19 and everything. There is good news as we are nearing the end, so let’s stay safe, mask up and wash our hands, and help our local breweries by not contaminating and making their jobs even harder.

Cheers Everyone!

-B. Kline

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Its upper 60s in early / mid May in Central PA, its a bit past noon, and you are stuck ‘inside’ (or at least stuck in / on ‘lockdown’) due to coronavirus / COVID-19, and you have a grill going in front of you, cooking up some hot dogs for three hungry offsprings…. you know what goes well with that? A fantastic Imperial Sour! Thats what! And luckily, as part of my beer mail trade, I received an excellent Imperial Sour all the way from Fort Worth Texas. And, it was absolutely delicious, hit the spot, was an excellent grilling beer, and went down far too fast (and made for a nice afternoon nap out in the sun reading.)

A bit ago, I did a beer mail trade, I sent some local beers – Boneshire Brew Works, Tattered Flag, Pizza Boy, Ever Grain Brewing, and Troegs Independent Craft Brewing; and in exchange I received beers from Texas. I’ve covered quite a few of them so far on the blog – Islla En El Cielo, Road Trip Snacks, Virtually Inseparable, and $#!+ Ton!. So far, the entire beer mail package I received was delicious. …Except for one – but I knew that going in, and thats primarily due to my tastes, my friend D. Scott loved it; and thats the Spicy Pickle Beer Maid beer from Martin House Brewing Company. I hate pickles. I’m not a huge spice person. And I received it for free as a bonus beer. I poured myself basically a shot of it, and gave Drew the rest of it, knowing pretty much full well that I was not going to like it. And sure enough, I didn’t. Thats not really a negative to the beer – thats just my own tastes, and I knew that going into it. (Don’t worry, I didn’t pull the famous Untappd line of: “0.5 Stars, IPA, I don’t like IPAs.” Or something similar.) Thats just a type of beer thats going to be polarizing, if you like pickles, or spice, you’ll probably like it, if you don’t, you’ll hate it. Not a lot of middle ground on that beer, and really, you aren’t going to be buying that beer if you know you’re not going to like it.

Alright, so lets move on, to a beer I really DID enjoy from Martin House Brewing Company – and that’s Blackbird. So lets discuss it!

Beer: Blackbird
Brewery: Martin House Brewing Company
Style: Sour – Fruited
ABV: 9.2%
IBU: 6
Untappd Description: Imperial Blackberry Sour.

According to Untappd; Martin House Brewing Company is a microbrewery from Fort Worth Texas. They have 505 unique beers, and a global average rating of 3.78 (as of 5.12.20.) Their Untappd description reads: “Martin House Brewing Company is a team of brewers, explorers, and dreamers. We avoid tradition in favor of adventure, both in brewing and in life. We value good ingredients and good people, and each of our beers will pair perfectly with life’s memorable moments. We want to be the handcrafted beer you and your friends choose when celebrating your most recent adventure or planning the next one. Martin House – Made in Texas by Texans.”

This pours a beautiful berry purplish, or lavender hue, its bright, sparkly, and looks like a lot of your typical berry infused sours. Especially blackberry or blueberry or raspberry sours. This is a bit on the more royal purple, darker purple spectrum, with the blackberries providing the deeper, darker contrasting purple coloring. It looks beautiful. It has a nice bit of carbonation and foam with a reasonable amount of head retention and leaves a good lacing on the glass as you drain this (and drain it quickly I did).

Aroma is strong berry, thankfully, which shows how this is a good beer. When blackberries are your main ingredient, I better well be getting a very heavy nose of them, and I certainly do with this. It has a tart, bite to the berry smell. You get a few hint of other berry notes, or at least I felt like it – raspberry a mild bit. There is also a faint hint of the booze hidden here from the smell.

Taste is fantastic. Its smooth, its tart, its sour, its even a bit boozy, but it is very dangerously crushable. I quaffed mine down far quicker than I expected. There is a boozy aftertaste from draining it. It almost tastes like it could have been barrel aged, but I’m 99.999999% certain its not, though I couldn’t find anything on their site, on Untappd, Beer Advocate, or with a quick Google search saying either way. Sadly the Untappd description doesn’t give you a lot to go on. You definitely can tell this is an Imperial or Double, and you certainly get that 9.2% ABV with this. It has a very tart going towards sour taste, which gets amplified by the higher ABV. It is undeniably juicy and very berry flavored, so if you are not a fan of berries – in particular black berries, this might not be for you, but I think it would still be an enjoyable beer. Its like drinking a very potent juice, with a bit of a boozy bite to it. It is a wonderful summer beer, and perfect for grilling, perfect for sipping outside in the sun, in just soccer shorts, tanning, reading, and… falling asleep and getting massively burnt because you passed out for an hour and a half and only get woken up by your youngest jumping off the trampoline to purposefully scare you ….. not speaking from experience or anything here. Sigh.

My Untappd Rating: ****
Global Untappd Rating: 4.1 (as of 5.12.20)

We are nearing our one-year anniversary here on The Beer Thrillers blog (May 17th, 2020 will be one year of the blog going strong), and what a wild ride its been. Especially the last few months. It certainly has thrown a monkey wrench in quite a few different ways. But its also provided an outlet for these troubling times. Look for a big article on that date, talking about the blog in a bit of a historical aspect.

Cheers everyone. Please keep safe and healthy, and please keep supporting your local businesses and breweries. They need it now more than ever!

-B. Kline

This was a juicy, big, bold, IPA that was sent to me as part of that Texas beer mail package. I’ve done a few other reviews from the beers sent to me – Road Trip Snacks, Thursday (2016), Islla en el Cielo, $#!+ Ton, Daebak, Chocolate Confidential, Sunshine and Opportunity, Azathoth, Citraquench’l, Paradise Lost, Irish Table, Athena, Vanilla Ice Cream Stout, Reve Coffee Stout, and Ghost in the Machine. (In short, I love getting beer mail; and love doing beer reviews of them!)

This is another gem from a beer mail / beer trade. Haven’t had too many misses on my beer mail and beer trades (thank the maker). While we’re all stuck inside due to the snow squalls and cold May weather here in Central PA; lets check this out.

Beer: Virtually Inseparable
Brewery: Celestial Beerworks
Collaborator: Turning Point Beer
Style: IPA – Triple New England
ABV: 10%
IBU: None listed
Untappd Description: A “virtual collaboration” with our cyber pals at Turning Point Beer. It’s a triple IPA brewed with Citra, Strata and Sabro. It has aromas of passionfruit and pineapple, and is jam packed with flavors of coconut, mango, taffy, and melon. It has a soft and fluffy mouthfeel and is the absolute brightest 10% glass of juice.

Interesting hops for this – Citra, Strata, and Sabro. People seem to be on the fence with sabro hops (some love it, some hate it).

This looks pure orange juice. Bright, beautiful golden orange color. Little foam to the head, not crazy head to it, but enough to be good. The bubbles are interspersed and varied. This is certainly hazy, with a few ‘floaters’ but nothing egregious.

Aroma is strong, super strong hoppyness. As obvious as the appearance of the beer is, the aroma kicks in as soon as you crack the can and lets you know right away that this is a Triple IPA. You get immediate notes of coconut, passionfruit, mango, pineapple, and a bit of melon.

Lets take this opportunity to look at the hops involved in this delicious triple IPA:
* Sabro – Sabro is an aroma hop that is notable for its complexity of fruity and citrus flavors. It imparts distinct tangerine, coconut, tropical fruit, and stone fruit aromas, with hints of cedar, mint, and cream. Sabro’s pedigree is the result of a unique cross pollination of a female neomexicanus hop.
* Citra – Citra hops are now one of the most coveted aroma hops in the US and have a strong citrusy profile with elements of grapefruit, lime and tropical fruit.
* Strata – Bittering with Strata brings a nice balanced bitterness. Flavor and aroma additions bring out the fruity side with tropical fruit and fresh berry brightness. Brewers say that dry hopping deepens the grapefruit and dank/herbal/cannabis elements.
(Information comes from Yakima Valley Hops, Hopslist, and Learn.Kegerator; respectively for all three.)

This has a soft mouthfeel. Its very juicy, very dank, but extremely drinkable and no booze or strong bite despite its 10% ABV. The flavor this is fantastic. You get notes of coconut, passionfruit, mango, slight berry notes, a bit of citrus poking through at points (primarily in a tangerine or orange taste), a little bit of pineapple. I think the biggest hop fruit flavor is mango, which explains why I enjoy it so much, thats always one of my favorite hop or fruit flavors in beers. (Funny because I don’t eat mangos as actual food, but love the flavor of them in beer.) There is little bits of floaters in this, but nothing you actually taste or detect as you drink. There is no dryness to this, and very little bitter or hop burn as well, its just genuinely a smooth beer, with a decently heavy mouthfeel but overall it tastes light and airy but still juicy. It goes down relatively quickly too, especially for a 10% beer. Having multiples of this around could be a danger that’s for sure.

My Untappd Rating: ****
Global Untappd Rating: 4.46 (as of 5.10.20)

This was a wonderful beer to have at home, sitting relaxing, after I did a 10+ mile walk with my dog (Leela) walking the Conewago Recreational Trail. I walked it from the start on Rt. 230 near where Elizabethtown begins, and took it all the way to the Lebanon County line (where it becomes the Lebanon Valley Rails and Trails) and, went a bit further, than turned around. After the walk, stopped at Moo-Duck to support local breweries. I got a taco flatbread pizza, and a crowler of Hades Chocolate Rye (which I drank later that night with my friend and was delicious).

We’re rolling through May everyone, its now May 10th, which means we’re 1/3rd of the way through the month. I hope everyone is having a wonderful May, and is enjoying the blog, hopefully also, everyone is staying safe, staying (primarily) home, helping local small businesses and breweries, and doing their part to beat this virus. We’re all in this together.

Would love to give a shout out to all the hard working nurses, doctors, people who are volunteering for their communities by handing out lunches at schools, taking care of elderly, or doing whatever they can for their fellow neighbors and people. And a big thank you to people still working at some of the ‘centers’ of this; grocery store workers, cashiers, hospital employees, medical professionals, firefighters, etc. Thank you to all of you!

We’ll get through this. We’ll get back out there to life, and we’ll all sit down for some beers together! Until then, cheers from afar!

-B. Kline