Fall Season

It is certainly that time of year… fall; and you can feel it in the crisp and cool air. And that means this time in the Hippo series, it needs to take a ‘fall’ turn and change, going from blue to red to pink to… fall. While maybe not a color like the others, fall is definitely a feeling, and works well for the series’ evolution.

(Check the links at the end of the review to read our beer reviews of some of the other hippo’s as well as other Boneshire Brew Works links.)

Mug Club

As you can see, my beer in question here is in a mug rather than a normal glass or anything. Sunday (Halloween Day, October 31st), me and a friend stopped in around noon to enjoy their 5th Anniversary ‘Shire’ Pastry Flight (you can read that here: Multiple Beer Reviews – Shire Pastries) and also get to try the new Fall Hippo. And lets just say, we enjoyed all five new beers.

The mug club is such a good deal if your a regular. Most breweries have them, and their typically relatively the same across the breweries with some different perks and add-ons and bonuses. One of my favorite perks is that the mug is 20oz rather than the normal 16oz, so all of your beers you get are 20oz pours rather than 16oz pours. Thats a big perk in my opinion, especially when you go often enough.

(Only downside is taking pictures for the blog, without the clear glass, but the overhead view is still good, and you still get an idea of the beer anyway.)

Beer Review

Beer: Fall Hippo
Brewery: Boneshire Brew Works
Style: Fruit Beer
ABV: 4.5%
IBU: None
Untappd Description: Next up in our Hippo Series, Fall Hippo. Brewed with Cranberry, Pie Spices, and Lactose. Fall desert in a glass.

Aroma is pretty on point with the description, and is certainly a fall desert in a glass aromatically. You get the cranberry and pie spices right up in those nostril canals when you lean in for a good whiff. Its not quite “pie on the window sill cooling” strong, but the notes are all present and you can smell them.

Appearance is hard to tell from the picture (but you can check Untappd for numerous other pictures here – Untappd: Fall Hippo). But, overall, it has a lovely pinkish, off cranberry coloring to it. Like a lighter, more diffused cranberry, maybe a cranberry mixed with water and other juices or similar. (Note: I am not saying its watered down, just trying to give an apt description of the appearance.)

Taste is lovely for this fine beer. Very enjoyable. This is a completely comfortable, ‘kill a four pack in one sitting’ smooth, easy beer. This is a wonderful all day sipper, you can crush a four pack (or more!) of these, and have no problems. Its not too tart to give you acid reflux or anything, and its not too heavy ABV that it’ll get your head swimming. You get a notable cranberry tartness to it, but its not too much, not too overpowering, or lip-puckering or anything like that. And its not too tart or acidic that it’ll you acid reflux or anything like that either. You can pick up the pie spice notes, that gives it this little extra ‘kick’ to it. There is a slick, smooth, slightly creamy feel and taste to it (feel moreso, taste is subtle) which is from the addition of the lactose (or I might be overreaching and thinking thats what its from). Its a very well balanced beer, nothing is overpowering or too much, everything is pretty much good accordance with each other. The mouthfeel is on point. There’s no slickness or cloying to it. It just tastes nice and smooth and light. Its also easy on the head with the ABV, though the lactose might make it not so easy on stomachs. All in all, this is just a smooth, easy drinking beer, that you could sit around the fire with, or sit around all day watching some football games (or early morning futbol games) and be fine at the end of the day, so thats just a win all around right there.

My Untappd Rating: ****.25
Global Average Rating: 3.86 (as of 11.7.21)

Boneshire Brew Works on The Beer Thrillers

Click below to read any one of our (is it a hundred yet?) articles on Boneshire Brew Works:

• Pigtoberfest 2021
• Boneshire Brew Works Expanding to Second Location
• Boneshire Brew Works 3rd Anniversary Celebration
• Beer Review: Pigtoberfest
• Beer Review: S’Mores LazaRIS
• Beer Review: Iscariot
• Beer Review: Tried and True (Mango)
• Beer Review: Dillston
• Beer Review: The Hog
• Beer Review: Harrishire
• Beer Review: Sunburst
• Beer Review: Road Less Traveled
• Beer Review: Blue Hippo
• Beer Review: Good Walk Spoiled
• Beer Review: Long Tongue Liar (Barrel Aged)
• Beer Review: AuZealand 2.0
• Beer Review: Caucus-Race 6.0
• Beer Review: Pandemic Pils
• Multiple Beer Reviews: French Toast Shire, Cinnamon Bun Shire, Coconut Shire, Hazelnut Shire (Boneshire Brew Works)

Small Brewery Sunday Giveaway

(Edited to add this heading and paragraphs – 11.23.21)

We are offering a free four pack of Fall Hippo through our blog and Facebook page. You can read more on how you can be entered to win this free beer here:

• Small Brewery Sunday Giveaway

Be sure to follow the instructions for your chance to win free beer!

Thanks For Reading

Thank you everyone for reading. It means so much to hear feedback from everyone, so if you have any thoughts, likes, dislikes, questions, or concerns, be sure to leave them in the comments section! And make sure to hit the subscribe and follow, as well as follow us on our social media accounts.

Cheers!

-B. Kline

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Sorry for a slow amount of articles lately. I know things have kinda gotten down to a trickle with only weekly articles, but I do have a lot of backburner ones, and hoping for my weekend (Wednesday – Friday) I will be able to get up a lot of them. Quite a bit of them are backdated ones, so be sure to be on the lookout for them (best way to automatically be notified is to become a subscriber and follower, so make sure to follow us). I am also hoping to finish up the YouTube video (FINALLY!?!!!!!??!?!?!?) and get that posted this weekend as well.

But I do have a TON, and I mean, ___A___TON___, of beer reviews to go over and get published up on here. From a lot of different breweries. Hopefully also J. Doncevic will jump back in with a review soon (every time I see him he hints to me that he’s getting back in the review game…. and…. then…. nothing….) (….maybe if we bug him enough…. he will….). Also looking forward (still) to A. Parys’s soon to be released interview article that he did / is doing / has done / is working on.

So as always, lots of stuff going on here at The Beer Thrillers, so always be sure to like, follow, and subscribe, and follow us on our Facebook, Instagram, Twitter, and our Facebook group (all of the links are above) and soon on our YouTube channel as well (link above also).

I ended up at Funk Brewing in E-Town a while back (September 4th) when Cox Brewing’s newest location – The Rally Point – was at max capacity. So, unable to get in, I got a draft to go, drank it in the parking lot, then went to Funk Brewing. Where I first had their Oktoberfest, and then this – Griddle – a barleywine that was delicious and worthy of a beer review. So here goes!

Beer: Griddle
Brewery: Funk Brewing (Funk Brewing Company)
Style: Barleywine – English
ABV: 10.5%
IBU: None
Untappd Description: Brewed with over 50 gallons of Vermont maple syrup this barleywine a huge maple nose but the heirloom english malt shines through cutting the sweetness. In 4 words or less: Flapjacks and Jack Daniels.

I am a huge Barleywine fan, of all shapes, sizes, flavors and breweries. Funk’s is no different. Funk Brewing is well known in the Central PA, primarily for their Double Disco and Mic Drop and Citrus and a few others. Their location in E-Town is typically pretty hopping (even during COVID) (….get the pun?). To read more about Funk Brewing click here for their Untappd page: Funk Brewing’s Untappd Page.

Appearance for Griddle follows what most Barleywines look like; a malty looking dark, heavy beer. Akin to tobacco spit, which might not be the most appetizing way to describe it, but I think a pretty apt one (just don’t think about it from now on). Despite having to drink it in a plastic cup (which I hear is a bit of a no-no for some people in PA and that sometimes post in a Facebook group and run their own brewery……….) it still had a nice small ring of a head.

Smell is very syrupy, very maple, very malty. The description does a good job describing the nose to this; very heavy maple. Very. Heavy. Maple. A. Very. Maple. Forward. Nose. The. Nose. Is. Very. Heavy. In. Maple. Ummm… did you pick up on that its got a very heavy maple aroma? There are a few more underlying hints and whiffs, but its primarily the maple, a bit of a brown sugar smell, and English malts. Possibly a hint of some of the English hops, but it would be so extremely diluted that it’d be hard to say.

This is definitely flapjacks and Jack Daniels. Its strong boozy right out of the gate, but with an extremely heavy maple flavor. The English malts (and perhaps English hops too) bitter out the sweetness of the maple syrup and tame it a bit, giving it – alongside with the booziness – a bit of a bite. Not fully a bitter bite, but a definite eye – opener. Mostly bitter to cut out the sweet, the bite also has that boozy undertone kicking you a fair bit. Thats not to say this isn’t sweet though. Its certainly still very sweet, but with the heavy boozy undertones, and with the English malts providing a nice malty bitterness, that the maple sweetness doesn’t become too cloying or clinging to your tongue (like Lizard of Koz was from Founders……. shudders….. I still have nightmares of drinking that beer). This seems like a very strong Pennsylvania beer, the idea of a boozy flapjack strikes deep to the core of a good hard working lumberjack breakfast. A can of Griddle, some flapjacks, scrapple, bacon, eggs, and maybe coffee to wash it down, would be a great breakfast and start to the day for any hard working man ready to go out and cut down a hundred trees and deforest the rural lands. The beer might even give said lumberjack the edge he would need if he had to race a giant flannel wearing man with a big blue Ox…… (Do people even remember the old folk tales and folk legends of yore?) At 10.5% and with the boozy taste, a 16oz can of this is all you need at a time, but its a wonderful time, and a great drinking beer. Enjoy! (I know I did!)

My Untappd Rating: ****
Global Untappd Rating: 3.65 (as of 9.21.20)

For those interested, the book I’m reading in the picture was a great book by Daniel Klein. You can find it (and even find my book review of it there) on GoodReads here: Everytime I Find the Meaning to Life, They Change It: Wisdom of the Great Philosophers on How to Live Life. I highly recommend the book as much as I do the beer. (In fact I highly recommend Daniel Klein as an author, his philosophy books are fantastic, and the joke series he did with Thomas Cathcart are great – Plato and A Platypus Walk Into a Bar and Heidegger and a Hippo Walk Through Those Pearly Gates).

This was a shorter beer review, and a bit of a quick launch one, but I wanted to get an article out tonight, because primarily, because I feel like I haven’t been writing that much lately, and I need to get a lot more writing done. I have all of these “drafts” set-up on my WordPress and just need to finish them. Plus I have had a ton of great beers lately that all deserve reviews. So I need to get through them and get them done! So I’m trying.

As always, please, please, please, please – like, follow, subscribe, follow us on social media, and comment your questions, comments, suggestions, etc. Always love to hear from you.

Enjoy and cheers everyone!

-B. Kline

A beautiful day calls for a beautiful beer does it not? Before the cold spell, before the rain and ugliness, before the threat of murder hornets, a nice, beautiful day spent doing yard work, grilling, relaxing, and doing the like – requires a delicious, zesty, tasty, cold brewski. And what better one to do it with than Blue Hippo by Boneshire Brew Works.

I had discussed doing the Pink Hippo on the blog before, back at the time of my review for ‘This is the Way‘ by Broken Goblet. Pink Hippo was a delicious beer, and its cousin (or sister, or brother, or step-sibling) is just as delicious. (Actually, I think it’s probably the better of the two so far in this series by Alan.)

Boneshire Brew Works is my closest ‘watering hole brewery’, and that is certainly no disrespect to Boneshire Brew Works or the hard work of brewer Alan Miller. (Non-quarantine) The cozy atmosphere of the brewery leads it to be the small town drinking pub for a lot of people. Myself, D. Scott, A. Parys, J. Doncevic, and many others included. Karl Larson (ihackbeer) also was a part-timer brewer for them. Its a great place to hang out, chat, listen to some wonderful live music, and drink some of the finest and most delicious beers in the Central PA area.

Of course right now with the quarantine, nobody is really hanging out in there, but I still love stopping in there for some 4packs (to go) and talking with Jason and Alexis (obviously safely from six feet or more away). (Bonus note people – right now, more than ever, even when stopping in at breweries just to grab a 4pk to go, leave a tip for your bartenders. Their still there, working, at a reduced rate right now due to closures of the indoor seating, and their still doing lots of work behind the scenes. We need to stick together and help each other out. …steps down from soapbox….)

As usual, I jibber jabber and ramble before getting to the beer review, so lets cut the crap and get right to it with this bright and delicious zesty beer.

Beer: Blue Hippo
Brewery: Boneshire Brew Works
Style: Fruit Beer
ABV: 5%
IBU: None
Untappd Description: This is beer 2 in our Hippo series, where we brew with loads of fruit. Blue Hippo is brewed with insane amounts of Blueberry and Tahitian Lime. Strong lime aroma and flavor rounded out with ripe blueberry.

As you can see from the various pictures, this is just a beautiful beer. It has a reddish (slight pinkish hint) to purple hue. Little bits of floaters / pulp one can see when poured from an unrolled can. It is certainly carbonated, it is a fruit beer afterall, and doing some possible refermenting, so definitely keep this cold, drink it fresh, and drink it quick!

Aroma is fun with this one. Its got definite tartness from blueberries and you get a good whiff of that out the gate, and its called the lime as well. It smells carbonated, with the bubbles tickling your nose as you take in the nose of this (and yes, I understand that doesn’t sound ‘technical’ or ‘correct’, but you can tell, and smell, and taste carbonation, thats my stance anyway). It smells like a ‘spritzer’. This is just a fun beer from the appearance and the aroma, before you even get to the taste of it. Sometimes you just ‘know’ when a beer is going to be good, when they just look fun, and you can’t wait to drain that glass.

This is certainly a case of this. This is such a great relaxing day beer. And at 5% it is completely crushable. Both a great sipping beer, and one you’ll finish in no time flat, its fantastic for all day. A Senators game, a college baseball game, your daughter’s softball game (shhhh, no one is telling), or mowing the yard, or suntanning, or sitting out to read (one of my favorites), this is just perfect for it. This tastes very similar to a spritzer, just like its smell. A fruited spritzer, unlike the white wine ones. The zest level on this thing is off the charts, but with a great tartness and slight funk from the blueberries. This is the right kind of blueberry taste; not too tart, not too funk, just right. Perfect middle ground on the blueberry flavor, and with the Tahitian lime zest and flavor, it gives it a fantastic kick to it. Mouthfeel is fine, no off flavors, just nice tartness, no cloying, no sweetness. Its not a true sour, it just has a bit of a tartness and the zest kick. At 5% you can drain the first, drink the second, and start on your third and not even feel a thing, perfect for the summer. (When its not snow squalling in May that is!) This is just a wonderful, well made, well crafted, and delicious beer. Probably better than Pink Hippo, which itself was very good. I highly recommend grabbing this while its still available at the brewery, and if you live close, they’ll even deliver it!

My Untappd Rating: ****.5
Global Untappd Rating: 4.2 (as of 5.9.20).

You can order online through Boneshire Brew Works’ website at: Boneshire Through Square.Site. Or check out their official webpage: Boneshire Brew Works.

Still rolling through May pretty strong. Make sure to wish your mom a happy mother’s day tomorrow. Make sure you avoid all this cold and the snow squalls. And keep washing your hands, practicing social distancing, etc. I want to be able to have at least SOME fun this summer, and go to events like the Ffej of July and brewfests at Lititz or Lancaster or the make-up dates for the RenFaire or AC Brewfests.

Cheers all!

-B. Kline