Victory Brewing and Tasty Kake Are Teaming Up Again

Victory Brewing and Tasty Kake Are Teaming Up Again

Their doing it again, for their second in what is now becoming a series, Victory Brewing and Tasty Kake are teaming up (again). Previously Victory Brewing and Tastykake teamed up to create the Victory Brewing – Koffee Kake Ale. (See: Victory Brewing Company and Tastykake Company Team Up for Koffee Kake Ale). This time they are back together, teaming up to make the Peanut Butter Tastykake collaboration.

Victory Brewing and Tastykake Team Up Again For Peanut Butter Kandy Kake Porter

Tastykake’s Peanut Butter Kandy Kakes

Victory Brewing (out of Downingtown PA) is again teaming up with Tastykake to release the Tastykake Peanut Butter Kandy Kake Porter. Tastykake is one of the most Pennsylvanian treats you can find (most likely at your WaWa or Sheetz or Rutter’s), and is always a go to treat for road trips and at home snacks. (I know personally its one of Amy’s favorites.) (I am fully anticipating a stop at Breski’s Beverages or West Connection Beer Vault once this is released to pick up a six pack.)

This will be a porter with notes of chocolate, peanut butter and light pound cake. It is the second release in what is becoming a series of beers between Victory Brewing and Tastykake. Currently its listed at being a 6% porter, and will be sold in 12 oz bottles (like the previous Victory Brewing – Tastykake pairing – Koffee Kake Ale), and its also noted that it will be released in cans. We will keep you updated on more information as we get it, including release dates, and if Victory will be hosting any events. (Last time they had a Tastykake Tap Takeover at their brewery.)

For More Information

For more information, stay tuned as we keep the blog updated on when new releases and more information will be available by Victory Brewing and this collaboration. You can also see these previous Victory Brewing and Tastykake articles:

• Beer Review: Koffee Kake Ale (Victory Brewing and Tastykake)
• Victory Brewing Company and Tastykake Company Team Up for Koffee Kake Ale
• Victory Brewing Hosting a Tastykake Tap Takeover

How to Find It

Find Victory’s new Tastykake Koffee Kake Ale at retailers near you after launch by exploring the Beer Finder at VictoryBeer.com/BeerFinder. Follow Victory on social media at @VictoryBeer and Tastykake @Tastykake for updates and more on co-branded events behind this tasty collaboration.

More Information on Victory Brewing Company

The following comes from Untappd. Victory Brewing Company is a regional brewery from Downingtown PA. They have 956 unique beers, and over 2.8 Million reviews, with a global average rating of 3.67 (as of 8.24.24). Their Untappd description reads: Co-founders Bill Covaleski and Ron Barchet The story of Victory Brewing Company starts on a school bus in 1973 when fifth-graders Ron Barchet and Bill Covaleski stepped aboard, on their way to a new school. The two became fast friends and remained so, even as they grew up and went to college on opposite coasts. Just months out of college, Bill’s appreciation of good beer and access to his father’s home brewing equipment inspired him to explore the hobby. That same year (1985), Bill gave Ron a home brewing kit as a Christmas gift. With that, both Bill and Ron developed their love of the craft, and a friendly rivalry grew between the two. The good-natured competition pushed Bill and Ron to become accomplished.

They have the following social media pages:

• Victory Brewing Company – Official Website
• Victory Brewing Company – Facebook
• Victory Brewing Company – Instagram
• Victory Brewing Company – Twitter
• Victory Brewing Company – Untappd

Tastykake – Koffee Kakes

Looking for more information about Tastykake and Koffee Kakes? Check out this link here:

• Koffee Kake Cupcakes (Tastykake)

Some Articles About Victory Brewing Company

• The Best Pennsylvania Breweries for Summer Beers
• From Philly to Pittsburgh: Pennsylvania’s Top Craft Breweries You Must Visit
• Sipping on Tradition: A Guide to Craft Beer Flagship Beers
• Victory Brewery in Kennett Square Fire and Explosion
• Victory Brewing Company and Tastykake Company Team Up for Koffee Kake Ale
• Victory Brewing and Tastykake Collab Koffee Kake Ale to be Released on December 22nd
• Beer Review: Koffee Kake Ale (Victory Brewing and TastyKake)
• Victory Brewing Is Hosting A Tastykake Takeover
• Victory Brewing and Tastykake Are Teaming Up Again for Peanut Butter Kandy Kake Porter

Related Koffee Kake Ale Articles and More Information

The Koffee Kake Ale is a “classic ale” style beer thats everything but classic. Its 6.0% ABV, and it has notes of cinnamon and pound cake. A Blonde Ale (or Golden Style Ale), clocks in at just 6% ABV and 35 IBU. You can find it in most distributors in six pack 12oz bottles.

• Victory Brewing Company and Tastykake Company Team Up for Koffee Kake Ale
• Victory Brewing and Tastykake Collab Koffee Kake Ale to be Released on December 22nd
• Beer Review: Koffee Kake Ale (Victory Brewing and TastyKake)

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Good happy snowy Super Bowl Sunday morning. Oops… “Big Game” Sunday. (Sits by his mailbox tapping his foot waiting for the cease and decease for using the term SUPER BOWL…. oops!)

Yet again another snowy day here in Central PA in 2021. Unlike previous years where we got relatively little snow, this year we’re actually getting the snow the weathermen and women have been calling for. Thank goodness…. (he says sarcastically). But with the snowy weather comes shoveling, and with shoveling comes snow shovel beer(s).

And I present you this morning’s snow shovel beer – a Blown Gasket variant by Braxton Brewing Company as part of their experimental brewing and experimental batches section of their brewery – Braxton Brew Labs.

I had stopped at Braxton Brewing Company when I was in Cincinnati on my trip. Braxton Brewing Company is just across the river in Covington Kentucky. I picked up a few four packs and six packs (Oktoberfest being one), and talking with the bartender he offered me a couple (two) crowlers (for free) (and without even mentioning the blog) to go. Was a fantastic time there and I absolutely loved the brewery. Beautiful building, fantastic atmosphere, amazing workers and all around high quality beers. I highly recommend the place if ever in the area, and talk to all the workers you can, they are all wonderful people.

For a quick recap of my time in Cincinnati you can check out the article here: Indy Trip Recap – Day Five – Cincinnati and Kentucky.

Make sure – if you get the chance – if / when visiting Braxton Brewing Company that you say “hi” to Adam the bartender, tell him I sent you. I can’t wait to come back and hang again for some beers. Extremely great guy and so very helpful too.

Braxton Brewing Company

Ok, so let’s dive in and go straight into the brewery behind the beer before getting to the beer review proper itself. As I’ve stated in several recent past beer reviews, I’m making a point to highlight the breweries behind the beers now. As a way to distinguish our beer reviews here on The Beer Thrillers, as well as to let people know the “behind the beer” and get to see who makes the delicious brews their imbibing in. Too rarely do some people know anything about who make their beers.

This is a great way to get some recognition to these breweries and workers who we review here on the blog and who make the fantastic beers we love. They deserve that recognition for all their hard work; and Braxton Brewing Company is certainly no exemption to that.

According to Untappd – Braxton Brewing Company is a regional brewery located in Covington Kentucky. I visited the brewery there in Covington. They also have a barrel house. Untapped says they have 647 unique beers, with a global average rating of 3.75 out of 253K ratings (as of 2.7.21). Their Untappd description reads: “From a humble start, a love for brewing has become an entrepreneurial obsession. Melding technology and tradition, at Braxton ideas are born and fermented.” They are a hop skip and a jump (just across the river) from Cincinnati Ohio.

You can follow them on their media pages here:

• Braxton Brewing Company Facebook
• Braxton Brewing Company Twitter
• Braxton Brewing Company Instagram
• Braxton Brewing Company’s Business Website

The brewery’s venue on Untappd can be found here. They are a verified venue on Untappd, so you can stay up to date on their beer menu. They also have the Braxton Labs in Newport Kentucky, the Braxton Barrel House in Fort Mitchell Kentucky, and Braxton Brewing Cincinnati in…. Cincinnati Ohio (shocker right?). All of their locations are verified venues.

Don’t Blow a Gasket

I had gotten a crowler of this and enjoyed it immensely, and only after doing some digging did I see that its not just an experimental brew, but its also a part of the series for Blown Gasket. (Pays to do some research sometimes when doing beer reviews huh?) I don’t think it makes much of a difference that its a variant of Blown Gasket, but in case, for anyone familiar with Blown Gasket and Braxton Brewing Company, I’ll give the specifics for the original here.

Beer: Blown Gasket
Brewery: Braxton Brewing Company
Style: Porter – American
ABV: 7.5%
IBU: 20
Untappd Description: This robust porter is a darker offering with a noticeably roasty aroma. Supportive notes may include bready, toffee-like, chocolate, and/or sweet aromas. A moderate hop aroma containing no fruity esters. Dark brown to almost black in color, with a beautiful tan head with excellent retention. The flavor profile is of moderately strong malt character, followed by roasty-dryness throughout to the finish. Medium hop bitterness, and low to moderate hop flavor to balance the roasted malts. This is a medium/medium full bodied beer.
Untappd Global Average Rating: 3.78 (as of 2.7.21)

I provide this here just to give some baseline information on the beer behind the beer, or the genesis of the beer I am reviewing. (Do with this knowledge as you will….)

Beer Review: Chocolate Covered Pretezel

Ok… finally, about time I get down to the review? Ok, simmer down folks, here we go, (you know you could have just easily skipped to this right? Yea…. yea… yea….). Ok, first, lets get the specs out of the way, then dive into the beer itself.

Beer: Braxton Labs – Chocolate Covered Pretzel
Brewery: Braxton Brewing Company
Variant: Blown Gasket
Style: Porter – Other
ABV: 8%
IBU: None Listed
Untappd Description: (Blank)

What does a snowy day call for? Shoveling unfortunately, but what does shoveling call for? A deep, dark, tasty beer. And for me, that means stouts, porters, barleywines, brown ales, coffee beers, and anything minimum 8%. Gotta warm those cockles as you shovel in shorts right?

Breaking this down as I usually do – appearance (then aroma, then taste / overall discussion); let’s jump right into that appearance. As usual with porters, they can look very similar to stouts and be indistinguishable at times. Sometimes they can have a browner look, but this is a pure black near stout like porter. The picture doesn’t do the carbonation justice because I poured it and realized I didn’t have my phone on me for the picture so I had to go and retrieve it, but there was a nice lovely foamy head. An off white brown tinted foam head, and great carbonation. A thin quarter inch head with various and diverse bubbles. As I drank the several glasses of it (it was in a crowler afterall), it left lovely lacing on the glass. As per my usual definition of dark black beers – “Its Razor Ramon hair black.”

This has a nice rich, dense smell to it. Very bready, very heady, a fair bit malty. A nice chocolate undertone to it, like a baker’s chocolate, but its more background to the bready, and even earthy notes. There is a slight roast note to the aroma but its certainly muted and not overpowering and comes through with the breadyness not behind the chocolate.

This was a delightful beer to drink, especially starting early morning while shoveling on Super Bowl (errrr…. Big Game) Sunday, and getting to drink throughout the day. Its got a deep, full body to it, and nothing about it is watery or thin or light or airy, even though its “only” 8%, it feels full, rich, deep, and dark. It looks and tastes like a heavy hitter even though it only clocks in at 8%. Like getting hit by a 280 lb boxer but the dude only weighs 220…. which…. is still more impressive than being punched by a 140 first time boxer…. but you know what I mean. Its still got a good jab going for it. I think the chocolate is interesting in this. It seems its “in sips”. I dunno quite how to fully describe that, but first sip seems very heavy baker’s chocolate, but then you’ll drink and sip and not taste it again until sip number six, and then you get some muted hints of chocolate. Like somehow its not even throughout the beer, like its in swirls hidden here and there. Hard to describe that. Perhaps its my own taste buds, or perhaps its just how the process is with baker’s chocolate or a bitter chocolate – you don’t notice it until the previous bittering wears off? Not sure. But its not a detriment, just an interesting noticing on my part. (I could also be totally wrong about all of it, maybe my taste buds just don’t know what their doing, as if its their first day on the job or something, who knows.) There’s a very nice bready taste to this, a roasty note, some good malt flavor as well. I think it certainly nails the “pretzel” part of “chocolate covered pretzel”. It has that lovely cooked pretzel taste, with a bit of the baker’s chocolate to go over top of it. This isn’t a massively complex beer, but its far from a simple beer, and there is a lot of nice notes to it. The mouthfeel just feels right too, (see what I did there?), its not watery, its not thin, but its not too heavy, its just right. There is nothing cloying to it either, its smooth with the only bitterness coming from the baker’s chocolate and it isn’t unpleasant. This is definitely a wonderful and delicious beer, I would recommend it far more as a “sipper” and at room temperature than cold (despite my picture of it sitting in the snow), it got better after I drank a few sips outside while shoveling, and came back inside and let it warm up. A crowler is the perfect amount and size for this.

My Untappd Rating: ****.25
Global Untappd Rating: 3.86 (as of 2.7.21)

Super Bowl LV

So whose everyone got tonight? Tom Brady and the Buccaneers or Patrick Mahomes and the Chiefs? The GOAT vs. The KID? The returning Super Bowl Champs vs. the elderly Tom Brady and a bunch of up and comers? Hopefully it should be a good game. My team – the Bengals – were long way out, (as usual for every year; I mean, our last playoff win was before the first text was ever sent), so I’m just interested in a good game.

Whose everyone taking money on? Any good bets or side bets or prop bets? I made a 5$ wager straight up (1 for 1) on The Bucs, and I made a 2$ bet (pays 7 to 1) on Tom Brady being named MVP. We’ll see how it all plays out. Fingers crossed that I become 19$ richer by the end of the game.

Let me know your thoughts or opinions on the game, the NFL Season of 2020 – 2021, Braxon Brewing Company, the beer, Kentucky, Cincinnati, Ohio, or whatever else is on your mind. Always love hearing from you guys.

And as always, make sure to hit the follow and subscribe. As well as check out our social media pages.

Thanks for reading everyone and stay safe out there with the snow and enjoy the Big Game tonight!

Cheers!

-B. Kline

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I had this on Nitro, had the I Voted Today, and later got a draft of this for Haley as her birthday ‘gift’ and she enjoyed it as well. So it does come …two-time recommended.

Beer: Shallow Grave (Nitro)
Brewery: Heretic Brewing Company
Style: Porter – American
ABV: 7%
IBU: 33
Untappd Description: Shallow Grave Porter is dark as night, perfect for a cool evening out in the woods. This is a big, dark ale with a complex and rich chocolate and caramel malt character followed by a touch of warmth and light malt sweetness, leaving you ready for more after each shovelful. You will love this so much you won’t have time to dig a six-footer, so make it a Shallow Grave. We’re sure you’ll dig it.

Heretic Brewing Company is a small microbrewery from Fairfield California. Their Untappd description reads: “Ordinary beer is boring; don’t drink it. Embrace your inner Heretic and join us to push the boundaries of beer flavors. We are crazy about beer and passionate about making it. Wanna be a Heretic too? There’s always room for one more.” They have 173 unique beers with a global average rating of 3.84 (as of 11.19.20).

This is a dark brown, but creamy looking porter. The nitro adds a layer of creaminess to the already brown silken look to it. It looks like a good dark brown porter should, not as dark as a stout, but with a heaviness that isn’t in brown ales. It had a very thin dispersed head with nice bubbles, all varying, smooth and creamy, with a lightly brown to off white coloring that dissipated pretty quickly.

Aroma is very deep complex rich and aromatic. Lots of chocolate and caramel notes. Sweet and bitter at the same time, like you are getting sweet candy and also the bitter baker’s chocolate at the same time. There is definitely some malt notes but its a little bit more subdued and hidden behind the chocolate and caramel.

This is delicious right out the gate, it starts with the bitterness of a baker’s chocolate, but very, very quickly, switches to sweeter chocolate, and sweet malt, and sweet caramel, all emphasized and stronger due to the nitro. This has a nice range of flavors amongst these – varying sweetness and bitterness, but mostly staying on the sweet side. I think the base malt gets really added to by the nitro and lays down a very solid foundation for the chocolate and the caramel. Most of the chocolate and caramel is a malty style, but there is some regular caramel and chocolate. The 7% ABV isn’t too high, but I definitely think you feel it with this, it has a bit of a heaviness to it all overall. You aren’t going into this drinking a four pack or a six pack, but this makes for a wonderful beer to drink by the campfire, or at the bar (when we can drink at bars again in Pennsylvania) in winter times. Nitro or not this has a great flavor profile, is exactly what a good porter should be, and will leave you feeling full but satisfied, everything you can really ask for in a beer during these colder months.

My Untappd Rating: ****
Average Global Untappd Rating: 3.84 (as of 11.19.20)

Well, back to writing on those Indy trip articles. They won’t write themselves after all. Until then, everyone stay safe and healthy, cheers!

-B. Kline

Please be sure to follow us on our social media accounts – Facebook, 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!

This is going to be something different, and don’t expect much more of this kind of thing. I’m not a huge fan of doing the mainstream beers, and I definitely don’t want to be doing macro beers (so have no fear, no Naturdays review coming up or Bud Lite Platinum or whatever other BS their peddling).

Yuengling is Pennsylvania though, through and through. You walk into any bar in Pennsylvania and say ‘lager’ you are going to get a Yuengling. Simple as that really. So if I have to drink the “lesser” beers, or the “swill” or “macros” or “mainstream” or “lower quality but mass produced beers”, Yuengling is usually my go to. Over the other heavily distributed beers like Miller Lite, Coors, Bud, Corona, or Heineken. I am not above drinking macro and I’m not making this a beer snobbery post, I drink, and I’ll drink anything/everything if nothing else is available. For instance, family parties where say a brother in law has just Corona, I’ll drink the Corona. So be it.

At the Boneshire Brew Works 3rd Anniversary party on Friday night (which by the way, look for an upcoming joint blog post from both me and J. Doncevic) I was hanging out with J. Doncevic and we discussed this exact drink, and we also discussed Yuengling in general, and macro beers as a whole. He’ll be upfront with any of you who ask him, he takes his beer snobbery to a whole new level, and he’s damn proud of it. He was telling me he’s never had Miller or Coors or Bud and won’t, and would rather not drink at a party then drink those. My unabashedly candid alcoholism tells me to drink everything and anything if available – so I do. Different strokes; different folks. Nothing wrong with either approach (in my opinion). But we did have a consensus that Yuengling is craft (it is by definition of the Craft Brewer’s Association) and that we both are willing to drink it.

In the South Central PA area, primarily every Hershey bar/brewery, beer place, etc, as well as in Harrisburg, Hummelstown, Elizabethtown, etc, nearly every place that has a good enough distributor got this (the Chocolate Porter) on tap. Specifically Hershey, Hummelstown, and Harrisburg. The Warwick, the Bear’s Den, Hershey Biergarten, Primanti Brothers, Hotel Hershey, Boro Bar and Grill, Chick’s Tavern, Boneshire Brew Works, The Sturgis, Ted’s Bar and Grill, Arooga’s on 422, Arooga’s on 22, just to name a few places that carried this.

Most places even did a glass give away the first night of the tapping. I know Boneshire Brew Works did (thus the glass in the picture), as well as the Gin Mill in Lebanon did. Hershey Biergarten did as well and I believe the Primanti Bros. did also. It is a lovely glass, a nice tulip with the logo in gold on it, looks very lovely and is a nice drinking glass for stouts, porters, belgians, etc.

So, on Wednesday the 16th, Boneshire Brewery announced that they were going to be tapping a keg of the Hershey’s Chocolate Porter and giving away the glasses. I got done with work at 5:40 (NEO from my work) and went straight to the library to drop off books, and was going to be meeting a friend at Newfangled Brew Works, but stopped at Boneshire to try out the porter.

So let’s break down the beer thats basically taken the beer industry, Twitter, social media, and the internet by storm. The beer that all of your non-craft beer friends have been bugging you about and asking you about for your opinion of it. Well, now here you go, you can just point them to this article, because I’m sure I speak for everyone. ………I kid…. I kid.

I feel like I could just break down Hershey’s syrup and that would be all the review needs to be. A slightly alcoholic version of the syrup, and bam-o there you go, review done. But, its not quite that simple, and there are a few more subtle notes.

This does seem to be the point of contention, for some it tastes like the syrup, for some it tastes completely different, it seems theres two sides to the coin of this beer, and the multitude of my friends fall on both spectrum(s).

Beer: Hershey’s Chocolate Porter
Brewery: Yuengling Brewery (or D.G. Yuengling and Sons Brewing Company)
Style: Porter – American
ABV: 4.7%
IBU: No IBU
Untappd Write-Up: Yuengling, America’s Oldest Brewery, and Hershey, America’s most iconic chocolate, are collaborating, for the first time in their history, to provide a once in a lifetime creation for their loyal fans to enjoy. America loves beer and America loves chocolate, so Yuengling and Hershey joined forces to bring the best of both worlds to their fans with a limited-edition Yuengling Hershey’s Chocolate Porter. This collaboration gives consumers the opportunity to savor and indulge in the unique beer from America’s Oldest Brewery and America’s most beloved chocolate brand.

Yuengling Hershey’s Chocolate Porter is a fresh take on Yuengling’s 200-year-old Dark Brewed Porter. Don’t miss your chance to enjoy, for a limited time only, America’s #1 craft brewery, Yuengling, come together with America’s most iconic chocolate brand, Hershey’s, for their first-ever collaboration — Yuengling Hershey’s Chocolate Porter.

Thats quite the marketing ad write-up right there. Gotta give an A+ to the ad team on this one, or at least a raise or something, that was a very well crafted (ah….. pun intended) and well made Untappd write-up for the beer. You can tell if a Brewery has a good marketing or ad-team with their social media presence, and things like a good Untappd write-up for their beers (like Troegs usually has a fantastic write-up, even for their Scratch beers) is a good sign of it; great Twitter posts, Facebook, Instagram, Pinterest, etc posts are always a good sign of a good marketing team which reflects well on a brewery as a whole.

So you have the oldest American brewery (left) and a staple of the East Coast (specifically North East Coast) dive bar, and the “most iconic” chocolate company in America teaming up to make a beer. Yuengling is the oldest brewery in America; by process of elimination. It wasn’t the oldest founded, it wasn’t the first founded, but it has survived through prohibition, and other stretches when most American breweries folded, by changing what they sold, how they sold, downsizing, upsizing, etc, and they are to be commended for how they were able to achieve and survive and thrive despite times like prohibition, etc.

Hershey’s is iconic, insofar as anyone from the United States has heard of it, if not had it. From Pennsylvania to California, from Maine to Texas, Hershey’s is distributed. And that’s not speaking internationally. I could go into the history of Hershey’s (or even Yuengling) and talk about how the company was started, by who, how they’ve grown, etc. I could talk about Hershey Park, Chocolate World, the town of Hershey in Derry Township, etc, but its all stuff we pretty much know, and its all stuff that’s not really necessary or relevant to the beer review. Suffice it to say that the write-up is pretty spot on despite everything; Yuengling and Hershey are both iconic. Perhaps some hyperbole but it is mostly true, and a sound argument, and a pretty remarkable thing for the two of them to hook up and collaborate on this beer.

The idea of these two brands hooking up and collaborating on a beer is pretty amazing and impressive in its own right. I don’t know what the process was; who contacted who; what the involvement was that each brand had (I can’t imagine Hershey had much say, I have to assume its kind of like how the write-up reads, that they took their recipe for their old Dark Porter and just added Hershey’s ingredients to it, and called it a day – it tastes that way as well). But its brilliant marketing and strategy plan, especially given the anniversary of Yuengling, and with Hershey doing their big launching of the new entrance to Hershey Park and everything.

But enough of all this gibberish and jibber-jabbing…. lets get onto the actual beer itself.

Appearance is a typical porter, Razor Ramon hair black, full bodied, thick, like some entertainers of the evening. It has a nice head to it, foamy, bubbly, a good half-inch that dissipated with nice interspersed and varied bubbles. The foam has a light brown look to go with the richness of the beer.

Aroma is chocolate syrup… Hershey’s chocolate syrup to be exact. Like flipping the lid of the syrup container and immediately getting that whiff of it. You get malty roasty grains from the porter to go with it, but the chocolate smell overpowers much of that. This is fine, this is what its being billed as, and it works well for this.

Moving on to taste; once again the very first thing you are going to note and taste is the Hershey’s chocolate syrup. I’ve likened this to drinking an alcoholic version of the famous Hershey’s syrup. But even in that aspect, its not too much of it, since the ABV is only 4.7% anyway. So its not a boozy version of Hershey’s syrup thats for sure. There is some malt, some roast, some dark notes underneath the chocolate syrup abundance, but its pretty subtle and mute. The mouthfeel is heavy, its thick like a good porter, and it hangs and feels right in your mouth, all signs that the beer is well made. I think beyond the chocolate syrup, there is a blandness to the beer. The chocolate syrup wears thin on the taste as you start to sip, and then its just a kind of generic bland porter with not enough malt backbone to really keep the taste alive or to really hold the beer. The more you sip and drink it, the less notable and profound the chocolate syrup taste is, and the weaker the beer as a whole gets. This is in general a discussion of mass market beers typically; that they don’t usually have the most flavorful beers, the most robust character notes, that there is just an underlying general blandness to most beers, like Bud, like Coors, like Miller, like Yuengling lager, like Corona, or Heineken, etc, theres just a ‘blandness’ or ‘been there’ kind of taste. Like McDonald’s to your local diner or restaurant, might be a very apt comparison for that sake. There’s just a mute blandness that this beer takes on as you sip it more and the chocolate syrup dissipates more. …or perhaps I’m full of it and reading too much into things and have my head up my own…..

Either way on this beer, it has certainly gotten the beer universe a flutter for a while, from Twitter to Instagram, from your friends at work and family who know you like beer “so how was it” or “did you hear Hershey and Yuengling are teaming up?” to actual craft beer enthusiast nerdy hipsters willing to try it out, it has gotten the attention, and the marketing it was aimed and designed for.

Overall, its not the worst beer you are going to drink, you know the hype is overblown, like it usually is for anything; not even just the craft beer industry, but all aspects (stares at the latest Star Wars trailer…. I know what your game is….). Its worth seeking out for the novelty of it. I couldn’t imagine myself ordering this again, but it was acceptable, and a fine drink at the moment of.

My Untappd Rating: ***.25
Global Untappd Rating: 4.03 (as of 10.27.19)

This review was started yesterday morning (Sunday, October 27th) but I wasn’t able to finish it before work, and then work happened, and then post brewski’s happened with my friend D. Scott. Which, he has finally finished the podcast that we did discussing Breaking Bad and El Camino, so I will provide the links for that, its two podcasts (a two-parter) because of how ridiculously long it was. This was done with our friend Esty and its for their podcast channel “WTF did I watch”.

You can check them out here:
WTF Did I Just Watch: Breaking Bad and El Camino – Part 1
WTF Did I Just Watch: Breaking Bad and El Camino – Part 2

Just as a heads up, there is some language in the podcasts, it would probably receive a R rating from the FCC, they are also long podcasts, so devote some time if you are going to watch them.

Thank you all for reading, please click the like, follow, subscribe, comment, etc. we always appreciate that here at The Beer Thrillers. When I do more podcasts with D. Scott, I’ll be sure to post them here (I won’t be posting the ones I’m not involved in). Also look for an upcoming collaboration article between myself (B. Kline) and J. Doncevic about the Boneshire Brew Works 3rd Anniversary Celebration. I also have plenty of beer reviews to post up. So please be on the lookout for all of that!

Tonight will be busy, work from 10-6, then blood donation at the Hershey Library, then the Hummelstown Parade, and then a party at a brewer from Tattered Flag’s house, so most likely no posts or blogs from myself tonight, but I’m sure I’ll have something for you all tomorrow, so be on the lookout!

Cheers!

-B. Kline