Last night was another ‘stream night’ with my friend Drew over at Knights of Nostalgia. I had four amazing beers last night (and will be doing a review of each). I had this – Pixels; Aslin’s Isolation Anniversary Beer, Elder Pine Brewing and Blending’s Villenage, and Great Notion’s Fruit Monster. This was my first time having all four of these beers, and my first time having a beer from Seminar Brewing, from Elder Pine Brewing and Blending, and from Great Notion Brewing. And none of them disappointed.

Don’t worry, I will be doing a review for all four of these. They were way to good not to do a review for each. (And made for quite the costly mix-a-six at Breski’s too, so I better put the drinking to good use!)

I had been saving the Pixels for a night of doing video game streaming with Knights of Nostalgia just due to its image and name-sake. Funnily though, we didn’t play a pixelated game, we did a more modern game (normally on Knights of Nostalgia we play old school NES or SNES games, like Zelda, or Metroid, or Mario, etc.). But, either way, it still made for a good fit for the stream. We played the Friday the 13th game, which you can play against people multi-player online. You are either Jason (the killer) or a camp counselor (someone who wants to escape). You play from various levels like Crystal Lake, Jarvis House, etc. Drew has all of the different Jason’s unlocked, so if you are Jason, you can play as any of the Jason’s from Parts I through X, including NES Jason. (Which looks absolutely horrible by the way, I do not recommend that Jason; just on aesthetics alone.) The game is ridiculously fun, and every time you play it, it’s simple, same yet different, and has endless possibilities. The surprise and shock factor of Jason appearing and things like that are always great too. Absolutely a blast to play with friends, definitely worth checking out. (Or go to Knights of Nostalgia and watch us play it.)

So after work yesterday, I ran home and got the beer and then went to his house and from 7:30 to roughly 12:30 we played Friday the 13th, and then hung around chatting until about 2:30 while having another beverage or two (St. Boniface’s Theory and Reality; and lots of water).

Enough jibber jabbering; let’s get on with the review!

Beer: Pixels
Brewery: Seminar Brewing
Style: IPA – New England
ABV: 7.2%
IBU: None
Untappd Description: New England Style IPA – Juicy, hoppy and cloudy, just like it should be!

This beer comes from a co-worker (shout out to Jam; who also brought me Up a Creek Extreme Ale) who grabbed this and a few other beers for me from South Carolina. Interesting note on this – the can’s tag price was 4.19$. Not sure why it’s such an odd amount, but possibly / probably because of tax I would assume. This is my first time having anything from them, and I was not disappointed. On Untappd their listed as having 60 unique beers. You can find the link to them above.

It’s hard to tell from the picture above (didn’t want to detract from the streaming by taking a beautiful photo, so you’ll have to deal with the crappy photo pic of the beer, half drank), but this looks like a juicy dank normal New England IPA. It’s hazy and opaque, and it foamed up a lot more than I imagined it would (could be traveling causing some shaking), but it had a lot of head to this. White foamy, billowy head to it, that left a fair bit of lacing on the glass.

Aroma is a very juicy, citrus, hoppy New England IPA. Its bright, powerful, and strong hop notes, this smells every bit as what you’re expecting from a hoppy and hop forward New England IPA. It’s definitely taken the knob and turned it up to max on the hop aroma, and there ain’t a thing wrong with that.

Taste is just like the above two – spot on for a New England hoppy / hop forward IPA. Very juicy, very strong hop notes and flavors, very powerful hop presence, that will really knock your socks off (be careful; drink this with shoes on to protect yourself from flying socks). There isn’t a crazy amount of things going on with this beer, its pretty much standard, by the numbers, but its done extremely well. You get a lot of juicy citrus hop notes up front, that taper off into more subtle earthy hop notes, with a slight background of mango hops flavors. It all blends pretty much by the end, and all blends very well to boot. Sometimes the best beer is just a beer done extremely well. Doesn’t need to have five thousand adjuncts or forty million different ingredients or a bunch of crazy recipe additions, late hop this, or dry hopped that, just a well brewed, delicious, tasty, and drinkable beer is all you really need most times; and this is just that beer. It hits all of the palate well, and spot on, doesn’t have any lingering or bad off flavors, and gets you wanting more when you are finished. At 7.2% ABV its not super strong and comparison wise, that puts it near Perpetual IPA (7.5%) by Troegs Brewing; so its not incredibly strong, and easy to drink a few of these at a time. A great beer to have while hanging out with friends and playing video games and streaming the game, while being chased and hacked to pieces by Jason.

My Untappd Rating: ****
Global Untappd Rating: 3.95 (as of 10.22.20)

Thanks for reading everyone. Today has been a slow day for me, I had wanted to go hiking and taking the dog walking and checking out a brewery or two or something, but that doesn’t look to be happening (started off slow… I may or may not have a pretty decent size headache when I woke up this morning, and woke up at 7AM thinking it was a work day, and then went back to sleep and woke up at 8:30-9AM). But hopefully tomorrow will be a hiking and traveling day. I’m thinking of hitting up the Hamburg area for hiking and obviously the breweries in the nearby areas.

You can see my latest beer reviews here:

• Beer Review: Dreams of Orgonon (Human Robot)
• Beer Review: Unicorns Stomping on Lanternflies (Saucony Creek Brewing Co)
• Beer Review: Griddle (Funk Brewing Company)
• Beer Review: Out of Order: Blue Milk (RAR Brewing)
• Beer Review: Up the Creek Extreme Ale (Thomas Creek Brewery)
• Beer Review: Hershey’s Chocolate Porter (Yuengling Brewery)
• Beer Review: Dropout (Rubber Soul Brewing)

Cheers everyone, and stay safe and healthy out there with all the rises in COVID cases. Remember to mask up, remember to wash hands, and most importantly: remember to drink some great craft beers!

Final notes – be sure to check out our article on Pilger Ruh Brewing and their crowd funding, they begin construction work on their brewery tomorrow, and need every cent they can get, so check that out and see if you are able to help out. Also, tomorrow, Tattered Flag released their Pitties beer; which some of the proceeds go towards helping Pittie Rescues. Be sure to check that out.

Ok everyone, have a great Thursday, and it’s time I get my butt moving instead of doing nothing all day. Alright, cheers everyone!

-B. Kline

First off, let me say – Happy Thanksgiving; from The Beer Thrillers family to yours. We hope you had a wonderful day with friends, family, and/or co-workers, that you had wonderful food, great conversations, and even better beer. That you remain grateful despite tomorrow being Black Friday, and that you continue to be thankful for what you have in life. We hope the day brought you much joy, merriment, and happiness.

Ok, now, lets get down to business.

Started off the day traveling to the in-laws for Thanksgiving there. Had a nice time, and a wonderful meal, though despite bringing my own craft beer, I was told to leave it in the car, and drank the Corona with them instead. (Ok, I can be sensible enough with in-laws to not fight them on this, enjoy the free beer, thank them for it, and enjoy my craft beer later.)

Afterwards, drove by Official BBQ and Burgers on the way home to see where its at, and realized its located really close-by. This is going to be the ‘future’ (future as in tomorrow) secondary location for Pizza Boy Brewing. In a joint fashion, they are opening a bar room up, and will be having Pizza Boy beers on exclusively. (So far as my understanding of things go.) They are due to go live tomorrow – Black Friday – 11.29.19 – and begin pouring the Pizza Boy beers from anywhere from 5-20 taps I’ve heard. I perhaps might be stopping in tomorrow to see what the news is, and to get the details.

I must say I am stoked to have a place with upwards of 20 taps exclusively for Pizza Boy so close (~10 minute drive). A ten minute drive versus roughly twenty to twenty-five minute drive, and also with a different set of food (BBQ and Burgers rather than pizza) so a bit of variety on the food and beer side of things in the nearby area, sounds fantastic. Sign me up.

After all this, I then went over to my sister’s for a wonderful traditional Thanksgiving meal with a flare of Mexico as well. Was very nice, interesting, and different. I brought along Azathoth to drink with the meal, and then while hanging out with friends and family I drank a Mango Guyabano sWheat Tart (that I still had apparently in my fridge) and then during the Spanish Loteria game, I had a Double Knife Fight in Space. (If you click the link, you can read J. Doncevic’s review of the Mango Guyabano sWheat Tart.)

So…. lets get to the beer, because you could care less about how I wracked it up playing Loteria with my sister and her family and her in-laws. And you want to hear about the beer.

I had gotten the Azathoth in a beer mail trade. It was a southern box from a trade I did – local for local – with a person on BeerAdvocate. I traded (as per typical of me, and anyone whose read previous blog posts would know this already) Boneshire Brew Works, Tattered Flag, Troegs Brewing, and Pizza Boy, and received Edmund’s Oast, Westbrook, Heist, Creature Comforts, Pretoria Field Collective, Fonta Flora, and Wild Leap. Not a bad trade if I may say so myself.

Beer: Azathoth
Brewery: Edmund’s Oast Brewing Company
Style: Stout – Imperial / Double
ABV: 11.5%
IBU: None
Untappd Write-Up: Notes of fresh coffee & bakers chocolate

I started with the stout figuring it’d go with the meal the best, and I certainly think it achieved that and then some.

Appearance is very black, dark deep stout black. With a very good brown head to it, creamy looking, thick, it left good lacing, and had nice bubbles that were disperse, random, and various sizes.

Aroma is slightly coffee, heavy roasted malts, with some deep dark chocolate notes. There is certainly a ‘baking chocolate’ aroma that mixes in with the roasted malts, and the coffee peeks out around these notes. Its not a super aromatic beer, but when you inhale deeply you can get the separate and distinct notes.

Taste is very full stout heavy flavorful. The 11.5% ABV is very well hidden. You know its there with how deep and dark and heavy the mouthfeel and stout tastes and feels, but the actual booziness of 11.5% is hidden. There is no alcoholic bite. There is a distinct bitterness in a two-pronged way; one being the coffee notes, the other being the baking chocolate. Both give off distinct, separate, but not bad, bitter flavoring notes and tastes. They combine nicely for a well defined beer. One that paired very well with turkey, mashed potatoes, and all of the other Thanksgiving traditional food – as well as tomalies, and jalapeno poppers, and pigs in a blanket (which was supposed to be for the kids…. but I yoinked a few).

My Untappd Rating: ****.25
Global Untappd Rating: 4.01 (as of 11.28.19)

Hope you all had a good Thanksgiving, and see you back here tomorrow for a Black Friday post. Maybe I’ll even get into anything. I know I won’t be going crazy trying to get the latest Goose Island Bourbon County bottles, but who knows, maybe I’ll get into something else for the day? Maybe check out the new Pizza Boy location? Who knows, check in here to find out! Or stay posted to our Facebook and Twitter feeds to find out!

-B. Kline