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

I always enjoy getting to review (and obviously drink) beers from out of state, ones that I most likely wouldn’t come in contact with. Don’t get me wrong, I love drinking and reviewing local beers and getting them some publicity, and I also love traveling and visiting breweries (just yesterday I was in Wellsboro Pennsylvania, visited the Pennsylvania Grand Canyon, and visited the restaurant and brewery – The Wellsboro House), but its also nice getting beers to review, from family, co-workers, and friends. (Hint…. hint…. for any friends, family, etc reading this…. )

A co-worker, Jam, was coming back from South Carolina, and he stopped at a bottle / can shop and grabbed a few beers for me and other co-workers. From Jam, I received a bottle of ‘Up The Creek Extreme Ale’, a can of Sidestepper (Charles Town Fermentary), a can of Pixels (Seminar Brewing), and a can of of a Red Ale / IPA by a collaboration with a radio station (the name eludes me and I left it in my friend’s fridge; but it had a tiger on it, thus why Jam got it for me due to me liking the Bengals). So this is the first of the South Carolina series of brews I’ll be reviewing. (I’ll be doing Sidestepper soon, because I just recently drank that; haven’t gotten to drink the others yet, will probably do the Pixels beer while streaming with D. Scott over at Knights of Nostalgia).

Quickly, before I go too much further, I want to throw a quick shout out to Josh; who is jumping back into the reviewing game (don’t call it a comeback son, he never left). He will have his first review since his Beer Review of Adroit Theory’s COLONIZATION back on November 11th, 2019. Stay tuned, I’m sure you won’t want to miss his newest beer review!

Also, in industry news, Howling Henry’s in Hummelstown just opened this week, as well as Rubber Soul, and Spigot Brewing in Ford City has announced they will be closing.

Now…. onto the review!

Beer: Up The Creek Extreme Ale
Brewery: Thomas Creek Brewery
Style: IPA – Imperial / Double
ABV: 12.5%
IBU: 143
Untappd Description: Up The Creek is a hoppy behemoth of a beer with its 12.5% ABV well hidden under heavy layers of malt. The hops come through powerfully in the mouth, with rich roasted malt, sweet caramel, and a burst of vinous fruit. The finish is malty sweet and fruity, while the hops dissipate. Use caution or you’ll be Up The Creek!

Ok…. so firstly, let me just say, this is the highest IBU we’ve reviewed here on the blog. Probably by a pretty far margin. The highest IBU I’ve ever had, according to the Untappd records of beers I drank is – Gyroscopes and Infrared by Broken Goblet. It was 174 IBU. After that it was the Mean Manalishi Double IPA by Hoppin’ Frog Brewery, clocking in 168 IBU, and in third place is Mango Bomb by Pizza Boy – clocking in at 162 IBU. Up The Creek Extreme Ale is number 7 on my list (according to Untappd), and if you count home brews (at a home brew event I had one that would be number 5 on my list; called Idiot Parade by McCarthy Brewing.)

IBU is a term for IPAs that means: “International Bitterness Units are a chemical/instrumental measurement of the number of bittering compounds, specifically isomerized and oxidized alpha acids, polyphenols, and a few other select bittering chemicals, that make your beer taste bitter. (Last Call for IBUs: Fact, Fiction and What They Mean in Your Beer – May 3, 2017). Overall, its a term that’s not being used as much in the industry anymore, and many brewers aren’t even bothering with testing it or listing it when listing their beers on platforms like Untappd or Beer Advocate. But its still a valuable tool and measurement when it is listed, and I still like to keep track of it, and include it when doing the beer reviews here. Its just not the be – all – end – all it used to be in terms of understanding IPAs (especially since New England IPAs seem to be more mainstream now, actually, being made more than regular old school West Coast style IPAs).

This is an old fashioned high octane ‘pushing the envelope’ West Coast style IPA. Appearance and look for this is on the malty end of IPAs (West Coast IPAs). It has a brown / amber hue, slightly transparent, but mostly opaque. Malt colored and malt looking like a malt bomb through and through. Caramel colored. It has a very rich, frothy, foamy head to it, thick, creamy looking with lots of bubbles.

Aroma is caramel, sweet roasted malt, and then pungent face-punching, nose walloping, hop explosion (can’t even call it aroma, its about as subtle as a sledgehammer to the gonads). You get the idea that this is going to be bitter just by the hop nose to it, and the malt sweetness does nothing to cover it past that initial whiff of the malt.

This doesn’t quite live up to the description provided by Untappd. The Untappd description gives you the impression there’s a bit of hype to this, that there’s more complexity to this than there really is. It starts off with the barest of traces of sweet, or caramel, malt. And then takes a very heavy swan dive off the cliff into a sea of hops. A sea of bitterness, of super hop flavor, super hop bitterness, super hop everything. Overpoweringly so. Too much so. A blend and cornucopia of hops, that doesn’t let you really even distinguish and unique hop flavors or notes. Its just straight hop bitterness in such an overwhelming display of raw power and hop (bitterness) that it doesn’t leave you tasting much of anything else. The malt taste is so minuscule and minimal you don’t taste any of it as soon as you get your first taste of the hops. Unlike the description, the hops don’t really ‘dissipate’, they stay there, punching you like a… like a… like a hop drinking punching bag…. yea… like that! There is definitely no dissipation here. I also don’t really get any ‘fruity’ ending to this. Maybe subtle stone fruit notes… but I think its so awash from the hop bitterness that its too hard to tell, and its too hard to differentiate between hop notes and fruit (stone or otherwise) notes. I think its all just a blend, and whatever notes are supposed to be in there, are so overpowered by the hop bitterness, that its too impossible to tell or to be able to pull them out and take note of them or actually savor them. Now… all of this is to say its not a bad beer; its just not… a great beer. And particularly not my style as much anymore. I do like West Coast style IPAs, and the New England IPA craze hasn’t diminished that; its just… this is too much. Too bitter, too hoppy, not enough actual flavor to it, and too hard to differentiate and tell the various hop notes apart from each other. I’m sure theres lots of ‘ultra’ or ‘uber’ hop heads or hop nerds or beer nerds out there who will love this, and all the better for it and for them, this just isn’t particularly my favorite or something I would outright pursue again.

My Untappd Rating: ***.50
Global Untappd Rating: 3.60 (as of 10.10.20)

Be sure to check out some of our recent beer reviews:

• Dreams of Orgonon (Human Robot)
• Unicorns Stomping Spotted Lanternflies (Saucony Creek Brewing Company)
• Griddle (Funk Brewing Company)
• Esmeralda (Ministry of Brewing)
• Out of Order: Blue Milk (RAR Brewing)

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!

Peace, cheers, and prost!

-B. Kline