Shock Induction (2024) is the latest novel from Chuck Palahniuk (note the standard spelling; the query used a common variant). Published by Simon & Schuster in October 2024, it’s a slim, roughly 240-page dark satirical parable that blends dystopian speculation, postmodern experimentation, and hypnotic literary tricks.

I have previously reviewed Palahniuk’s “Not Forever, But For Now”.

Another Chuck Palahniuk novel to review… and another disappointment and let down. Am I getting older and growing out of Chuck? Or is Chuck growing out of Chuck himself? Is he just a shell of his former self or is it that there are too many other authors in a similar vein? Perhaps my joy of his writing style just isn’t there anymore. I’m not sure, but lets dive into a bit with this review.

Shock Induction by Chuck Palahniuk

Back of Book Cover Blurb

The description and back of the cover blurb on Shock Induction, by Chuck Palahniuk, as per GoodReads:

From the bestselling author of Fight Club comes a dark, satirical parable about a string of mysterious high school disappearances, the seedy underbellies of billionaires, and the tough choices we make in the face of an uncertain future. In Shock Induction, the best and brightest students at a seemingly reputable high school are disappearing. Every day it seems another overachiever is lost to an apparent suicide. But something far more sinister is lurking beneath the surface. These kids have been under surveillance since birth, monitored and measured by an online service called “Greener Pastures.” It’s here, in Greener Pastures, that billionaires observe and recruit the next generation of talent. The highest test scores, the best grades, and the most niche extracurriculars just might land these teenagers an enticing offer at auction. A couple billion dollars in exchange for the remainder of your life and intellectual labor sounds like a pretty fair deal—doesn’t it? In a high school only Chuck Palahniuk could imagine, students must choose between the risk of following their dreams or the security of money and a lifetime of servitude to the world’s wealthiest and most elite—but how much of a choice do they truly have?

–Shock Induction (GoodReads)

Book Review

Description

The story is set in 2037 and centers on Samantha Deel, a precocious, talented high-schooler (strong student and aspiring singer) trapped in a grotesque, abusive home life with pill-popping, gasoline-huffing parents and a lecherous uncle. At her school, the best and brightest students are vanishing one by one—officially chalked up to suicides, but something far more sinister is at play. These overachievers have been tracked since birth through “Greener Pastures,” a shadowy online surveillance and auction platform where billionaires and elites bid on young talent. The winning bid buys a teenager’s entire future: their intellectual labor, creativity, and life in exchange for vast wealth and “security.” It’s framed as an irresistible deal in a world where following your dreams looks riskier than selling your soul to the highest bidder.

Palahniuk layers in government experiments with “ERE poisoning” (chemicals supposedly laced into books to manipulate readers’ emotions and focus) and weaves in real hypnotic techniques. The title itself refers to “shock induction”—a sudden jolt (a word, image, or repetition) used in hypnosis to break someone out of their normal thought stream and make them suggestible. The narrative itself tries to do this to you, the reader: short, pointillistic chapters that mimic doom-scrolling on a phone, sudden fourth-wall breaks (“Psych!”), pages of repetitive mantras (like the word “avocado”), and interpolated passages or quotes from classics (The Great Gatsby, Moby Dick, Alice in Wonderland, Shakespeare, David Copperfield). The prose swings between minimalist and maximalist, surreal and deadpan, laced with Palahniuk’s signature grotesque humor, drugs, sexual weirdness, and off-color jokes.

At its core it’s a scathing update on themes he’s explored since Fight Club: the illusion of choice under late-stage capitalism, the commodification of human potential, the failures of the American education system, surveillance as the new normal, and language itself as the ultimate brainwashing tool. It’s pitched (by reviewers) as The Truman Show meets The Hunger Games meets Euphoria with an Alice in Wonderland twist—a “coming-of-rage” story about a rebellious misfit trying to seize control of her own narrative.

Critique

Shock Induction is Palahniuk doing what he does best—weaponizing the novel form itself—but pushed further into experimental territory than most of his post-Fight Club work. The meta-hypnosis gimmick is genuinely clever and ambitious: the book isn’t just about mind control and commodified youth; it tries to perform it on the reader through repetition, disorientation, and literary Easter eggs. When it works, the effect is unsettling and exhilarating; clarity dissolves, you feel the trance setting in, and the satire lands with real sting. Samantha is one of his stronger recent protagonists—empathetic, furious, and believable in her teen angst without tipping into caricature—and the surreal set pieces and dark humor keep the pages turning even when the structure gets labyrinthine.

Many longtime fans (including some reviewers) hail it as his strongest book in years—a return to the subversive, mind-bending energy of Rant, Haunted, Invisible Monsters, or Survivor after some recent misfires. It’s a love letter to reading itself, treating literature as a drug that can rewire you, while simultaneously daring casual readers to keep up. The collage style (short bursts juxtaposed like phone-scrolling potato chips) and pointillistic convergence of tiny disparate pieces can deliver more emotional punch in a few pages than many linear novels manage in hundreds.

That said, the very things that make it bold also make it divisive. Goodreads sits at a lukewarm ~3.2/5, and plenty of readers find the non-linear, confusion-inducing structure maddening or opaque rather than hypnotic. Supporting characters often feel thin, some sections read like scattered messes, and the second-person social-commentary passages occasionally tip from playful into preachy. It alienates fans who just want another tight, accessible gut-punch like Choke or Fight Club; this one demands endurance and rewards re-reading (you’ll almost certainly miss references the first time). The “hypnosis on the reader” trick can backfire into frustration instead of fascination.

Ultimately, Shock Induction is Palahniuk evolving on purpose—pushing away from the persona that made him famous thirty years ago and challenging readers to grow with him. It’s not a perfect or universally enjoyable novel, but it’s a fearless, fucked-up, thought-provoking one that lingers like a literary contact high (or poisoning). If you’re in the mood for a chaotic, satirical fever dream that treats the act of reading as both salvation and trap, it delivers. If you want straightforward storytelling, you’ll probably feel hypnotized… into putting it down early. Worth trying if you’ve ever loved Palahniuk at his weirdest.

In the lineage of writers who have stared into the abyss of human commodification—Camus’s stranger alienated from meaning, Orwell’s Winston broken by surveillance, Beckett’s figures reduced to waiting in ashbins, Ligotti’s puppets aware of their strings—Chuck Palahniuk has long positioned himself as the American heir apparent. His early work weaponized the grotesque to expose the hollow core of consumerist masculinity and corporate myth-making. Yet with Shock Induction (2024), that once-sharp blade has dulled into something closer to performative frenzy, a book that gestures toward profundity while mostly succeeding in exhausting the reader.

The premise arrives with the familiar Palahniuk bite: in a near-future 2037, elite high-school students are vanishing, not into suicide as the official story claims, but into literal auctions run by the shadowy “Greener Pastures” platform. Billionaires bid on youthful potential, purchasing entire futures in exchange for wealth and security. Samantha Deel, our narrator and aspiring singer, navigates this dystopia amid abusive parents, hallucinogenic experiments, and the book’s central gimmick: “shock induction” itself, a hypnotic technique mirrored in the prose through repetition, fourth-wall ruptures, interpolated passages from Gatsby, Moby-Dick, Shakespeare, and Alice in Wonderland, and pages that dissolve into mantras (“avocado” repeated ad nauseam) meant to disorient and entrance.

Palahniuk’s writing style has, over the past two decades, settled into a predictable pattern of these same formal tricks. What once felt revolutionary— the fractured timelines of Rant, the typographic assaults of Invisible Monsters, the oral-history collage of Snuff—now reads like a signature stamp applied to every new manuscript. Repetition is not a scalpel but a blunt instrument; gaps and white space are not voids of existential dread (as in Beckett or Ligotti) but literal breathing room inserted between micro-chapters. The fourth-wall asides, the sudden “Psych!” interruptions, the pages of single-word loops: these are no longer innovations but reflexes, the literary equivalent of muscle memory that has atrophied into tic.

One cannot escape the suspicion that an editor’s quiet directive hovers over every draft: hit the page quota. Where Steinbeck or Orwell achieved devastating economy by saying only what must be said, Palahniuk appears to pad deliberately—repeating phrases until they lose all charge, stretching single ideas across blank expanses, tossing in extraneous literary quotations not for resonance but for bulk. The result is a book that feels contractually obligated to be a novel rather than artistically compelled to exist. The hypnosis gimmick, meant to indict the reader’s own suggestibility under late capitalism, instead indicts the author’s reliance on the same old bag of effects to reach an arbitrary word count. What could have been a lean, Camus-like parable of commodified youth balloons into a repetitive fever dream that mistakes quantity for hypnotic depth.

The intent behind all this is clear, even admirable on paper. Palahniuk seeks to make the novel a literal instrument of mind control, turning reading into a drugged experience that critiques how language, surveillance, and late capitalism erode autonomy. One can almost hear the echo of Freud’s talking cure gone wrong, or Vonnegut’s meta-fictional winks in Slaughterhouse-Five, but stripped of restraint and replaced with frantic collage. Where Lewis (C.S.) might have layered allegory with moral gravity, Palahniuk opts for bombardment: short, pointillist chapters mimicking doom-scrolling, sudden “Psych!” interjections, grotesque sexual asides, and chemical-laced absurdities.

The result is less hypnotic than irritating. The experimental form—once innovative—here feels like exhaustion rather than revelation. The narrative fractures so relentlessly that coherence becomes optional; supporting characters blur into caricatures, and the satire lands with the subtlety of a sledgehammer. The commodification of youth is a potent theme, ripe for existential dread in the tradition of Orwell or Camus, yet it is buried under so much noise—and so much visible filler—that the critique flattens into gesture. One finishes the book not enlightened or unsettled, but merely relieved the assault has ended.

For readers who prize the stoic endurance of Beckett’s minimalism or the quiet terror of Ligotti’s cosmic pessimism, Shock Induction offers only sporadic glimpses of what might have been: a few razor-sharp lines on the illusion of choice, a haunting image of potential sold at auction. But these moments are drowned in excess. Palahniuk, who once channeled Lynchian surrealism with precision, now seems content to mimic its chaos without the underlying discipline.

This is not the abyss staring back; it is the abyss shouting over itself until the reader walks away. Two stars: for ambition that occasionally flickers, and for reminding us how far the once-vital provocateur has wandered from the clarity that made his best work endure.

See Also: Book Review: Not Forever But For Now (Chuck Palahniuk)

Chuck’s Writing Fall Off

Chuck Palahniuk arrived in the 1990s like a literary Molotov cocktail, his early novels—Fight Club, Choke, Lullaby—delivering a visceral, black-comic assault on consumerist masculinity and the hollow rituals of late capitalism. In those books the grotesque served the satire: every spilled bodily fluid or deadpan monologue felt necessary, the way Vonnegut’s absurdism or Orwell’s surveillance state felt necessary. The prose was economical, the formal tricks earned, and the reader emerged shaken but strangely clarified, as if the author had performed a controlled demolition on the American Dream. For a time Palahniuk stood shoulder-to-shoulder with the writers this ledger reveres: a pulp Camus, a Lynch of the paperback rack, a stoic who refused to look away from the abyss and instead spat into it.

By the mid-2000s the trajectory had already begun its slow, unmistakable descent. Snuff, Pygmy, and Tell-All retained the surface shocks but lost the underlying necessity; the transgressive elements started to feel like contractual obligations rather than organic eruptions. What had once been radical fragmentation—Invisible Monsters’ typographic violence, Rant’s oral-history collage—hardened into a reusable template. Repetition, once a hypnotic scalpel, became a blunt hammer. The fourth-wall asides, the sudden “Psych!” interjections, the pages of single-word loops or white space masquerading as existential pause: these no longer destabilized the reader so much as they announced, with increasing weariness, that Chuck Palahniuk was doing the Chuck Palahniuk thing again. Where Beckett pared language to the bone until silence itself screamed, Palahniuk began padding the silence with filler, as if an editor’s page-count quota had become the true antagonist.

The later novels—Adjustment Day, The Invention of Sound, and especially Shock Induction—confirm the pattern has calcified into self-parody. Each new book arrives with the same checklist: a dystopian premise commodifying human potential, a precocious narrator steeped in pop-culture detritus, interpolated literary quotations that feel less like dialogue with the canon and more like literary name-dropping to pad the word count. The hypnosis gimmick in Shock Induction is emblematic: what could have been a lean, Camus-like parable about the auctioning of youth instead bloats into repetitive mantras and micro-chapters that mimic doom-scrolling so faithfully they induce the very boredom they purport to critique. One senses the author no longer trusts the story to carry its own weight; instead he stretches, repeats, and inserts gaps the way a contractor adds unnecessary drywall to meet square-footage requirements.

This is not the gentle maturation of a Steinbeck or the deliberate minimalism of a Ligotti; it is artistic entropy. The once-fearless provocateur now seems trapped inside the very brand he helped create, recycling the same shocks until they lose their voltage. The result is work that gestures toward the abyss but never quite stares into it—content instead to shout the same slogans louder, longer, and with more white space. For readers who still demand the stoic clarity and moral gravity that once defined Palahniuk at his best, the decline is not merely disappointing; it is a quiet betrayal of the very transgressive promise that made his early books endure.

Overall Rating

I gave Chuck Palahniuk’s Shock Induction two stars in my review because, while the premise holds genuine promise, the execution ultimately collapses under the weight of its own exhausted tricks. The novel imagines a near-future where talented teenagers are auctioned off to billionaires through a platform called “Greener Pastures,” framed through the lens of hypnotic “shock induction” techniques that the prose itself tries to replicate via repetition, fourth-wall breaks, literary collages from Gatsby, Moby-Dick, and Shakespeare, and pages filled with looping mantras. I acknowledged the ambition—echoing themes from Camus, Orwell, and early Palahniuk—but found the fragmented, pointillist style and constant interruptions less hypnotic than irritating. What once felt radical in his work now reads like a tired formula: short chapters mimicking doom-scrolling, gratuitous white space, and repeated phrases that seem designed more to pad the page count than to deepen the satire on commodified youth and surveillance capitalism. The result is a book that gestures toward existential dread but delivers mostly noise and caricature, leaving the reader relieved when it ends rather than unsettled or enlightened.

Looking back at my review, I see it as a lament for Palahniuk’s artistic decline. His early novels delivered necessary grotesquerie with precision and purpose; now the same tools—repetition, meta asides, grotesque asides—feel recycled and obligatory, lacking the stoic economy of Beckett, the cosmic quiet of Ligotti, or the moral clarity of Orwell and Steinbeck. I rated it two stars to reflect that disappointment: flashes of potential exist, but they drown in excess and self-parody. In the future, I hope Palahniuk steps away from the branded formula that has calcified around him. A leaner, more disciplined novel—one that trusts the story instead of padding it—could rediscover the raw power that once made his voice essential, letting the abyss stare back with fresh clarity rather than shouting the same slogans louder and longer.

My GoodReads Rating: ** out of *****
My LibraryThing Rating: ** out of *****
Overall GoodReads Rating: 3.16 (as of 3.14.26)

Other Book Reviews

• Book Review: The Greatest Beer Run Ever (John Chick Donohue and J.T. Molloy)

• Book Review: Subpar Parks: America’s Most Extraordinary National Parks and Their Least Impressed Visitors (Amber Share)

• Book Review: Courage is Calling (Ryan Holiday)

• Book Review: The Basic Laws of Human Stupidity (Carlo M. Cipolla)

• Book Review: Brewed in Japan (Jeffrey Alexander)

• Book Review: The Question of God: C.S. Lewis and Sigmund Freud Debate God, Love, Sex, and the Meaning of Life (Armand M. Nicholi Jr.)

• Book Review: Family Reins (Billy Busch)

• Book Review: The Last Days of the Dinosaurs: An Asteroid, Extinction, and the Beginning of Our World (Riley Black)

• Book Review: The Wit and Humor of Oscar Wilde (Oscar Wilde)

• Book Review: Create Dangerously (Albert Camus)
• Book Review: The Road (Cormac McCarthy)
• Book Review: The Donnie Darko Book (Richard Kelly)
• Book Review: How to Rule the World: A Handbook for the Aspiring Dictator (André de Guillaume)
• Book Review: Here is New York (E.B. White)
• Book Review: Uncle John’s Beer Topia
• Book Review: I Drink For a Reason (David Cross)
• Book Review: Something Wicked This Way Comes (Ray Bradbury)
• Book Review: Siddhartha’s Brain: Unlocking the Ancient Science of Enlightenment (James Kingsland)
• Book Review: Atomic Habits (James Clear)
• Book Review: A Significant Life (Todd May)
• Book Review: Not Forever But For Now (Chuck Palahniuk)
• Book Review: The Psychology of Zelda (edited by Anthony M. Bean)

Follow The Beer Thrillers

For more updates on Pennsylvania brewery news, closures, openings, and expansions, follow The Beer Thrillers on social media and subscribe for the latest articles on the state’s ever-evolving craft beer scene. Search for us on all of your favorite social media platforms (Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Threads, BlueSky, etc.) – search “THE BEER THRILLERS”. Thanks.

Thank You For Reading

If you like this article, please check out our other many articles, including news, beer reviews, travelogues, maps, and much much more. We greatly appreciate everyone visiting the site!

Cheers.

Thanks again for reading everyone. Take some time to check out the site, we greatly appreciate it. We have affiliates and sponsors with Pretzels.com and Beer Drop.com, which can save you money on their products if you are interested. Check out our articles on them. Make sure to check out our beer reviews, brewery reviews, Amy’s weekly column, book reviews, hike reviews, and so much more.

As always, thank you everyone for reading! Leave your likes, comments, suggestions, questions, etc, in the comments section. Or use the Feedback – Contact Us – page, and we’ll get right back to you! You can also reach out to us at our direct e-mail address: thebeerthrillers@gmail.com

Thank you for visiting our blog. Please make sure to follow, bookmark, subscribe, and make sure to comment and leave feedback and like the blog posts you read. It will help us to better tailor the blog to you, the readers, likes and make this a better blog for everyone.

We are working on a massive project here at The Beer Thrillers. We are creating a map of all of the breweries across the United States. State by state we are adding maps of all of the different states with every brewery in each state. (We will eventually get to the US Territories, as well as the Canadian Provinces, and possibly more countries; as well as doing some fun maps like a map of all the breweries we’ve been to, and other fun maps.) You can find the brewery maps here:

• MAPS OF BREWERIES

We are also working on a project of creating printable and downloadable PDFs and resources to be able to check and keep track of all of the breweries you’ve been to. So stay tuned for that project once we are finished with the Brewery Maps of the US States.

You can check out our different directories here: Beer Reviews, Hike Reviews, Book Reviews, Brewery News, Brewery Openings, Brewer Interviews, and Travelogues.

Please be sure to follow us on our social media accounts – Facebook, Facebook Group, Twitter, Instagram, YouTube, and Influence. As well as our brand new Tumblr page. Please be sure to also follow, like, subscribe to the blog here itself to keep updated. We are also now on BlueSky as well, so make sure to check us out there also. We love to hear from you guys, so be sure to leave a comment and let us know what you think!

You can now find us on our Discord Server here: The Beer Thrillers (Discord Server).

We also now have a SLACK channel – which acts as a hybrid chat room, message board, Reddit style; workspace and posting area for us. You can hang out with us there and chat about all kinds of things – not just beer, but “off topic” things like movies, TV, books, podcasts, hiking, sports, and more! Join us at: The Beer Thrillers on SLACK.

We’ve also joined LinkTree to keep track of all of our social media pages, as well as hot new articles we’ve written. The Beer Thrillers on LinkTree can be found here: The Beer Thrillers LinkTree.

We have partnered with an affiliateship with Beer Drop.com. You can check out that partnership and receive great discounts, coupons, and more here: Beer Drop. Going here and logging in and ordering will help you receive your discounts and coupons as well as help support our page. Thank you for helping to support The Beer Thrillers and to help us maintain the site and blog and to keep it running.

The Beer Thrillers are a blog that prides itself on writing beer reviews, brewery reviews, travelogues, news (especially local to the Central PA brewery scene), as well as covering other topics of our interests – such as hiking, literature and books, board games, and video games which we sometimes stream with our friends over at Knights of Nostalgia. We are currently listed as #5 on FeedSpot’s “Top 100 Beer Blogs” and #9 on FeedSpot’s “Top 40 Pennsylvania Blogs”. (As of May 2025.) Thank you for reading our site today, please subscribe, follow, and bookmark. Please reach out to us if you are interested in working together. If you would like to donate to the blog you can here: Donate to The Beer Thrillers. Thank you!

You can also check out our partnership and affiliation with Pretzels.com, where ordering pretzels and using our affiliate code – AFFILIATE CODE IS THEBEERTHRILLERS20 – will help you get wonderful pretzels and help us maintain and keep this blog running. Thank you!

If you would like to reach out to us for product reviews, beer reviews, press release writing, and other media – please contact us at thebeerthrillers@gmail.com. Thank you.

(Thank you for reading. The opinions, thoughts, and expressions of each article posted on The Beer Thrillers represents the author of the content and only themselves. It does not express the opinions, beliefs, or ideas held by The Beer Thrillers or any company in which the author themselves work for. Each piece of written content is written by the creator(s) listed in the authorial section on each article unless otherwise noted. Their opinions, comments, and words on screen do not represent any company in which they work for and / or are affiliated with or any non – profits that they contribute to. Thank you.)

]]> 16816 https://thebeerthrillers.com/2020/11/20/beer-review-the-pandalorian-tattered-flag/?utm_source=rss&utm_medium=rss&utm_campaign=beer-review-the-pandalorian-tattered-flag Fri, 20 Nov 2020 14:36:43 +0000 https://thebeerthrillers.com/?p=5429 Its another Friday, and we all know what that means – another episode of The Mandalorian. So of course, I waited til today to drop this review. As soon as I heard them announce this, I had to grab a four pack of this.

First, Tattered Flag is one of my favorite local breweries, and secondly, its a Mandalorian themed beer, and thirdly…. Pandas. Seriously, what could go wrong here?

Absolutely. Nothing.

So, since I am still doing some ‘at home’ quarantining after my trip out to Indianapolis from work, yesterday I did a bit of day drinking and had to make sure this was one of the several wonderful beers I had, and as you can see, I made sure to use my new glass I got from the Vonnegut Museum and Library.

On The Beer Thrillers we have done several Mandalorian and Star Wars themed beers before, so it should be obvious to any reader of ours that I am a huge Star Wars fan. You can see our Mandalorian themed beer reviews here:

• Beer Review: This is the Way (Broken Goblet)
• Beer Review: Out of Order: Blue Milk (RAR Brewing)

And our Star Wars themed beers here:

• Beer Review: Wookie Monster (Fourscore Beer Co.)
• Beer Review: This is Nut the Fluff You’re Looking For (Fourscore Beer Co.)

Space Balls themed beer:

• Beer Review: Moon of Vega (Equilibrium Brewery)

If you use our search function on our blog and type in STAR WARS, these are some of the various articles where I mention Star Wars in them: STAR WARS on THE BEER THRILLERS.

Rotunda Brewing Company in Annville (and their brewpub in Hershey) are re-releasing their Chewbacca beer this weekend, a black IPA which I have had before. I am going to be getting a can and doing a review for that as well. (Can never have enough Star Wars themed beers to review on here, believe me. So if you know of any, or have any and would like to see me review it, contact us through the CONTACT US page.)

As you can see, like I said above, I am also using my brand new Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library glass. It has such a great quote of Vonnegut which he also used in Slaughter-House Five:

“I have this disease late at night sometimes, involving alcohol and the telephone.”

Story had it, he would drink and call people, just to basically yell something poignant and quick to them over the phone, and then slam the phone down. Not to strangers or random numbers, but to his friends and colleagues. I can certainly relate to some late night drunk texts (I think a lot of people can actually). So I see where he is coming at with this.

Alright, now that we’ve established the background for the beer and for the glass, let’s actually review this beer shall we.

Beer: The Pandalorian
Brewery: Tattered Flag
Style: IPA – Imperial / Double New England
ABV: 7.5%
IBU: None
Untappd Description: Hazy Imperial IPA made from a blend of base malts, generous wheat addition, oats, and flaked maze bring forth a sweet backbone complimented by Sabro in the kettle and a massive Sabro Cryo dry hop. Expect sweet coconut ? up front followed by citrus lime and a sweet creamy finish.

As you can see above, this is hazy, but on the lighter, softer orange – yellow – golden scale. Not the deep heavy dank, but a lighter, softer looking hazy New England style IPA / DIPA. Justin, the head brewer for Tattered Flag does a lot of New England style IPAs (and a lot of sours) and does them all very well, making them different from each other too, which is sometimes hard to do with the style. You have some that look bright orange to golden with a very dank and heavy haze, and then you have some that are lighter softer yellow to golden like this, with some haze. There is some orange here, but I would say its mostly yellow and golden. There is a thin head to it, and great carbonation, and left nice lacing on the glass.

Aroma is a blend of hop, mainly a blend of coconut, tangerine, the fruity and citrus hop aromas. Sabro is a pretty strong hop and gives this a very strong hop presence and nose. On the nose you get coconut, tangerine, hint of cedar and mint, with some cream, some lime.

This is a very smooth and drinkable DIPA. At 7.5% its in a middle ground of ABV for IPAs and DIPAs. In comparison, Troegs Brewing’s Perpetual IPA (their flagship West Coast IPA) is a 7.5% (and right there is where the comparison between the two of these stop). 7-8% is a good middle ground area for IPAs and DIPA’s I feel. Its enough to get you to notice the ABV, but not enough to make it boozy, to heavy, or to get you too drunk. A nice general buzz is all that is needed and required. This looks and tastes similar to New England IPAs, but its not a generic New England IPA / DIPA. The Sabro hops gives it a very different taste than most New England IPAs, as Sabro isn’t really a much used hop, especially in the Cryo style. This gives The Pandalorian an interesting start with a different finish to it. It has a coconut, tangerine, citrus, taste at the beginning, but it ends on more of a zest lime, cream flavor. Overall its a silky smooth drink that is very easy to drink. There is a bit of an ending bite as you get to the bottom of the glass, but that is typical for most IPAs especially as you get closer to the finishing last sips. Despite the Sabro hops and the nose, there isn’t much of a cedar or mint flavoring that I was able to pick up on, but I did get tangerine, coconut, lime, and cream. My one friend suggested grapefruit, but I wasn’t able to pick up any grapefruit, and thats also not typically a characteristic of Sabro hops either. I very much enjoyed the smoothness of this, and the flavor profile, the aroma was on point, and the ABV was nice for a good buzz, a four pack is nice for sharing with buddies while streaming (which me and my friend did during the Konami games live stream we did on Knights of Nostalgia). This adds to the growing list of good and great New England IPAs that Tattered Flag has put out over the recent year. Definitely make sure to check this out, either for namesake or for the beer itself. Not sure how much longer the four packs will last at the brewery, so if you want the great can art be sure to pop in soon, they also have it on draft which will probably last a bit longer. This is a good smooth, tasty New England DIPA that will certainly not disappoint.

My Untappd Rating: ****
Global Untappd Rating: 3.84 (as of 11.20.20)

You can check out more beer reviews I’ve done from Tattered Flag below:

• Beer Review: Flavor Guided Juice Missile (Tattered Flag)
• Beer Review: Tattered Soul (Tattered Flag and Rubber Soul)
• Beer Review: Social Distancing (Tattered Flag, Abomination Brewing, and Pilger Ruh Brewing)
• Beer Review: Going Rogue (Tattered Flag)
• Beer Review: Member Berry (Tattered Flag)
• Beer Review: Inexplicably Juicy (Tattered Flag)
• And many more at the TATTERED FLAG search.

Also, Tattered Flag now does statewide shipping through their SUPPLY DROP. Make sure to take advantage of that if you live anywhere in Pennsylvania and are unable to make it to their brewery.

On Black Friday they are doing a big bottle release at their upcoming Lancaster Barrel House location. More details can be found on their Facebook page – Tattered Flag @ Facebook and Tattered Flag Barrel House @ Facebook. I will be doing an article covering that shortly as well.

As I’ve mentioned earlier, I got the pint glass from the Kurt Vonnegut Museum and Library. You can visit them and donate as well as order online, and if you are a big fan of Kurt Vonnegut, I highly recommend it.

You can read about my trip (in recap form) to Indianapolis and back through the following:

The Trip to Indianapolis:

• The Trip to Indy
• The Trip to Indy – Day One Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Two Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Three Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Four Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Five Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Six Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Seven Recap
• Recap and Stats

My time in Indianapolis is covered specifically in the Day Four recap.

The books behind the beer in today’s blog post are: “Happy Birthday Wanda June” by Kurt Vonnegut, “Armageddon in Retrospect” by Kurt Vonnegut, and “Star Wars: Alphabet Squadron” by Alexander Freed.

Also, be sure to check out some of our other beer reviews in recent history:

• 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)
• Beer Review: Pigtoberfest (Boneshire Brew Works)
• Beer Review: I Voted Today (Tired Hands)
• Beer Review: Super Villain (Urban Village Brewing Company)

Star Wars themed articles:

• May The Fourth Be With You
• Revenge of the Fifth (Cinco de Mayo)

You can check out the tabs at the top of each page to visit our BEER REVIEWS, BEER EDUCATION, TRAVELOGUES, etc. Be sure to check out all the latest beer reviews, as we’re pumping a lot out in recent time.

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!

Thanks for reading everyone, please stay safe out there, I know cases are on the rise and spiking, so make sure to wash your hands, stay distant, enjoy your craft beer, and wear a mask. Cheers and May the Force Be With You!

-B. Kline

I woke up early outside of Dayton Ohio, and get my shower for the day at my La Quinta Hotel…. to find my room’s hot water isn’t working. (The check out lady gave me a run around saying I should have turned the knob a bit to the left, then back to the right to bypass something…. yea, ok lady.) So that was my wake-up for the day. Then it was on the road for what Google Maps had listed as a 1 Hour 18 Minute Drive….. which turned into a 2 Hour and 34 Minute Drive….. because Google Maps didn’t reload until I was on the road that I-70 was having massive road work done for a giant long stretch.

Whatever.

I made it to Indianapolis and to the Vonnegut Museum at 12-noon, just in time for everything to start. In my full detailed travelogue I’ll discuss it, but the reason for the trip was to get here on Wednesday (today) – November 11th, – Armistice Day – Veteran’s Day – Kurt Vonnegut’s birthday. He would have turned 98 years old today.

Like I said, I’ll go into much more detail about the museum and library, but suffice it to say it was fantastic, and any fan of Vonnegut owes it to themselves to come out and check out the museum and library at least once in their lives. I’m looking to come back in two years for his 100th Birthday.

After the Museum, my first Indianapolis brewery was TwoDEEP Brewing. Fun little brewery, beautiful inside. I had a roasted amber ale and a pilsner. (No flights, just drafts.) Both were fantastic.

I of course had to drive and stop (illegally parked – at a meter – might I add) and get out and grab a picture of this. I also later in my day stopped by his childhood home and then the cemetery where he was buried. (I was unable to find his grave, but I did find President Benjamin Harrison’s gravesite.)

An absolute must stop for everyone in Indianapolis. This is THEE brewery in the city, and it shows. They’ve won a ton of awards in the past, and several more this year at the 2020 GABF. Amazing beers, not a single bad one. Even my least favorite from them was nearly a four cap beer. The nacho and taco place inside was also really great. Be sure to visit Sun King if you are ever even remotely in the area.

So after driving out to his childhood home and grabbing a picture, and going up to the cemetery and driving around looking for ‘him’, I had to stop at BLUEBEARD for dinner. Why? Well, the tavern is named after his novel ‘Bluebeard’ and even has a picture of him with a replica of a typewriter he used. This is a very hoighty-toighty place, (baby octopus was 28$) and very heavy sea-food (which when you are deathly allergic, is a slight scare). But I had a fantastic beer from a local brewery in can and great pasta.

About three businesses down from Bluebeard was a brewery (just happened on it by walking to / from my parked car). So I ducked in for a pint, and picked up a four pack to go.

I ended my night (as far as breweries go) at Ellison City Brewing. Looked like an old apartment building reimagined, not quite sure though in the dark. When I entered they had two food trucks or two kind of party trucks or something outside, and a lot of younger (20s) dancing and carrying on by them. After I had my pint and read, which I nursed a bit, and came out, the revelers and trucks were gone. Shrug.

Then it was off to another hotel for the night, where I wanted to finish A Man With No Country by Vonnegut, but sadly, I stayed on the phone with a co-worker til about 12:30AM and then soon passed out watching Chappelle Show on Netflix.

Tomorrow’s itinerary is Cincinnati, with a dip into Kentucky. Then moving on towards Hocking Hills, Athens, and Ohiopyl and back home to Central Pennsylvania. Nearing the home stretch of the trip and tour. We’ve gone, now we’re coming back.

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!

The Trip to Indianapolis:

• The Trip to Indy
• The Trip to Indy – Day One Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Two Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Three Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Four Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Five Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Six Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Seven Recap
• Recap and Stats

Just like last summer (August 1st-3rd) when I took my daughters on a trip up to Elk Country, to Kinzua Bridge, to Pittsburgh, to Bushy Run, and back home; I am again taking a road trip.

This time, it’s a solo trip, just myself. So wish me luck that this reads as a “Tale of There and Back Again” and no Reading shenanigans happen again.

Unlike the trip with my daughters, this is being a bit more ad-hoc and I am kind of doing things on a whim. With them I had a very planned itinerary of where we were going, what days, what times. However, for my trip the main focus point is getting to Indy for Wednesday the 11th (Veterans Day) which is Kurt Vonnegut’s birthday and visit the Vonnegut Museum and Library.

I do have a list of some breweries I will be hitting, but not a guarantee I will hit them all. COVID-19 is throwing a bit of a monkey wrench in my plans for what breweries are open certain days, plus unlike last time, I’m traveling Sunday through Friday whereas last time it was a Thursday – Friday- and Saturday.

You can read about my trip last year here:

August Road Trip Series:

• Going on the Road
• The Trip: Day 1 Recap
• The Trip: Day 2 Recap
• The Trip: Day 3 Recap

I didn’t go into a crazy lot of detail about all the places we went to in the articles, but you can still read them and get an idea of what I did hit up. In later travelogues for the blog I’ve gone into a bit more detail on my crazy travels with Drew or Ming or by myself.

For my first day of travel – tomorrow – Sunday, November 8th – my places of visit will be:

• Thousand Steps Trail (Mount Union, PA)
• Juniata Brewing Company
• Ghost Town Trail
• Levity Brewing Company

Hopefully everything goes according to plan. Tomorrow is a few hikes, a few breweries, and then Monday will be the outskirts of Pittsburgh and Pittsburgh area, and then Tuesday I will drive through Ohio and Columbus make my way towards Indianapolis. Where Wednesday I will spend the day in Indianapolis. Then Thursday I will make my way back through Ohio through Cincinnati. Friday I will be making may way back home.

Fingers crossed.

I will most likely be doing a “recap” of each day once at the hotel at the end of my days, so be on the lookout for that.

Be sure to leave some comments letting me know where to stop and check out on my travels. Let me know what your favorite breweries and places to visit are, I’d love to hear them!

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!

Cheers!

-B. Kline

The Trip to Indianapolis:

• The Trip to Indy
• The Trip to Indy – Day One Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Two Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Three Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Four Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Five Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Six Recap
• The Trip to Indy – Day Seven Recap
• Recap and Stats