I'd wanted to hit up a new brewery in Wrightsville, which is right across the river from Columbia, PA. With that in mind, I felt obligated to swing by one of my favorite area breweries, Columbia Kettle Works, to get things started on the right foot. I mean, we were driving right past it, so we had to stop in for at least one beer, right? Well, and some food too. Thanks again, 'Rona. Turns out it was one-and-a-half beers, but who's counting? Oh yeah... I am.
OK, enough jibber jabber. Let's get down to business. I'm going to spare you of the details of all the 'Rona rigamarole at each of these places. I will say, however, that CKW seemed to have its shit together. After being greeted upon our entrance, we checked out our phones for the current draft list. I was initially drawn to an IPA I hadn't had before but whose name escapes me. The server recommended two other hoppy beers, and she was happy to provide samples of each. The one I decided on was Tango Hopstrot, a deliciously fresh and moderately hoppy golden lager brewed exclusively with Mandarina Bavaria hops to elicit notes of citrus, especially tangerine. This beer was quite enjoyable and set a solid benchmark for the rest of the day.
Meanwhile, Brewslut worked on a pour of a sour beer called Provisional Measures. On paper, this one sounded pretty ambitious. Boasting an intensely tart, complex sherry-like character and fruity notes of black cherries and red currants, this blended sour combines a 12-month-old barrel aged Oud bruin with a golden sour ale base. I managed to nab a few sips of this beer, and it was quite tasty with definite notes of sherry and dark fruit.
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| Pleeps is starting the day off right! |
We decided to share a pour of something else while we finished up our cheese plate, which featured three different selections - a washed Tomme, a sharp cheddar and a gouda - as well as pretzels, olives, gherkins and a delicious dark, coarse mustard for dipping. Since we're required to purchase food with beer during these weird times, we decided to keep things light since we'd be visiting several breweries and would have to eat something at each stop.
The beer we shared was called Gember Perzik, a hazy orange Belgian-style saison brewed with ginger root and peach puree. Dry and earthy up front with a slight ginger sting, the peach character crept in to offer a hint of juicy nectar to this otherwise traditional saison. Overall, the ginger and peach notes worked nicely together, making for a delicious combination.
I'm definitely glad we decided to stop in CKW for a bit. They do a grat job, they have wonderful staff who are friendly and educated, and the beers are always solid. They shouldn't be as under the radar as they are, in my opinion. If you haven't been there yet, do yourself a favor and check it out. Along with St. Boniface, CKW is my other favorite brewery in Lancaster County.
Just across the river from Columbia is Wrightsville, which finally hosts its own small brewery in Hell in a Bucket. Situated on Front Street right along the Susquehanna River, the brewery takes its name from a Grateful Dead song. With jam band tunes in the air and tie-dyed shirts strewn across the bar, this place is definitely about crunchy vibes and hippy philosophies. While I'm not the biggest Dead fan, I did notice some Zappa references in the beer names and memorabilia decorating the walls, which made me smile.
Upon perusing the beer menu, we noticed that the place has a penchant for high gravity Belgian-style beers. We noticed a Dubbel, a Tripel, and a Quad all on the menu. With this in mind, we opted for a flight of four different beers with which to test the waters. Here's the scoop:
- Tom Banjo - imperial pilsner
- Jack Straw - American pale ale hopped with Simcoe and Idaho 7
- Disco Boy - Belgian style Dubbel with strawberries and chocolate
- Dark Star - American stout with Simcoe and Magnum hops and Safale yeast
Things got off to a shaky start with the Tom Banjo, which had a definite burnt rubber finish. We both immediately knew this was an undesirable off-flavor, so we took to Google to figure out what might have caused it. Turns out it's something called "yeast autolysis," which is the result of leaving beer in primary fermentation too long. Healthy yeast cells die, which in turn produces off-flavors of - you guessed it! - burnt rubber. This made sense to me, as lagers take longer to ferment than ales. So I learned something new, and you probably did too.
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| Robot roll call... let's go! |
Otherwise, our flight was pretty solid, with Disco Boy being the clear winner... and coincidentally the one of four beers we tried named after a Zappa tune rather than a Dead song. That observation certainly wasn't lost on me. But Jack Straw was a decent pale ale, and Dark Star boasted a surprising hoppy character I wasn't expecting. But the clear winner for me was Disco Boy, although the strawberry came across more as cherry than strawberry on my palate.
Meanwhile, my nephew Kyle and his entourage showed up to meet us, as they had been at the nearby Moondancer Winery just a few miles down the road. With the whole crew there, I decided to go with my favorite of the lot, Disco Boy, for a full pour to accompany my tropical shrimp taco (not the best pairing, mind you, but I follow my beer instincts more than my food palate). Thankfully, we could purchase a single taco as a "meal" while we were there. Hey, at least it wasn't a hot dog.
Brewslut tried her luck with Dupree's Diamond, a DIPA brewed with local Nugget hops from River Hills Hop Farm in nearby Mt. Wolf, PA. I tend to be wary of hop-forward beers from brand new breweries (especially ones made with local hops), but I was pleasantly surprised with this one. It was a tad malty and sweet for my personal preference, but otherwise we both thought it was well done. It had a full, somewhat sticky mouthfeel that I appreciate with DIPAs.
We asked if the youngins wanted to accompany us to our next stop, but they apparently had already consumed a lot of wine at Moondancer and needed to take a breather for a few hours. Plus they had to attend to various pets and what not (one of the reasons why we're still pet-less). We made plans to meet up later at Mellow Mink, which is in their neck of the woods.
I must admit that I didn't have high expectations for our next stop of the day, Lydian Stone. I figured it was worth a stop since we were in the general area. At the very least, we could cross it off the list and move along. As we pulled into the parking lot, the building reminded me of someone's house. A make-shift beer garden was assembled in part of the parking lot, with some tables, colored lounge chairs and tents scattered about. I honestly didn't know anything about this place at all. As a matter of fact, the only reason I even knew it existed was because it popped up on my beer map app a few times while searching for new breweries in the area to visit.
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| Outside Lydian Stone Brewing Company. |
Originally founded under the name Touchstone Brewing in 2016, the brewery took its name from a hard, black stone traditionally used to measure the quality and purity of gold and silver. I dig it. We made our way inside and checked out the beer selection, which to my surprise was quite extensive and varied. We decided to share a flight to try a cross section of different styles. Here's what we settled on:
- Sweet Apricot Ale - light fruity ale with a juicy apricot flavor
- Pretzel Wheat - a light wheat-based ale meant to mimic a soft pretzel
- Kilt Lifter - Irish style dry stout
- Northwest IPA - west coast style IPA
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| Pleeps has taken flight! |
I couldn't really find any information on the beers; the brewery's Untappd page offers little to no ingredients or additional descriptions. But I will say that we were pleasantly surprised with our beers. The only one that came across as a bit lackluster was the Pretzel Wheat, which was kind of thin and lifeless. The others were all quite enjoyable. Even the dry Irish stout, a style I don't tend to get into much, was nicely done, with a roasty flavor and heftier-than-usual body for the style. The somewhat light, watery body is one of the things I tend not to enjoy about Irish stouts, but this one was beefier and still maintained that dry, roasty flavor that's a hallmark of the style. I was also surprised by the IPA, which was well-balanced with a moderate bitter finish. Aaaaah, bitterness... a commodity seldom found in IPAs of the last five years. It's great to see that west coast IPAs still aren't extinct. Hopefully we'll see a resurgence in the style as beer drinkers begin to tire chasing the haze craze.
Honestly, we could have stayed a bit longer and tried a few others, but we now had somewhat of an agenda, as we were regrouping with Kyle and Co. in a few hours. We had one more brewery to visit before meeting up at Mellow Mink with the gang.
Mechanicsburg's Hemauer Brewing kind of floated under my radar. In the past, when a brewery opening occurred within a 50-mile radius of my house, I heard about it. I actually discovered Hemauer when I saw a post from a friend on Facebook, who gave it "thumbs up." I must be getting old! Naturally, we had to make plans to visit. As I said earlier, we'd planned to visit a few weeks ago, but the pool enticed us away from beer on that sweltering hot Sunday afternoon.
In 2017, owner Brooks Hemauer decided to take the leap into professional brewing and got the ball rolling on all the backend stuff like paperwork, clearances, securing a location, etc. In August 2019, Hemauer opened its production facility in nearby Dillsburg. The taproom opened in May 2020 smack in the inauspicuous midst of COVID-19, which is perhaps why I hadn't heard anything about it. At any rate, here we were, about three months after the grand opening of the tasting room.
Hemauer is situated in the Wesley Drive shopping plaza, a practice that has become more and more commonplace with small breweries in recent years. We ran into some beer buddies sitting out on the patio and chatted for about a minute or so. After the formalities, we headed inside to peruse the beer menu. Immediately, I was drawn to a collaboration IPA Hemauer brewed with Collusion Tap Works, my favorite brewery in York. The beer, Hazy County Bois, is a hazy lactose NEIPA hopped with Citra, Mosaic and Lotus for a melange of juicy citrus and tropical notes. I really enjoyed this one. It paired nicely with my mini box of Frosted Mini Wheats that I purchased as my "meal" for a mere $0.50. Dinner is served! I mean, it sounded like a square meal to me, right?
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| Outside Hemauer Brewing in Mechanicsburg. |
We were also pleased to see a collaboration with Chambersburg's GearHouse on tap, which Brewslut dutifully ordered. Chocolate Covered Cherries is a dark, bold stout brewed with Nathan Miller chocolate and sweet cherries. This one was heavier on the chocolate with a touch of dark roasted coffee and just a tinge of cherry sweetness in the finish. Pretty solid overall, although I preferred my IPA over this, and so did she.
We decided to split a beer, and we'd be remiss if we didn't try the Raspberry Berliner Weisse (the style being a favorite of Brewslut's). It was pretty solid overall albeit a tad thin. However, it displayed a sweet-and-tart berry tang amid the light, effervescent base beer. By now, it was nearing the time to head over and regroup with Kyle and his cohorts.
As I said earlier, we'd been wanting to get back to Mellow Mink for quite some time, especially since my nephew had been raving about its sour beers lately. We'd visited twice in the past with mixed results, but with several more months under its belt, we were convinced that Mellow Mink had finally found its voice. With a bent leaning towards sours and funky farmhouse ales, Mellow Mink prides itself on embracing local terroir and ingredients such as fruits, flowers, and spices.
With a tap list featuring around six beers, the selection is always light but fairly eclectic. We decided to dive into a pair of its Superfruit beers to get things started. The first, Superfruit #7, is a golden sour ale brewed with cherries, blueberries and black currants and blended to capture the flavors of summer fruit wines. It definitely had that tart, refreshing, fruity sangria vibe going for it. The other, Superfruit #1, is a blonde sour ale featuring raspberries and passionfruit. I found this one to be a bit more tart than #7. Passionfruit just has that tart bite that clings to the sides of your throat. I found both of these to be quite enjoyable.
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| Pleeps rockin' some Superfruit. |
Meanwhile, the rest of the group got here and we all ordered our requisite hot dogs (yes, I ate an actual hot dog for the first time in probably 10 years). Gotta do what you gotta do. I wasn't happy about it, but I was hungry, so I just closed my eyes and hoped for the best. Eric (one of my nephew's buddies) and I decided to share two 750mL bottles that sounded tasty. The first was Scarlet Sunrise, a blend of sour red ales aged for 12 months in Cabernet Sauvignon barrels, then refermented on blackberries and blueberries. This might have been my favorite beer of our visit. After all, a dry, robust Cab Sauv is probably my go-to wine (even though my favorite style is Cabernet Franc).
The other bottle we shared, Barrel Aged Janet Weisse, is a barrel-aged golden version of Mellow Mink's apple pie sour. A blend of blonde sour ales aged in Chardonnay barrels for 12 months, it's aged for an additional 6 months on cinnamon sticks, vanilla beans, and locally harvested apples. Part cider, part spiced ale, and part Belgian ale, this tasty concoction boasts lots of fall spice flavor with a vinous character hinting at dark stone fruit but with a crisp apple presence that somehow works.
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| Pleeps is lookin' California at Mellow Mink. |
We decided to squeeze in a visit to good ol' Pizza Boy. As it would happen, our old pal Swingle was out back drinking with one of Al's delivery guys who was off his shift. We pulled up a chair and waited a few minutes until 9:45 p.m. to order our cheap slices... but not before getting our hands on one of Pizza Boy's two dozen or so tap offerings. I was excited to see Just the Tidbits on tap, a pungent, tropical IPA brimming with bright pineapple and fuzzy hop juice that was the impetus of a past Ffej of July beer that ultimately became Pina Coolada. Brewed with Pilsner malt, fluffy malted oats, unmalted wheat, a touch of Honey Malt and hopped in the kettle with Amarillo and Mosaic, this juicy IPA is conditioned on about 700 pounds of pineapple tidbits and dry-hopped with tons of Australian Ella hops. This is a solid offering in a fine pedigree of tasty IPAs from Pizza Boy.
Speaking of tasty IPAs, I washed my buffalo chicken pizza slices down with Murren River, Pizza Boy's 100% Citra-hopped signature IPA. It's a Pizza Boy classic for sure... just ask Swingle. He's got 1000 Untappd check-ins of this sucker.
Well kids, that's all for now. Join us for the next installment of The Pour Travelers when we head to Bellefonte, PA to check out a few breweries and even a... GASP!... distillery. Until next time...
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