Working with Wawa’s own coffee wizard, Michael McLaughlin, we brewed a oatmeal stout and steeped it with Wawa’s Reserve Winter Blend Coffee, an exclusive handpicked roast that has flavors of sweet clove, dark chocolate, and graham crackers. Our brewer, Bob Barrar who, like Wawa, is a Delaware County native, and has won over 30 Great American Beer Fest Medals and 11 World Beer Cups, chose to brew an oatmeal stout because of its balanced sweetness that will showcase the full range of flavors from the Reserve Blend.
Just about everybody in the Northeast/Mid-Atlantic region (PA/NJ/DE/VA specifically) of the United States knows Wawa. The store is a cultural icon and staple of the greater Philadelphia region, South Jersey and even Central Jersey. For those not in the know, nationally, think 7-11, but much, much better. I grew up in North Jersey where there weren’t many Wawas but once I moved a little south to Middlesex, then Somerset County, there were plenty of Wawas near me and I’ve been getting their doughnuts, breakfast sandwiches, and most importantly and relevant to this review, their coffee since. So when 2SP announced they were brewing a Coffee Stout with Wawa coffee last year, I wanted some. Demand was high and I didn’t get any. Well, they saw how popular the beer was and brewed more (and different varieties) for Winter 2019, which brings me to this beer.
So…the beer. Pop of the can and it pours a nice black into the glass. There’s a thin khaki/tan head to the beer that dissipates fairly quickly. In terms of aroma, I’m introduced to a beer with mild hints of coffee, but it mostly smells like I’d expect a stout to smell. No complaints there.
My second introduction to the beer, the taste, is quite pleasing. I get ample stout flavors – roasted malts, smoothness from the oatmeal. There’s definite coffee flavors, too, but not overpowering. Mild spiciness akin to the cloves mentioned in the description, maybe a little bit of nutmeg? The short of it – I like what I’m tasting.
Image courtesy of MyBeerBuzz via untappd
First things first, this is tasty, well-made beer. Nothing else about the beer would work unless the base beer – a smooth and tasty Oatmeal Stout – wasn’t well-crafted. I typically have strayed away from flavored coffee over the past few years, aside from throwing a few dashes of cinnamon in the coffee I brew at home, so I was a tad nervous that flavored coffee could potentially sway my experience. Well….the coffee element, and the flavored elements in that coffee, of the beer is really nice, not overpowering and the beer has a good finish. I suspect the oatmeal and graham cracker flavors of the coffee help to give the overall profile of the beer a harmonious balance of flavors.
Wawa has such a loyal customer base and beer drinkers and coffee drinkers overlap quite strongly, that this beer could be seen as a novelty beer that would sell regardless of quality. Fortunately, the beer is pretty damned tasty. Bob Barrar, the head brewer at 2SP has a great reputation, has won several awards and that quality of craftsmanship shows in every drop of this beer. Put simply, this is very good beer.
This velvety smooth, roasty style will take your taste buds to another planet. Oatmeal isn’t just for breakfast anymore. That’s 35 different beers with the style of Stout – Oatmeal or Stout – Imperial Oatmeal. Try 5 more for Level 8!
Draught Diversions is the catchall label for mini-rants, think-pieces, and posts that don’t just focus on one beer here at The Tap Takeover. We hope you don’t grow too weary of the alcohol alliterative names we use…
The last two years, I’ve posted “12 Beers of Christmas” over the course of two days as an homage to the “12 Days of Christmas.” However, even last year to get to 12 I felt I was stretching my search parameters a bit. I’d rather have a super-solid six pack filled with a couple of borderline iconic beers this year. Also, in an effort to NOT exhaust all the Christmas beers available, I’m trimming it down to a single six pack of Christmas beers for 2019.
Avec Les Bons Vœux | Farmhouse Ale – Saison | Brasserie Dupont | Tourpes, Belgium | ABV 9.5%
Image courtesy of Brasserie Dupont’s Web site
I’ve seen this holiday Saison in some shops over the years but never grabbed a bottle. However, after having THE flagship Saison earlier this year, I’m even more excited to try this beer. A spiced up and higher ABV version of a world-class Saison sounds very intriguing indeed. This might be a bottle to bring to my in-law’s since my father in law is a big fan of Belgian style ales.
What Dupont says about the beer:
Les Bons Voeux means best wishes, which is what Brasserie Dupont sends with this very special saison ale brewed for the holidays. .
Redolently aromatic, rich and velvety, rich gold color, fragrant (lemony with hints of pepper, banana and clove), as all the beers of Dupont are with a full,deep malt richness that lingers on your tongue for what seems the whole holiday season.
Considered by some the finest offering from this unparalleled Brewery. “The best Belgian beer, if ever there could be such an award…a sumptuous, seductive 9.5% beer. Because of it’s intensity, I would recommend the novice graduate to this beer. However, if a saison that is starting to lean towards being a triple appeals to you, and if its in season, don’t hesitate.
How do I not include a beer whose label looks so Christmasy with those red-hatted gnomes? N’ice Chouffe is one of those beers I see often in the import section but never got around to trying, similar to the beer above. At 10%, this dark beer seems like a nice sipper for a cold evening by the fire with the Christmas Tree acting as the only other light source in the room.
About the beer:
N’ice CHOUFFE is the winter beer from the Achouffe Brewery. We recommend that you enjoy it from mid-October to mid-February, preferably by the fireplace. It is a dark beer, slightly hoppy, spiced with thyme and curaçao, and made using orange peel. It has an alcohol content of 10%. N’ice CHOUFFE goes well with any winter dishes.
Winter Lager | Schwarzbier | The Brooklyn Brewery | Brooklyn, NY | ABV 5.6%
Image courtesy of The Brooklyn Brewery’s Facebook
Brooklyn has a beer for every season and their Winter seasonal is a dark lager in the vein of a German Schwarzbier. Although I’ve had only a few Schwarzbiers, I do like the style, but it isn’t a very popular/prevalent style. Of the Schwarzbiers I’ve had, I was very much reminded of porters from the ale side of the beer tree – strong roasted flavors, maybe smoky, sometimes coffee or chocolate. I haven’t had Brooklyn’s dark lager yet, but that may change.
What Brooklyn says about this beer:
Brooklyn Winter Lager is our answer to the heavy ales and stouts that emerge in wintertime. Though dark in color with a sturdy presence, our Schwarzbier-inspired lager layers notes of chocolate, roasted barley, and dark bread into a 5.6% ABV frame that finishes surprisingly light and pleasantly dry. Winter means different things depending where you live, but Brooklyn Winter Lager is ready for any chill.
Gingerbread Stout | Imperial Milk Stout | Hardywood Park Craft Brewery | Richmond, VA | ABV 9.2%
Image Courtesy of Hardywood Park Craft Brewery’s Website
This is one of those “event” beers that has specially scheduled days of release dedicated to it. Ever since I became more aware of the online beer community and more aware of regional breweries outside of NJ over the past few years, Hardywood’s Gingerbread Stout is the Christmas Beer at the top of my list to get. Unfortunately, Hardywood does not distribute into NJ so the potential for me to get this beer is not very high. Based on the description, this beer seems like the epitome of a Christmas Stout.
What Hardywood Park says about the beer:
Made with baby ginger from Casselmonte Farm and wildflower honey from Bearer Farms, Hardywood Gingerbread Stout captures the terroir of Central Virginia in a rich, creamy libation with a velvety mouthfeel and an intriguing evolution of notes from milk chocolate and vanilla, to honeycomb and cinnamon, to a snap of ginger in the finish. We hope Hardywood Gingerbread Stout contributes to your merriment this season.
Fuggly Sweater | Lager – Dark | Ithaca Beer Company | Ithaca, NY | ABV 5.7%
Image courtesy of Ithaca Beer Company’s Website
Ithaca is one of the great Northeast Breweries, their “Flower Power” IPA is iconic. With that said, it is nice to see another Lager for the Christmas season. Ginger and cinnamon, the holiday spices, seem to be on prominent display here. Plus, that is some nifty looking label design.
What Ithaca says about the beer:
‘Twill be the fuggliest time of the year, so we joyously present our gift to this year’s season… Fuggly Sweater. Fuggly Sweater is a dark lager brewed to inspire the holiday favorite, gingerbread. The wide range of specialty malts create yummy cookie and cake qualities. The presentation is dark, but not opaque, with brown hues. Ginger is at center stage, and as with traditional gingerbread, a light amount of cloves, nutmeg, and cinnamon round out the spice profile.
Mad Elf Grand Cru | Belgian Strong Dark Ale | Tröegs Independent Brewing | Hersey, PA | ABV 11%
Image courtesy of Tröegs Independent Brewing’s Facebook
It just doesn’t seem like the Christmas season until I have a bottle/glass of Mad Elf. A couple of years ago, the brothers Trogner decided to play with the legendary beer by adding more tart cherries to the mix. I haven’t had this beer yet, but for Krampusnacht, The Krampus (my wife) got me a bottle of this, so I’ll be sipping from that bottle when we decorate our Christmas tree.
What Stone says about the beer:
If you know Tröegs, you know The Mad Elf, the mischievous belle of the holiday beer ball that helped put our little brewery on the map. In your hands is the Director’s Cut. Tart Balaton cherries – loads of them – make all the difference. Bottle-conditioned and flush with notes of cinnamon and clove, this beer begs to be shared. Take a bottle home, gather your friends, and cherish the cherries.
We taste: tart cherry, brown sugar, clove, subtle peppercorn
Availability: 750mL cork & cage bottles only.
There it is, a robust six pack of suggestions. For my Christmas Beers this year, I’ll be having at least one of the above. On Christmas Eve specifically I’ll also likely bring a growler from one of the handful of breweries in my immediate vicinity, maybe Jersey Cyclone, maybe Conclave Brewing to my parents’ house. The last couple of years I’ve brought growlers from Lone Eagle Brewing and Demented Brewing (which went out of business earlier in the year). All of those growlers went over very well and were finished very quickly so I feel like I have set the bar high in the past with what I brought to share.
Have a warm and safe holiday season, Merry Christmas!
A complex and flavorful beer that showcases local innovation from two fine Brooklyn purveyors of adult beverages.
From the untappd page for the beer:
This Honey Lager is our third collab with the cool cats over at All-Wise Meadery in Brooklyn. Brewed with delectable orange blossom honey, BEE-R is sessionable, smooth, and slightly sweet, powered by New York State malts and hops.
As close as I live to NYC, I haven’t had very many beers from the growing number of breweries in New York City’s five boroughs. I’ve been participating in a semi-monthly bottle share with some colleagues/friends from work and friends who once worked with all of us. On a recent bottle share, we did a Secret Santa and this was one of a handful of beers I received. To say this beer, a collaboration between a NYC brewery (Five Boroughs Brewing) and a NYC meadery (All-Wise Meadery) was a pleasant surprise is an understatement.
That’s how I received the beer. On to the beer itself…
The beer pours a beautiful golden-yellow from the 16oz can into the glass. It isn’t very clear but it isn’t also very hazy so I’m not sure how filtered the beer is. Regardless, it looks great. Aroma has a little bit of the honey, but nothing out of the ordinary….it smells like beer.
The first sip brings a smile to my lips…in a time of year when darker, heavier beers, are the norm, it is very refreshing to have such a full-flavored less-heavy* lager in my glass. I’ve only had a few different meads, not that this is mead…but I’ve had plenty of lagers and stylistically, this fits the bill very nicely. I get the crispiness of the lager, plus some bready characteristics typically associated with Lagers, Helles Lagers specifically. Underneath it all and completing the pleasant finish of the beer is sweetness from the honey.
*Blatantly avoiding the word “light” since that word brings so many negative connotations to Lager.
BEE-R has one of the most important qualities any beer needs to have – drinkability. An overused term, but a term that most definitely applies to this beer. There’s such an easy-going flavor profile to the beer, it is elegant and refreshing at the same time. Every time I put the glass down, I didn’t want to wait too long to pick it up and consume more because BEE-R is, to put it simply – a very tasty beer.
As a beer on its own merits – BEE-R is a standout. As a collaboration between a NY brewery and a NY Meadery that showcases NY ingredients, it is a home run.
I like the relatively simplistic label and the clever name, too. One of those obvious names that seems like somebody should have used it already for a beer that features honey as a prominent adjunct.
🍁 🥞 French Toast Bergen County Bull Stout 🥞🍁 a brand new variant for 2019 Barrel Aged Imperial Stout with Maple, Cinnamon, Cocoa and Madagascar Vanilla 🤤.
Bolero Snort has been a NJ mainstay for a about a half-dozen years now, they’ve garnered a following and reputation without having a home base, they’ve been a contract brewery since their inception. That all should be changing by the end of 2019 as their brewery/taproom (which will be the 12th largest in the State) finally opens. Over the years, they’ve been releasing a big stout around Thanksgiving, which they call Bergen County Bull Stout. Anytime a bovinely inspired pun can be inserted, it will happen. Furthering the pun, so to speak, the initials of that beer are BCBS, four letters which should ring a bell for beer people. As for the beer itself, the base of Bergen County Bull Stout is a barrel-aged imperial stout and each year, the Bolero boys brew a couple of different varieties. This year’s new variant is French Toast, which contains maple syrup and cinnamon as the prominent adjuncts with additional flavors of cocoa, Madagascar Vanilla, and lactose.
This was a very limited release as is the full complement of Bergen County Bull Stout variants, so I was happy to get a bottle since most stores were permitting only one bottle per customer. The bottle sports a nice label, cool font for the beer name, with the newly fashioned and stylized “BS” logo (as seen to the right) front and center. One last note on the packaging, I really appreciate that this is a 500ml bottle as opposed to what was once a standard, the 750ml bottle. 500ml is slightly more than a pint and is just enough for one person to consume on their own.
The beer pours almost obsidian and the aroma coming from the beer has my mouth watering. I get the full flavor-smell of French Toast – cinnamon, maple, and even that pleasant eggy-bread aroma. My only concern before taking the first sip is that it might be too sweet.
This is a complex beer…I need to put that up front as if that wasn’t obvious. The eggy-bread aroma of French Toast is present in the taste with the bourbon hints from the barrel making their way through everything. I also tasted ample amounts of cinnamon and maple syrup, too. The beer is most definitely a stout, the adjuncts don’t diminish the stout elements of the beer at all. The vanilla is a little toned down, which is welcome because especially Madagascar Vanilla can overpower other flavors to a negative degree. Here in the French Toast variant of Bergen County Bull Stout, the Madagascar Vanilla complements the cinnamon and maple and sits very nicely with the overall “French Toast” profile on the finish of the beer.
This beer is full-flavored, full bodied and boozy. As I said, the character of the bourbon barrel seeps through the whole of the beer, it isn’t intrusive but rather complements all the other additives Bob Olson and crew have thrown in the mix for this beer. Earlier I said I was concerned that the beer might be too sweet. Well, the beer is most definitely sweet but not to a cloying degree.
Pastry Stout (or dessert stout) has emerged as a distinct style over the past few years and this beer definitely falls into that category. I’ve had a few other beers that emulate breakfast meals like pancakes and bacon, but the French Toast variant of Bergen County Bull Stout is probably my favorite and most balanced I’ve had along these lines. A beer that has the flavor components of that rich, dessert-like breakfast while still retaining the stout qualities that give the beer it’s primary character.
The full “range” of Bergen County Stouts released in 2019. Image courtesy of Bolero Snort’s Web site
I’ve been really enjoying Bolero Snort’s output over the past year or two. For my birthday my wife took me to a beer pairing dinner at a local restaurant which was great experience – delicious food and tasty beer with an excellent host/ambassador in Adrian from Bolero Snort. Say one thing about Bolero Snort, they’ve never shied away from the flavor adjuncts and this beer is proof that their skills are well up to their ambition. This beer is probably the best I’ve had from them. As their motto says, that is No BS, just ragin’ good beer.
Draught Diversions is the catchall label for mini-rants, think-pieces, and non-review posts here at The Tap Takeover. We hope you don’t grow too weary of the alcohol alliterative names we use…
A larger variety of new beers crossed my palate in November 2019 than usual, with the typical mix of NJ and non-NJ beers. The annual birthday beer tour took us through a portion of the Bucks County Ale Trail, with a beer from that day featured here. That proved to be a lot of fun, with a wide range of beers with an extremely wide range of quality. Outside of that day, I thought I was done with barrel-aged beers after having some earlier in the year that didn’t work for me, too much barrel flavor, adjuncts not blending well. That was a blip on the radar because three barrel-aged stouts appear on this month’s six pack. Enough with all that …here…we…GO!
The Bruery makes big beers, potent in ABV, robust flavor, and physically big for the size of their bottles. This is one of their more popular and highly rated barrel aged stouts, and a beer I’ve been wanting to try for a few years. I haven’t seen bottles of it very often and it is a pricey beer, so I was very happy to see the beer on draught when my wife and I went to dinner with my parents for my birthday at a Paragon Tap & Table. I’ll just cut to the chase and say this is the best barrel-aged stout I’ve ever had.
Continuing with the birthday theme…the first stop of the aforementioned Bucks County Ale Trail was Moss Mill Brewing. All three beers I had there were very good, but the one that started the day stood out – a clean crisp and fresh Pilsner. Did exactly what a Pilsner should do and set the mood for what turned out to be a great day. If Moss Mill was more local to me, I’d definitely be hitting them up more frequently based on the three beers I had. Speaking of “more local to me…”
I’ve been really enjoying dark lagers of late, one made a six pack appearance last month and I gave von Trapp’s great Dunkel the full review this past October. Jersey Cyclone started strong with their Lagers, so naturally I wanted to try their Munich Dunkel. While they did not brew an Oktoberfest this year, this Dark Lager is perfect for fall – full flavored, great finish, and overall just a fantastic beer. Jersey Cyclone recently doubled their taplist and they have this one on Nitro now.
This is the second of three barrel-aged stouts to make the November list. Cape May’s stout, named for a WWI naval folly, has a boozier feel than the Bruery stout mentioned at the start of this post. That said, the beer is very good, full of flavor from the Woodford Reserve Bourbon barrels it sat in for a while. I keep saying whenever a beer of theirs appears here, but Cape May continues to brew outstanding beers and is strong contender for my top NJ brewery of at least 2019.
Victory has been having a great year in my mind, as several of my posts here would prove. Their latest “limited release” (aka not core/year round beer) is a toned down version of their outstanding barrel aged Java Cask Stout. Java Latte is lower in alcohol, has some milk sugar added and is a delicious stout. The coffee is present but not overpowering, the lactose adds enough sweetness, and the alcohol at 8.2% is not exactly low, but a perfect stout for cool nights. My only minor complaint is the body is a little thin, but the flavor is all there. I like Victory’s trend with these limited release beers being released in 16oz 4-packs, too.
Lone Eagle brought a new head brewer aboard a few months ago and when I last mentioned them here, he was still relatively new so only a few of his beers were ready for consumption at that time. The monthly board game meetup in November gave me the chance to try 2 of his beers and both were really good, with this barrel-aged stout being a standout. What set this one apart are the heavy notes of chocolate and how well those notes played with the bourbon from the barrels. At 10%, patrons were only permitted two pours of the beer, which is understandable. This is a great beer.
Although most of what I consumed in November was good to outstanding (I could have easily added at least four more beers to this list), one big dud stands out. Not just a beer, but an entire brewery – Mad Princes Brewery, which was part of the birthday beer tour of the Bucks County Ale Trail. I got a flight and could only finish one of the beers, the other beers were just untrue to style, had very “off” flavor profiles and were simply bad beers. I didn’t like it and the group (6 people) consensus was equally negative. The brewery itself was probably the most unwelcoming brewery I’ve ever visited out of the nearly 100 breweries I’ve visited over the years.
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