gitlab-ce deployed via helm chart returns http 500 (TCP connection failed to about.gitlab.com)

Summary

I have deployed the latest gitlab-ce build to an on-prem Kubernetes 1.12 cluster that is in an isolated network (offline/no internet access).

After helm install completes, I can access the sign-in page and successfully sign-in as the root user with the generated password.
However, after successful sign-in, I only get HTTP 500 errors from the server.

Steps to reproduce

I followed the steps as detailed on https://docs.gitlab.com/ee/install/kubernetes/gitlab_chart.html.
Only minor deviation is that I use a local docker registry co-hosted with the k8s cluster as there is no network access.
All required gitlab-org docker images are downloaded and pushed to the local registry and the gitlab.<x>.image.repository helm values updated as needed.

What is the current bug behavior?

After sign-in, the server only responds with HTTP 500 error messages.

What is the expected correct behavior?

I should be able to access the project / repository pages as expected.

Relevant logs and/or screenshots

The gitlab-unicorn pods contain the following log messages for every browser request that results in a HTTP 500 response:

==> /var/log/gitlab/production.log <==

ActionView::Template::Error (Failed to open TCP connection to about.gitlab.com:443 (getaddrinfo: Temporary failure in name resolution)):
    1: - show_blog_link = current_user_menu?(:help) && blog_post_url.present?
    2: %ul
    3:   - if current_user_menu?(:help)
    4:     %li

It looks like gitlab is calling out to the about.gitlab.com blog to pull the post related to the specific gitlab release that is running. However this connection fails as the gitlab instance is deployed in an offline / isolated network.

I should be able to deploy and run gitlab offline without requiring access to about.gitlab.com.

I guess I can't be the only one trying to run gitlab offline - so perhaps I am overlooking something obvious. Has anyone encountered this issue before or is aware of how I can disable the show_blog_link / Release Blog Post Helper module?