This brewery's ARS is really in a garage--in South Philly

   South Philadelphia, between the pro teams' stadiums and the touristy Italian Market/cheese-steaks district, is a gritty blue-collar neighborhood that would support craft brewing only if it doesn't look too yuppie. IMHO, at least.  Earlier this year I wrote about 2nd District Brewing and its presence in a block of auto repair and detailing shops down here.  Just lately I got over to the south end's newer

brewery, which has taken over the space of a garage on Passayunk Ave., the main drag in these parts.  A couple of pizza joints and a sandwich shop are the neighbors across the street. The block is cheerfully mixed, residential, commercial, industrial would have been welcome back in the day.
A couple of brothers, Andy and Sean Arsenault, using the first three letters of their name, called it BreweryARS and opened (rolled up?) their door to the public last December.  They fit a 10-barrel brew system with six fermenters into what had been an auto body repair shop.

   How did these guys choose this path?  Andy is the beer guy. After some homebrewing time, he went out to UC Davis, near Sacramento, and earned a degree in brewing.  Then he went to work at Victory Brewing, Pennsylvania's most nationally distributed craft beer, for a while.  Sean, a contractor-builder in the neighborhood, acquired this space and the two hatched their idea. 
    Follow the link to their site and look at some forty styles that have come out of this little plant in their first eight months.  They like to play around.  Much like the pre-Inbev Elysian, which turned out over four hundred types of beer in the eight or nine years preceding the buyout.  And admire the graphics--Andy says that's one of Sean's contributions; he didn't go to art school but he loves to draw. 
     With all this brewing background, you would think Andy has both imagined and brewed these beers, some of them unique.  But, he says, we've both had to keep our day jobs and hire someone to do the brewing (90% cleaning and sterilizing, 10% cooking, as even us homebrewers learn).
Andy's day job is an east coast rep for the Hop Union, and he does have to be in Yakima five weeks each year.  If you can't stir the mash, at least you get to smell hops on the vine, right?

If you took my suggestion and looked at their site, you'll have seen many examples of Sean's artwork (ars is also a Latin word for art or skill, but it ain't yuppie if its what the folks around here shorten your name to). Here's one:Diggable is billed as an "IPAish" beer, meaning it ferments on a Belgian yeast rather than the customary ale yeast.  The fruity esters do cut the bitterness down some.  As brewers experiment more and more with the IPA style, this might get some copiers. 
   I took four cans of Diggable home as it was not on tap when I was there.  What I did taste was (1) Maple Hill, a smoked sweet potato saison, 6% abv, and (2) Bright Lights, which they call the House Blonde, 5.0% abv (does "house" imply you would keep it in a regular rotation? Andy: maybe).  Now the Maple Hill is smoked only in the sweet potato part, not the malt, so the applewood smoke is subtle, not heavy.  Worth coming back for.  The Blonde presents no unusual tastes, would be a good gateway craft beer.

(Visited 10/22/17)