A stitch in time tastes fine in Wilmington

Wilmington, Delaware, the largest city in the First State (first to ratify the Constitution back in 1787) presents a pleasant downtown, even if retail has been gutted by malls which sell without sales tax to the nearby Jersey and Pennsylvania folk.  Seven or eight blocks from the train station, up Market Street, one can stop at the pub of Stitch House Brewing Co. for a pint.

The Stitch House name is based on a former retail tenant, the Linen Mart; its original use was as an ice-making plant. The brewery opened March 18 this year and was doing a good trade after eight months, on a sunny Sunday afternoon.  Twelve beers were on tap, eleven their own and one a collaboration.  This lineup included three IPAs and two pale ales, and in more adventurous territory, a rauchbier, a kolsch, a shandy, and a pilsner.  I had to sample the Baby Guava Dava, a sour Berliner Weisse made with guava in the boil and kettle-soured, I assumed. A tasty example of the style. 
With a mac and cheese plate I paired one of the pales, Big Stitch Nick, a clean-finishing ale with little aroma (5.6% abv).  The collaboration is called Out and About Oyster Stout, brewed for a recent festival event.  Andrew Rutherford, head brewer at Stitch House, worked with his counterparts at Iron Hill, Two Stones Pub, and Wilmington Brew Works to concoct this delicious black stout with the oyster juices trumping the usual coffee and chocolate notes in a sweet stout. 5.2%.

Stitch House utilizes five seven-barrel fermenters and a brew kettle in the street side window.  Waitstaff said most of the production is consumed here on the premises, with one or two other downtown spots having their kegs on tap. A slow and steady launch seems like a prudent beginning.


(Visited 11/11/18)

Phoenixville Pt. II-crawling toward the castle

A pub crawl along Bridge St. in Phoenixville continues for three or four blocks past the Main St. corner where Root Down brews.  After Root Down, the next two are branch pubs.  The Iron Hill chain began in Newark, Delaware in 1996 and now has upwards of twenty locations in Delaware, south New Jersey, and the greater Philadelphia area. The business model is like McMenamins in the Northwest, with small breweries at each site supporting mostly on-premise consumption in their full-menu restaurants.  Some styles are made in all locations, others can be unique to that pub. By the way, Iron Hill says they won two GABF medals in their first year of competing, in 1997.

Further up Bridge St. one encounters the Rec Room, the  newest outlet of Conshohocken Brewing Co., opened last December.  The original plant and main production brewery opened around 2012 some fifteen miles down the same Schuylkill River in the town of Conshohocken. Its best known beer and recent medal winner at the World Beer Cup is an ESB, Puddlers Row. Know it well, and it is a good example of a style not all breweries make.

Several doors up from Conshy's Rec Room is Crowded Castle Brewing, located in another building

with a modernized facade in front of another repurposed business space.  This was once a printing press operation, vacant for some years.  These guys had eleven taps working, four of which were IPAs, and some unusual stuff in the other seven.  I tried some Centurial Sentinel, billed as an agave ale aged in tequila barrels, 5.4% and endowed with a desert aroma.  I gave the Defiance Alt a shot--they describe this as top fermented with a kolsch ale yeast and then aged cold like a lager.  Comes out medium dark with a nice head, good mouthfeel.  4.8% abv.

The logo, shown on the right, is a nice bit of work and will look good on a label when they get around to bottling. 
My last taste here was a short glass of Kahuna Umi Umi, a lager which earns the Hawaiian name by being aged on ripe pineapples.  That fruit does linger in the finish. 
A pleasant, cozy space with a good vibe.

(Visited 11/17/18)

Putting roots down in Phoenixville

   Phoenixville, Pennsylvania sits along the Schuylkill River near Valley Forge, maybe twenty-five miles outside Philadelphia.  The factories that got the town going are long gone now, but the 15,000-plus people who live there have found other kinds of work.  Including, of late, brewing.
My first couple of times in Phoenixville including stops at the brewpub of Sly Fox Brewing, a well-run operation executing a solid business plan including canning from the get-go and competitively priced growler fills (reminds me very much of Kulshan in Bellingham).  I didn't realize their downtown section was a lively spot for beer tourism until lately.
   Last Nov. 17 downtown Phoenixville put on a pub crawl: six stops at the four breweries, the distillery, and the wine shop, earned one some swag.  Said crawl was all along a three-block section of Bridge St., the main drag as those of us of a certain age used to say.  I misspeak: the first stop going east to west is Root Down Brewing, at 1 Main St., just off Bridge. This brewery, opened just

in 2017, occupies the space once used by a soft drink bottler; its brick facade has a mid-20th century look a bit out of step with the early 20th look of most buildings along Bridge St.
When I stepped inside and worked my way up to the bar--it was work, the pub crawl had drawn a real crowd--I scanned the tap list and saw 18 (eighteen) taps all their own beers.  On a second scan, I saw stars by two of those eighteen, for a gold and a silver medal at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, held just two months previous.  Now that's not stop the press news--talented brewers have come back from the GABF with multiple medals before. Chuckanut in Bellingham has, I know. I'm sure Dogfish, Sierra Nevada, Allagash, and other famous breweries with long track records have done so.  But the year after you open?

The back of the pub is given over to a food ordering counter, barrels for aging the product, and a flat open area, big screen for sports, etc. The fermenters were crowded behind the bar just like the people were jam-packed in front of it.
I tried the medal winners:  Bine, an IPA, 7.1% abv, gold in the American IPA style, and Salty by Nature, a sour gose beer winning silver.  The Bine had a nice nose and finish, the gose--shouldn't have tried that after a hop bomb IPA.
(Visited 11/17/18)

Nesmaniny Creek's Borough Brewhall: Another repurposed brewery space

Neshaminy Creek Brewing has been going strong since 2012 in Croydon, PA, up the river a few miles from Philly.  Last year they had an opportunity to expand in a spot somewhat closer to the urban core. The Guildhall Brewing Co.  had been working on opening an attractive spot in Jenkintown, next to an art house cinema and in an upscale neighborhood. By cut-the-ribbon time, all the capital they raised had gone into the plant and none was left for operating it.  So it went on the market and Neshaminy stepped up.

The building, spacious on the inside, evidently housed other types of commerce before the GuildHall investment.  After a movie next door, I stopped in for a half-pint of JAWN (juicy ale with nuggets), their popular pale ale (5.2%, using Zythos in the hops mix along with Nugget and Cascade.  Later I tried the Maximum Mocha Porter, brewed with locally roasted coffee beans and infused afterwards with chocolate.  Like drinking dessert. 

The view of the back of the building, from the three-sided bar, says this is an active brewing location even if the large scale production and canning continues in Croydon.  The pub has a good vibe and should be a fixture here for many years.



(Visited 11/09/18)

Mainstay Independent: brewing in a re-purposed brewery

After the last two posts, seeing Roy Pitz in a re-purposed pharmaceutical warehouse and Love City in a re-purposed railroad parts manufacturing building, I called on the newest addition to the Philly craft brewing scene, operating in a building formerly used as--a brewery!  Mainstay Independent Brewing Co. has taken over the riverfront space recently vacated by Yards Brewing when the latter moved to its shiny new quarters on Spring Garden St., a few blocks away.  The operation is helmed by Brian O'Reilly, formerly of Sly Fox Brewing, and partners who share the vision of a crafthall in the overall space.  A bakery is already slated to move into the old Yards loading dock area, and coffee roasters and other artisans of the edible or drinkable may follow.

The glass wall between the pub area and brewing operations remains as it was in Yards' days. The 60 bbl fermenters are new; Yards left their old tanks on the floor but they were not in good enough condition to start a new brewing life.
My first glass was a very aromatic wheat IPA called Harness Blend (5.7% abv), made with decoction mashing of a spicy wheat malt,hopped with Mosaic, Citra, and Cascade. Hazy orange color, floral taste, tingly finish.  Good brew.
For the opening days, Mainstay has been pouring two Berliner Weisses. The main one (not tasted) is called King Laird Weisse, named for an early Irish immigrant who grew wheat in the area. The second, Wiener Weisse (5.6%) is one of those last-gasp-of-the-yeast efforts, made on a smaller pilot batch system with yeast from brewing the King Laird.  Spicy, good aroma.  They had a Kolsch, a pale, an amber, and a pilsner.  Sundry IPAs are doubtless in the works but it was nice to see a launch without this ubiquitous style on board.
(Visited 11/04/18)

Love City Brewing: Take a Ride on the Reading

Anyone who's played Monopoly more than once has drawn the card to advance to the Reading Railroad.  Such a railroad once ran, in real life, but is now long gone.  Its terminal in downtown Philadelphia is now a touristy market and its tracks running north from that terminal are now a weedy, aging viaduct over Philly streets.  One crossing, over Spring Garden St., is just a block from the Roy Pitz brewpub, last post, and from Love City Brewing's taproom, open just six months.
Brewing takes place under high ceilings in an industrial building first used by a company that made parts for the Reading Railroad.

The tops of some of the 10-bbl fermenters stick out above the partition in the picture to the left. Brewer and co-owner Kevin Walter concocts a variety of IPAs (I counted seven, two signatures and five seasonals) and some tasty alternatives. My first pint was the Generator Wheat Ale, a spicy take on the style at 4.25% abv.  A shorter glass of stout, aged in bourbon barrels was a good warmer for a chill day. 
Kevin honed his craft working at the Iron Hill Brewing chain for nine-plus years, in several locations and capacities.  As the web site relates, he met his wife Melissa over a craft beer keg event and they brewed a special batch of beer for their wedding. 

As the next picture shows, food trucks can be driven right inside the cavernous building. 
One more detail about the long-gone railroad--the city is working on a plan to convert the old viaduct into a walkway, similar to the very successful High Line on the west side of Manhattan.  The first phase, RailPark 1, ends about a block and a half from Love City's front door.  "If they can finish it to Spring Garden," Kevin says, "this district will have a great boost."
I took home a six pack of Love City Lager, filled by a contract canner as often as sales support. This was a very sound session beer at 4%.
(Visited 10/20/18)

Roy Pitz: more new in Philly central

"Roy Pitz"--sounds like a good name for a Pennsylvania Dutch farmer, doesn't it?  Turns out it is the nicknames of a couple of guys, Ryan Richards (Roy) and Jesse Rotz (Pitz), best buds since first grade in Chambersburg, PA, out in the country a ways west of Gettysburg.  Both learned beer-making at the Siebel Institute and opened up a brewery in their hometown about ten years ago.They have evidently prospered there, as they recently opened a new location in Philadelphia, just north of center city and about five blocks from Yards Brewing's new plant on Spring Garden St.  The Roy Pitz Brewing Co. website describes this venue as a barrel house, designed for finishing sour beers and the like.

Some of the barrels and fermenters are shown on the left, on the ground floor of a former warehouse, a seven-story brick building built in 1927 for pharmaceutical products. It stood empty for some decades, one of so many rustbelt structures that dominate large swaths of the Philly landscape.
This building has had a dramatic makeover and spaces on the higher floors are being filled by a variety of business tenants.  Roy Pitz's space is on the street level and shows off some snazzy 

design features, like this dramatic mural bracketing the current tap list.  Speaking of the beers--I went through a flight of four tasters here.
Started with Ichabod Crane's Midnight Ride, an exemplar of the pumpkin ale style that seems obligatory in October now.  Belgian ale yeast, 7% abv, nice aroma and malty mouthfeel.  Then the Gobble Lager, a 5.5% marzen, dark with an earthy tang, interesting effect with light hopping.
No. 3 was a sour Berliner Weisse, 4%, red color and made with berry puree.  Did I just imagine a hint of cranberry, influenced by the seasonality of the other beers?  I finished up with Heavens to Betsy, a hazy yellow IPA, about the color of grapefruit juice with 5 % alcohol, with some peach and strawberry tastes coming on in the finish.  Not a bad beer in the bunch.  A fun spot for later research.
(Visited 10/18/18)

Fremont Oktoberfest: not that local

Seattle's Fremont neighborhood, self-proclaimed as the Center of the Universe, is home to the eponymous brewery as well as a troll under a bridge, a statue of Lenin, and a sheet metal rocket ship. Just to its west, the still somewhat industrial neighborhood of Ballard has become a warm incubator for new craft breweries over the past few years.  This Octoberfest, held late in September on the Fremont-Ballard line ("Frelard") could have held fifteen or sixteen breweries within a mile and a half of its locus.

But it didn't.

Besides Fremont, I saw Hale's Ales and Peddler at this festival. No Reuben's, no Stoup, no Outlander, no Populuxe, no Bad Jimmy's, no Holy Mountain, no Naked City or Flying Bike.  No new brewers I haven't visited yet.  A number of breweries from Bend, a fair number of German imports.  Small breweries can experience festival fatigue this time of year, we must give them that.  Fresh hop days are just around the corner with more focused festivals.      

 Still, this particular festival seemed a lot more fun in terms of meeting local brewers six or seven years ago.   

  Ciders were more in evidence, as I suspect they will continue to be at beer events.  My most memorable taste was a watermelon cider from Pear Up Cidery near Wenatchee.  All the aroma you would expect and a distinct flavor.  Reminded me of that old county song about watermelon wine.

(Visited 09/21/18)                                                

Great Canadian Beer Festival--Notes

     On September 8 I found myself in Victoria, B.C., taking in the aforesaid festival held in a baseball stadium (home of the HarbourCats, who play in the West Coast League with the Bellingham Bells. the Wenatchee AppleSox, etc.).  The festival drew around ninety brewers, snuggled into some sixty-seven booths.  The very lively craft brewing scene here in British Columbia was here in full force but representation from the eastern end and middle of the country seemed slight.

     "Well, yes, it's not all that national," local beer writer Joe Wiebe told me.  "We have a couple of breweries from Quebec, a couple from Ontario--it's a big country and a long way to travel, from the Maritimes, say."  Joe added that the name, Great Canadian, had been the title of this festival from its beginnings, 26 years ago, the oldest festival in Canada held in an outdoor setting.
      I thought, of course, of the Great American Beer Festival, held in Denver every September like this one, and such a prestigious event brewers from every corner of our big country clamor to get in.  Denver is not too far from the middle of the USA, and it is the capital of a state so passionate about local beer they elected a craft brewer as governor.  Project Denver's longitude up into Canada and you are somewhere between Moose Jaw and Saskatoon, so you see the problem.
      Anyway, there were some fine beers pouring in Victoria that afternoon.  One of the more unusual was called Beets By Sinden, from Town Square Brewing in Edmonton (one of four Alberta brewers who pooled their resources to share a single booth).  Now, I didn't live twenty-plus years in Montana without knowing what beets meant in that part of the world--big foot long sugar beets.  But no, said the brewer, Drew Sinden, I'm using those dark red beets you get as a vegetable side. Adds tartness and a redder coloration to an ale.  Had to agree with the man, he made a tasty brew here.
     Another concoction caught my eye in the program: Wild Sour Lavender Gruit.  This came from Moody Brewing in the Vancouver suburb of Port Moody.  First time I tasted a lavender-bittered beer I spit it out, it was awful.  That was in Omaha. Second time I tasted one, in Anacortes, it was pretty good, I finished my festival four ounces.  This time it was damn good.  Stats per the program: 4.5% abv, zero IBUs.  And yet it had some distinctive bitterness, kind of a lemony finish.
      I found Field House Brewing in Abbotsford, visited once before, several years ago, and gladly had another wee glass of their Salted Black Porter (6.5% abv, 23 IBU).  The magic ingredient here is dutch droppies, a salted black licorice candy we can blame the Netherlands for.  Next time I'm in Lynden, Wash., I look for some. 
     My best-of-show was an IPA, so it must have been toward the end of my tastings.  Sip an IPA early in a festival and your scorched earth taste buds may not respond to any gentler brew.  This was called Passionfruit Destiny IPA and it is made by Fuggles and Warlock in Richmond, near the Vancouver airport,  6% abv and 62 IBU but not a hop bomb.  Infused with fresh passionfruit in the (secondary?) fermentation, it was just delicious. 
(Visited 09/08/18)

Two standouts in B.C.'s lower Fraser valley: Dead Frog and Four Winds

   Some time back I tracked down Dead Frog Brewing in the community of Aldergrove, B.C., just over the border from Lynden.  They had a production brewery in a business park, no tasting, just off-sales of bottled brews.  They hooked up with Walton Beverage when the Pepsi distributor decided to add some craft beers to its lineup--one of the few Canadian beers to make it over the Beerlin Wall (a/k/a 49th parallel), and I was happy to pick up an occasional bomber of their Rocket Man Pale or Classic Nut Brown Ale in Bellingham.
     Fast forward to 2018:  Dead Frog is opening a classy brewpub along with expanded production capacity in the middle of Langley, B.C.

Just off a major exit on the TransCanada Rte. 1 freeway, the pub will be much easier to reach from Vancouver.  The kitchen offers a few choices in sandwiches with salad sides, well prepared.  Tables inside and out on a patio, and gleaming wood bar and bench areas will all told hold plenty of people, and it will be a venue for bands to make music.
The beer choices are extensive.  I sampled a Brett Ale, aged two years in unspecified barrels for a tangy sour flavor, just 11 IBUs but strong at 7.3% abv.  Wonderful aroma.  Next flight was the Winter Beeracle, a dark, chocolate-orangey flavored winter ale. Kind of a spice chest aroma.

Third up was the classic nut brown, nutty enough for those of us who have Samuel Smith to thank for the introduction to this fine style.  22 IBUs and 5% abv.  Last on the line, the Moscow Mule, a tart lime and ginger flavored ale.  Just 18 IBUs to remind us there are more acid flavors than are dreamt of in your philosophy, Horatio.  Some of Dead Frog's offerings are sold in cans as well as bottles.

(Visited 09/03/18)



The graduation from a production brewery with tastings or perhaps food trucks to a regular pub is a course not all brewers choose.  But I am happy to learn that Four Winds Brewing in Delta, BC is choosing that direction. Presently, this award-collecting brewery operates a small pub on its premises in a business park; tacos for lunch and space for perhaps twenty people to eat and drink.

And more than twenty often show up.  In two years, though, Four Winds will be in a proper pub in the Southland Farms development just now going up in the Tsawwassen community snuggled up against the aforementioned 49th parallel.  And about a mile or two from my new digs in Point Roberts, Wash.
Last visit here, I had a taco with a pint of Norwegian Wood, a really fine Belgian Saison with a transporting aroma, taste both fruity and dry, and wonderful  Enigma hops and a yeast from Norway (so it isn't just a Beatles riff).
Carry on, Four Winds, until you can get that new place built!

Paper Street--downtown Richland

     Back in Washington!
     In the first block off Lee Ave in Richland, a good stop after several hours touring the Hanford site's radioactive cleanup work, I find one of the newer brewers.  Paper Street is named for a location in the movie Fight Club, screenplay written by a local guy from the Tri-Cities area.

That's what Robbie Burns, the founder and brewer says. and it would have been his call.  He brews over in Pasco and brings the kegs across the Columbia River to the taproom here, has been operating that way four years now.
Some of the ales evoke the big historical stories of the Tri-Cities, like 96 Bones IPA, for the discovery of the 9,000 year old skeleton known as the Kennewick Man in 1996, or Secret Keeper, for the people making plutonium at the B Reactor for the atomic bomb in 1944-45.  Nothing as yet for the paranormal novels of Patricia Briggs, all set in this area.


No ales with haggis ingredients, although that would be a fun nod to Burns' namesake, the 18th century Scots poet.  He did make something with a bit of Greek yogurt when I was there.
(Visited 07/17/18)

Lancaster Stop #2: History cherished at Wacker Br.

    At one point in the nineteenth century, in the industrializing decades after the civil war, Lancaster was reputed to be brewing seven percent of all the beer consumed in the U.S.  One of the leading producers was Eagle Brewing Co., founded in 1853.  Joseph Wacker purchased the brewery in 1870 and he and his sons and grandsons ran it up to and then after Prohibition until 1938, a sixty-eight year run.  The brewery closed in 1956 along with hundreds of regional brewers in that era, and after another fifty-eight years, the business was reborn under the same name, Wacker Brewing Co., in 2014.
    Both the website and the interior of the taproom pay homage to this history. Along with photos of the original brewery, now demolished a few blocks away, the owners have framed and hung labels that once festooned Wacker bottles back in the day.  The Bohemian Pilsner, a best seller for the brewery in draft or 12-oz cans, was a leading brand back then, too.  The Kolsch is another popular style, according to brewer Michael Spychalski.

     The ten-barrel brewing system with four fermenters down in the basement keep about a half-dozen styles on tap here.  Wacker II just celebrated three years of business May  15. On the left, a glass of Marzen, somewhat lighter in color than many brewers make (isn't Marzen the style of choice for many oktoberfest beers?).  Or is memory tricking me here in the springtime? This led with the malt and went down very well.




(Visited 05/02/18)

Lancaster's eponymous brewer

   Amtrak rolls west out of Philadelphia on the main line of the old Pennsylvania Railroad, through towns of mortared stone mansions and good new beers--Ardmore (Tired Hands Brewing), Bryn Mawr (Tin Lizard), Berwyn (La Cabra).  Past Downington and Victory's original brewery, farmland becomes more prevalent than commerce. Tidy farms, some run by Amish, surround the compact city of Lancaster, PA, about an hour's ride from the city.

    Lancaster Brewing Co., about a dozen blocks from the station, is the oldest (est. 1995) of the new breweries in a city once called the Munich of America for the quantity and quality of German lagers made here. Approaching its solid nineteenth century brick building, once a tobacco curing warehouse, one sees a silo attached to the exterior, looking like a grain silo--but isn't.

It's a rainwater catching structure, built to intercept storm water from the city's sewerage system before those extra flows can overload and bypass the treatment works. Inside, I meet Mark Braunwerth, head of brewing operations for the company and learn that the silo evolved from the city's review of LBC's application to add a brick patio area for outdoor sipping (visible beyond the silo). More impervious surface would have meant more stormwater in the sewers, unless it could be offset by some serious mitigation. Hence the silo and some other pervious areas to soak up the rains. 

   All that sounds fine, environmental kudos, etc., but what about the beer?  What caught my eye on their website was a milk stout, a chocolate milk stout, no less.  I remember having a hankering for this style back in Washington last winter; the only packaged milk stout was from Left Hand in Colorado.  "I think we've been making this longer than Left Hand," Mark said, offering me a sample. 
   Oh, my Gambrinius, that was good!  Think of a chocolate malted milk shake with a call-a-cab kick (6.8% abv). 

It was not stout-drinking weather, about 75 and sunny, but happily the brewery did have 4-packs of 12-oz bottles, so I took some home to savor on a cooler day.  These bottles were brewed and filled at Susquehanna Brewing, about a hundred miles from here, Mark said.  "All our capacity here," indicating the fourteen 30-bbl fermenters behind him, "goes into kegs."  He added that a canning line was in the works, which should enhance the company's marketing area, the five states that abut Pennsylvania, plus Virginia.
   So what to drink on a warm spring day.  A lemon blueberry shandy (5%, 5 ibu) caught my eye.  "That's quite a fruit bomb," Mark said. "I like to cut it half and half with our Kolsch" (5.1%, 35 ibu).  I took the brewer's advice and quaffed a just-right beer, a liquid blueberry muffin.
(Visited 05/02/18)

Sterling Pig: True beer facts in this Media

   The pretty town of Media, PA, a few miles west of Philly in the suburban fringe, boasts two quality craft beer makers, one of the Iron Hill chain and Sterling Pig Brewing Co., a small (10-bbl?) operation with a good-vibe taproom and a menu with some tasty barbecue, smoked on site.

Founded in July 2015 by local restaurateur Loic Barnieu, the pub's food fare does stand out from typical pub grub.  The barbecue, like pulled pork, is smoked on the premises and the pizza comes out of a copper clad oven upstairs.  The beer selection is much more varied than the typical IPA house, too.  How many taprooms will have two pilsners on out of about a dozen choices?
Sterling was doing a standard pilsner, called Shoat (5% abv), hopped with just Mt. Hood, and Hoppin' Pils (4.9%), same process as Shoat to the end of the boil, then adding whole leaf Liberty hops in  a hopback process. I tried both, liked the second version a bit better. 
  Another good pint was the Sty-Lander (yes, a

few piggy names here), a Strong Scotch ale at 8.3%.  This had not just a malt-in-front taste, there was a bit of peat in there too.
  The pizza oven is shown on the right.







(Visited 04/26/18)

Cast a crooked eye in Hatboro, PA

     The Crooked Eye Brewing Co. is about a six-block walk from the regional rail station in Hatboro, PA, a suburb about twelve miles north of the Philadelphia city line. The seven-barrel brewery was

founded in 2014 by a couple of brothers of the Mulherin clan and their uncle.  The building is tucked behind a tattoo parlor and also shares parking with a deli, so food, while not made in the taproom, is never a lack.
   The Irish like the Mulherins are akin to their fellow Celts, the Scots, and this is most true in the beers made here.  Among what they call the core beers I saw a stout, a wit, a golden, a brown, and a Scottish Ale, Regimental 80, at 4.7% abv, a nice malty flavor.  Plenty of choices besides the usual IPAs, in other words.
   They offered a second, stronger Scottish called Angry Piper (6.9% abv) and this was wonderful.
I imagined I could taste a bit of the earth the barley had been grown in, the mouthfeel was that good.  At the recent Locals Only beerfest in Philly, where each brewer brought their flagship and one specialty brew they wanted to show off, Crooked Eye had Angry Piper on tap as the specialty.

   Ever adventurous, the brewers were also offering a Gruit called Ugly Mug Wort the day I stopped in. Gruit is German for herb, and before hops were as commonly grown as they are today, various herbs were used for bittering. This one (6.9%) used mugwort, hence the name, also some sweet gale,ground ivy, and heather tips. The end result was still on the sweet side--if you want real pucker up bitter, there's no substitute for hops.



(Visited 04/08/18)

Yards' New Digs

The Yards Brewing Co., a mainstay of the Philadelphia brewing scene for all of the past thirteen years I've been visiting the city of brotherly love, has been turning out its revolutionary war recipes and other ales down by the Delaware River, a site that it finally outgrew.  The new quarters are a long five blocks away, at 5th St. and Spring Garden, a major crosstown arterial.

  The architecture features a striking facade and     a line of grain silos over the Spring Garden sidewalk.  The brewery passed the 40,000 barrel annual sales level in 2015 and must have been pushing 50,000 bbls by the close of 2017, when they opened the new plant.

The taproom seems vast, certainly by the standards of a Washingtonian (I'd guess you could fit Scuttlebutt's and Fremont's taprooms both in this space).  They have almost twenty of their own brews on tap, along with the occasional ciders or guest taps.  Great glass panels expose the whole of the operation to the public's view.  The very first brew kettle, encased in a brick jacket, was in plain view at the riverfront site and I was told it would be reassembled here, at some point.
Yards' packaged beer sales have been almost entirely in 12-oz glass bottles; a few limited releases have been in 22-oz bombers.

But lo and behold!  Part of the new plant is a canning line. It was almost ready to start up when I stopped by on March 31.  It may well be running by now.  Cans increase potential marketing areas--I don't think Yards sells west of Ohio now but this should certainly open up more midwest markets, at least.
I tried a seasonal release, Cape of Good Hope double IPA, 9.7% abv, and very floral along with a burst of bitterness.  Very good.



(Visited 03/31/18)

From a sun break in Guatemala--Antigua Brewing Co.

It's been a long, soggy, gray winter this year, although the variety of winter ales is up and helps to dispel the gloom.  However, the itch to wander needed a little scratch and I just came back from a week in Guatemala. Got some natural Vitamin D and a taste of craft beer in the old colonial city of Antigua, a few miles from the capital, Guatemala City. The stucco walls come in all sorts of pastels and the brewery, a couple of blocks from the main plaza, contributes a bright blue.

This operation started up a couple years ago, brewing on a small system that looks to be capable of making three or four barrels at a batch.

The pint I tried poured real pretty and tasted like a well made pale ale. They sell at forty quetzals (around six dollars) a pint, closer to U.S prices than what the locals would be used to getting their Gallo cervezas for.  Indeed, the other customers I saw on a Thursday afternoon were turistas like me, speaking English.

The treat here was the roof patio, looking out over the town and several of the volcanoes that surround it.  The mountainous part of the country is mostly made up of volcanoes, like our Cascades, but considerable more active.  The most recent activity came out of a volcano called Pacaya, which blew in 2010 and again in 2014.    (Visited 02/08/18)    

Volcan Agua, not erupting, just catching clouds

Illuminati: Bellingham's newest

    Our fair city of about 80,000 is now home to 11 brewing entities, making beer in 12 buildings (Kulshan has two). The most recent to open, last October, is Illuminati Brewing, way up on the north side.  Like DesVoignes in Woodinville, Illuminati makes its beer under the same roof as a related winery, Masquerade Wines. The taproom is not a pub per se,  but a cold case holds a fair assortment of artisan cheeses, a nod to the winery adage "Buy on bread, sell on cheese."

The logo is unusual, reminding one of the odd pyramid on a dollar bill

When I first stopped in, the crew was celebrating the opening weekend of the latest Star Wars movie with Millenium Falcon IPA on sale at three dollars a pint. They also participated in the state beer commision's Belgian Fest down in Seattle in January, pouring Spinal Tap Tripel, a hefty 11% abv done in the Belgian tripel ale style, and a Belgian style pale ale called Rickshank Redemption, a more civilized 5.6% abv.

(Visited 12/16/17  and 01/27/18)