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)