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)