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)