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)