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)