Tag Archives: Beer

Memphis Taproom Thirstoberfest!

It was amaz­ing! Beau­ti­ful weath­er goes per­fect­ly with great beer and peo­ple. Had a lot of fun.

What did I drink? (Looks at list.) Keep in mind they were 6 oz. cups. Oth­er­wise I’d prob­a­bly still be lay­ing in the biergarten.

List­ed in no par­tic­u­lar order:

  • Alla­gash Confluence
  • Cig­ar City Maduro Brown Ale
  • Dog­fish Head Bitch­es Brew
  • Dog­fish Head Sai­son du Buff
  • Green Flask Le Freak
  • Har­poon Wet Hop
  • Ommegang Cup o’ Kyndnes
  • Sly Fox Keller Helles
  • Vic­to­ry Sai­son du Buff

Jesse cooked up some mar­velous food, too. I wolfed down his chou­croute gar­nie. What’s that. Think meat plate. It was Boudin blanc, ribs, pork bel­ly, kiel­basy, pota­toes and kraut. Hearty. Just what the doc­tor ordered.

My Beef with the PLCB

While I don’t share Lew’s froth­ing hatred of tax­a­tion, I must say that I’ve reached my lim­it with the PLCB. What was the last straw, you ask? I have nev­er had a good local dis­trib­u­tor in my life. I had a flir­ta­tion with Soci­ety Hill Bev­er­age, but even their supe­ri­or selec­tion (by PA stan­dards) and rea­son­able prices aren’t enough to keep me from envy­ing my friends in Jer­sey, or from rel­ish­ing trips to Helen’s home state too much. (Lit­tle secret: Vir­ginia is for beer lovers! Bet you did­n’t know Dog­fish Head has a string of brew­pubs down there!)

No one retail­er is per­fect. I’ll accept that for all intents and pur­pos­es beer snob­bery is the new record snob­bery. You can read all about it, sali­vate over every bou­tique brew, but the the real chal­lenge is to find it in the wild. Might not be so hard at the local tap­rooms, but try find­ing a bomber of Dog­fish Head­’s lat­est, Bitch­es Brew, any­where around town. It’s point­less to try.

I’m not sure what the answer is. I’m not typ­i­cal­ly a fan of pri­va­ti­za­tion. Sure, there’s malfea­sance in the pub­lic sphere, but we can influ­ence that. Look around at what’s hap­pened in the free mar­ket in the past ten years and ask your­self if they’re doing much bet­ter. What I will grant is that folks in oth­er states with more lib­er­al alco­hol sales laws tend to have a bet­ter over­all expe­ri­ence. Would it kill some­one to let me buy a mixed six pack, instead of hav­ing to buy a whole case of pump­kin ale?

As it stands now, plen­ty of Penn­syl­va­ni­ans become boot­leg­gers rather than con­form to local laws. It’s too tempt­ing to sneak over the Jer­sey or Delaware bor­der to pick up your favorite beer and wine in stores that are frankly much bet­ter than any state store or dis­trib­u­tor. Why not just reform the laws and find a way to make that sys­tem work as it does in neigh­bor­ing states?

I will say this: boot­leg­ging is much eas­i­er now since the advent of E‑Z Pass. You don’t even have to wait in pesky toll lanes!

In Praise of Two Guys on Beer

There’s some­thing amiss in the Philly beer blo­gos­phere, if you ask me. Lew’s been crazy busy with more impor­tant things, like send­ing his son to col­lege, not to men­tion fin­ish­ing up that book. (Con­grats on both, Dad!) Ram­blin’ Jack has been a lit­tle heavy on the press releas­es late­ly in anci­ti­pa­tion of launch­ing a new site, which has been post­poned, per his lat­est post. Beer­lass has been doing her thing, but her blog tends to make me more hun­gry than thirsty. Love Joe Six­pack, but hate philly.com too much to find his stuff.  Where do I turn for more beer insight?

I’ve been tweet­ing recent­ly with Dave Mar­torana, half of the Two Guys on Beer duo. They have a video pod­cast, which you can also view at their YouTube chan­nel. Nat­u­ral­ly, I’m eat­ing crow here as they haven’t record­ed since the World Cup end­ed, but I think that’s due to some shenani­gans at Indy Hall. Dav­e’s been great about rec­om­mend­ing oth­er video pod­casts to me, like Beer Tap TV and Two Beer Queers.

Thing that’s great about video pod­casts now? They look great on your iPhone 4. Seri­ous­ly. Amaz­ing. I was total­ly over pod­cast­ing. The word just turned me off and the prod­uct often was­n’t much bet­ter. You know what changed all that? HD tech­nol­o­gy. Every­thing looks and sounds awe­some, and you can watch while you ride the train to work! Per­fect, bite-sized morsels of beery goodness.

But you know what? I want more! Rec­om­mend your favorite beer writ­ers and pod­cast­ers. I love local folks, but I want to know who your favorites are. It always helps to refresh sources and I feel like I’m long over­due for some good­ies. Drop your rec­om­men­da­tions in the com­ments so I can check ’em out!

My Two Cents on Philly Beer Week

Philly Beer Week real­ly works for a select con­stituen­cy, main­ly the guys who are cov­er­ing the local beer scene. The rest of us can par­take in the bajil­lion events hap­pen­ing all over the place if we like, but if arti­cles like this one are any indi­ca­tion, Philly Beer Week has more in com­mon with the local music scene in Octo­ber than any­one would like to admit. Guys, all these events do is just can­ni­bal­ize each oth­er! (Hat tip to Lew Bryson for shar­ing that link on Face­book. I would’ve total­ly missed that piece in all the hoopla.)

I noticed an insight­ful tid­bit from Mithras, a great Philly blog­ger I’d not read in a lit­tle while. He wrote:

I under­stand that bars have to pay a fee to PBW to par­tic­i­pate. One bar own­er told me it was $500. With 1,000 venues, that’s a lot of rev­enue. Of course it’s in PBW’s inter­est to have more and more events — but it’s not in bar own­ers’ or in beer drinkers’ interests.

So there’s the fol­low the mon­ey angle, if PBW orga­niz­ers have no skin in the game for week to be a suc­cess­ful one from a stand­point of curat­ing a great city­wide beer experience.

Of course, I’m with the folks who just think that hav­ing Philly Beer Week dur­ing the first week of June is just sil­ly. I man­aged to get over to Mem­phis Tap­room — which is lit­er­al­ly around the cor­ner from my house, as I’ve writ­ten repeat­ed­ly — exact­ly twice. Helen and I squeezed in a quick din­ner and drinks before the Erykah Badu con­cert and I made it back over one evening for a hasty Hap­py Hour with Char­lie in my lap. I prob­a­bly drank three beers total at Mem­phis Tap­room that week, which is actu­al­ly few­er than most weeks.

Don’t get me wrong. I love the idea of mak­ing a fuss over Philly Beer Week. When I talk to beer-lov­ing friends who live else­where they nev­er for­get to remind me just how lucky I am to be a Penn­syl­van­ian, PLCB notwith­stand­ing. We need to cel­e­brate what makes this state so spe­cial to the micro­brew cul­ture that’s matur­ing into a sus­tain­able busi­ness and not just lux­u­ry brews for beer snobs. But aren’t we cel­e­brat­ing that very thing night­ly in this town? Do we real­ly need big­ger, bet­ter, faster, more? Philly Beer Week is verg­ing on SXSW Music in terms of sheer scope and insanity.

Jack Curtin seems to feel the same way. Sure, March can be tricky, too, what with the whole St. Patrick­’s Day thing, to say noth­ing of the impend­ing 96 team field for March Mad­ness, which may add an addi­tion­al week­end to the pro­ceed­ings. Fac­tor in the lousy weath­er we had this win­ter and maybe Philly Beer Week dodged a bul­let by mov­ing to June. With any luck, the orga­niz­ers will work some of the kinks out for next year and it’ll be the dream event every­one wants it to be.

(In case you’re won­der­ing, I drank a delight­ful impe­r­i­al stout from Brew­Dog called Tokyo. I thought it’d do me in. Need I men­tion what an amaz­ing job Leigh, Bren­dan and the crew do over at Mem­phis Tap­room dur­ing Philly Beer Week? No Repeat Beer Week for me is the epit­o­me of what makes Philly such a great beer town. My neigh­bor­hood bar can cre­ate the entire expe­ri­ence in a micro­cosm! As they say where I grew up, ‘Nix besser!’)

Ain’t No Cure for the Summertime Brews

As I watch the Phils wrap up a come from behind win against the hap­less Astros, I can’t help but think about what I’ll be drink­ing this sum­mer. It ain’t easy being a Pennsylvanian!

Sum­mer beers I like include:

  • Troegs Sun­shine Pils
  • Vic­to­ry Pri­ma Pils
  • Philadel­phia Brew­ing Co. Row­house Red (or Fleur de Lehigh)
  • Sly Fox Pike­land Pils
  • Oskar Blues Dale’s Pale Ale

It’s nigh impos­si­ble to choose one as my favorite sum­mer ses­sion ale. I know what you’re think­ing: first world prob­lems, dude. But it’s one of those things where you like to have a depend­able go-to when you reach for a beer in your fridge or cool­er, you know? I’ve been par­tial to Sly Fox, since I love the cans, but now Oskar Blues has Dale’s Pale in our mar­ket. I also love the refresh­ing taste of the Troegs and Vic­to­ry selec­tions. I must admit a wan­ing appre­ci­a­tion for PBC beers; I just don’t think they live up to the qual­i­ty of com­pa­ra­ble craft beers. What’s your favorite? Feel free to sound off in the comments.

An aside: was the ses­sion beer move­ment just a fig­ment of Lew’s imag­i­na­tion? Friends of mine who home­brew said they’d heard that every­one was going big — very big — just as the econ­o­my start­ed tank­ing. Made sense to me, but as some­one who’s try­ing to wean him­self off of those humun­go beers, I’d like to think some brew­ers haven’t aban­doned it altogether.