Tag Archives: Philly Beer Week

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!’)

Geeking Out at Memphis Taproom


Weyer­bach­er Fireside
Orig­i­nal­ly uploaded by J T. Ramsay

I met Kei­th Fitzger­ald at Mem­phis Tap­room last night to talk about blogs, apps, and all the oth­er fun geek stuff our wives tell us “sounds fun” as we walk out the door.

Our won­der­ful con­ver­sa­tion was aid­ed and abet­ted by some deli­cious beer as the No Repeat Beer Week rolls on! I start­ed the night with a smoky Weyer­bach­er Fire­side (pic­tured) before delv­ing into a bunch of beefy IPAs. Here’s last night’s list:

I took it easy since it was a school night, but I can assure you I had no dif­fi­cul­ty get­ting up this morn­ing for a quick three-mile run.

Our con­ver­sa­tion end­ed with an inter­est­ing dis­cus­sion about how RSS is the blood cours­ing through the veins of the Inter­net, yet we still find our­selves join­ing every known social media plat­form that comes down the pike. Isn’t RSS sup­posed to make our lives real­ly simple?

Speak­ing of which, we also chat­ted about Pitch­fork’s head­scratch­er of a redesign. It remind­ed me of Paper Thin Walls after it was redesigned and made ready for a social net­work that nev­er took off. Ouch. I told Kei­th that Pitch­fork should’ve looked to ESPN.com’s redesign and focused on their video pro­duc­tion. Why they’re still mar­ried to the con­cept of a music webzine escapes me.

Kei­th also shared his pet project with me: a run­ning app for the 3G iPhone that should blow Map­MyRun and its ilk out of the water. I’m con­sid­er­ing buy­ing a new iPhone just to beta test it against my Garmin watch. It sounds great for begin­ners and advanced run­ners alike. There’s a great oppor­tu­ni­ty for an iPhone app like this to meet the needs of Garmin cus­tomers who’re still wait­ing for Garmin to roll out their Mac features.

It was a great night for geek­ing out on beer and the Inter­net. I’m look­ing for­ward to work­ing with Kei­th on tweak­ing and adding fea­tures to Kens­ing­ton Blues over the next few weeks. To that end, can any­one rec­om­mend a clean, free, 2‑column Word­Press theme?

Philly Brewing Co. Birthday

Philly Beer Co. Birthday

Orig­i­nal­ly uploaded by J T. Ramsay

I was able to sneak over to cel­e­brate Philadel­phia Brew­ing Com­pa­ny’s first birth­day this after­noon with a cou­ple plas­tic cups of Ken­zinger. It’s hard to believe that it’s only been a year since their brand of deli­cious brews flowed forth from the site that once housed the mighty Yards Brew­ery, which has since relo­cat­ed to Delaware Avenue.

In that time, they’ve deliv­ered some great local beers for a great price. If you’re look­ing for a ses­sion beer this sum­mer, look no fur­ther than Ken­zinger. For my mon­ey’s it has all the best aspects Yards Philly Pale Ale offered, but just a lit­tle more refreshing.

My per­son­al favorite? Row­house Red! It goes with just about every­thing, while main­tain­ing its own dis­tinct personality.

No Repeat Beer Week @ Memphis Taproom

Lest peo­ple start to think that this blog is going to focus exclu­sive­ly on the issues fac­ing the music indus­try, I’m writ­ing today about anoth­er one of my pas­sions: craft beer! In the past year or so I’ve got­ten very seri­ous about the beer I drink, thanks in no small part to Bren­dan, Leigh and every­one at my amaz­ing local bar, Mem­phis Tap­room. We Philadel­phi­ans are also for­tu­nate to have Lew Bryson and Joe Six­pack, two of the coun­try’s best beer crit­ics, right in our own back­yard! So while I’m not going to attend any of the offi­cial Philly Beer Week events, but I’m mak­ing the most of Mem­phis Tap­room’s No Repeat Beer Week…and then stum­bling home happy.

Last night Helen and I were joined by our friends — and new neigh­bors! — Rick and Grace for a nice din­ner, which ulti­mate­ly evolved into the girls going home and us boys geek­ing out to some new beers. I can’t think of a bet­ter way to wel­come them to the neighborhood!

What did I drink? Jess was kind enough to loan me a pen and I used one of their handy beer menus as a check­list. I tried one of each of the following:

What did I like? I’m par­tial to every­thing Elysian does. I enjoyed their Bifrost Win­ter Ale immense­ly and look for­ward to try­ing more of their stuff. My local dis­trib­u­tor’s even stock­ing it now! The Loki Lager had an amaz­ing fin­ish that demands your attention.

Any­one who knows me knows that I’m a suck­er for an IPA, even though I’m try­ing to break the habit of default­ing to these some­times over­pow­er­ing beers. What can I say? I’m a total hops-head!

Dog­fish Head makes some of the most nuanced beers I’ve ever tast­ed, and the Red and White was no excep­tion. They’re always work­ing on anoth­er lev­el in my opinion.

My sur­pris­ing favorite? The Ipswich Orig­i­nal Ale. I know! I’m shocked, too! Lew Bryson says it’s going to be a big year for ses­sion beers, and if they’re as sat­is­fy­ing as this one, who could deny him?

Let’s just say it was an amaz­ing way to cel­e­brate Philly Beer Week in my ‘hood! Be sure to stop by and sam­ple some of the great stuff they’re tap­ping this week at Mem­phis and Cumberland!