Yearly Archives: 2011

Get your mug to these Philly Beer Week events

PHILLY BEER WEEK is about the beer. But more importantly, it’s about drinking the beer.

And more important than that, it’s about where you drink the beer.

For the 10-day celebration of America’s Best Beer-Drinking City is a full-frontal showcase of scores of great beer bars and restaurants. More than 200 participating venues and breweries are hosting hundreds of events … Read the rest

Philly Beer Week 2011: Ten Days of Frenzy

A COUPLE of weeks ago at the Brandywine Valley Craft Brewers Fest in Media, Bob Barrar – Iron Hill’s bearlike, award-winning brewer – waded into the crowd with a giant Methuselah bottle filled with his barrel-aged ale. As Barrar hoisted the bottle overhead, hundreds of eager festivalgoers surrounded him, their small plastic cups raised, hoping for sample of the rare … Read the rest

Drinking Down the Shore: Where to Find the Good Stuff

Clarification: Tun Tavern brewer Tim Kelly says he has never been told by management to limit the variety if or dumb down beers he serves. Additionally, he notes he has never brewed a barleywine at Tun Tavern.

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FINDING GOOD beer down the Shore in 2011 is a little like finding good beer down the Shore in 1931. “Boardwalk Empire’s” … Read the rest

Clearly, a cloudy beer emerges

LATELY, THERE’S been a bizarre struggle over tap handles in Philadelphia. Instead of going at each other’s throats with more spigots that pour clear, yellow lager, the Big 3 have been battling it out with a cache of surrogate brands that are the flavor/style/philosophical opposites of their flagships – namely, witbier.

Budweiser? Forget about it. Anheuser-Busch has hooked up … Read the rest

Yo, Beer Man! In 140 characters or less

A CITIZENS Bank Park vendor is on Twitter. Tweet him during a game, and he’ll deliver a fresh beer to your seat.

Ladies and gentlemen: I present the first practical use of Twitter.

No more waiting for the beer man to finally wander down your aisle. No more hustling off to stand in line for half an inning. No more … Read the rest

Rye Not?

RYE IS A dirty grain – bitter and black and somber-looking. It is unfit for human consumption, except during famine. It is very “disagreeable to the stomach.”

This point of view is not mine, for I count myself among those delicatessen faithful who kneel in the presence of pastrami piled high between slices of rye.

Instead, these are the learned … Read the rest

Philosophy on Tap: I Drink, Therefore I Am

IT’S HEARTENING to see our nation’s colleges are still tackling the existential quandaries of man. Case in point: “Philosophy on Tap: Pint-Sized Puzzles for the Pub Philosopher” (Wiley-Blackwell, $19.95), by Matt Lawrence, a philosophy professor at Long Beach City College.

This fun paperback considers the Big Questions that have troubled college sophomores since Aristotle had his tenure. Like:

If a Read the rest

Oyster stout edges into popularity

“HE WAS A BOLD MAN,” wrote 18th-century Irish satirist Jonathan Swift, “that first eat an oyster.” But no less bold was the first brewer who added oysters to his stout. After all, salty, squishy and arousing are not adjectives one normally associates with beer.

And, yet, lately we’re seeing an unexpected surge in the quirky style known as oyster stout:… Read the rest

Report from a brewery in the Japanese earthquake zone

If mass casualties, flooding and nuclear meltdown aren’t bad enough, Japan’s beer industry is in a shambles, too.

Kirin, Asahi and Sapporo breweries have all reported extensive damage to their plants in the weeks after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami. Several breweries have closed, others have ceased beer-making operations to bottle water for survivors.

I’ve been trading emails with … Read the rest