SATURDAY MARKS the 500th anniversary of Reinheitsgebot, the German law that simply decreed beer can be made with only water, barley, and hops. Yet there is nothing simple about Reinheitsgebot, starting with its name, which Americans can correctly pronounce only after a liter of lager or two.

For, even after half a millennium, the edict remains a lightning rod for an unsettled argument among beer-lovers – one that pits tradition against modernity.

The traditionalist sees it as the benchmark of beer purity, a law whose tight brewing restrictions are responsible for the finest beer in the world.

The modernist looks at it as repressive, a law that stifles the creativity responsible for the most diverse beer in the world.

The traditionalist says: “Water, barley, hops – what else do you need to make a great beer? “

The modernist says: “Really? How about yeast to ferment it into alcohol? “

Traditionalist: “Five hundred years ago, brewers didn’t fully understand the role of yeast in fermentation. Besides, later versions of the law included yeast as an acceptable ingredient. “

Modernist: “As knowledge evolved, so did the law. Why not apply the same rationale to other ingredients? “

Traditionalist: “Because we need controls to ensure the quality of beer. That’s why the law was written in the first place – to make sure brewers didn’t add other cheap, dangerous ingredients, such as wormwood and chicken feet. “

Modernist: “Not true! The original law was designed to prevent brewers from buying up other grains – such as rye and wheat – that should be saved for baking bread. “

Traditionalist: “Well, we had to eat. “

Modernist: “Yeah, until the royal family of Bavaria wanted to make wheat beer. Then it changed the law to suit its needs. It’s the same old story: The laws only protect the established order. “

Traditionalist: “And what’s wrong with that? Those laws also mean Germany doesn’t have to suffer the crime against humanity that is light beer made with rice or corn. “

Modernist: “Blah! German beer is still all fizzy, yellow liquid. “

Traditionalist: “Be serious. A fresh, hoppy pils. A bready helles. A full-bodied bock. If you call yourself a true beer lover, you have to appreciate the craftsmanship that can create such complex, well-balanced beers. Under Reinheitsgebot, there are no trendy flavors of the week, like pumpkin ale or black IPA. “

Modernist: “And no choice, either. In most places in Germany, you’re lucky to find three, maybe four different styles of beer. In America, we’d call that T.G.I. Friday’s.”

Traditionalist: “C’mon, there are plenty of unusual styles in Germany: Hoppy altbier, sour Berliner Weisse, smoky Rauchbier. “

Modernist: “And they’re all niche styles that you’re more likely to find in an American craft beer bar than in most towns in Germany. “

Traditionalist: “Still, you can’t blame the Reinheitsgebot for limiting creativity. “

Modernist: “Are you kidding? Some of the world’s greatest beers would be illegal if they were made in Germany. Russian River Pliny the Younger is made with sugar; Firestone Walker Wookey Jack is made with rye; Cantillon Kriek has cherries. “

Traditionalist: “That’s why Germany is one of the leaders in the development of new hops varieties that can create a huge variety of flavors – even fruit. “

Modernist: “Big deal. You still can’t drink a beer made with raspberries or chocolate. “

Traditionalist: “So, you’re telling me you’d rather have a pint of Shock Top Strawbanero Wheat than a perfectly made Dortmunder? “

Modernist: “Ooh, low blow! But there are plenty of bad Reinheitsgebot beers, too. Oettinger is just plain nasty. “

Traditionalist: “OK, you named one bad . . . “

Modernist: ” . . . Beck’s, Heineken, Tuborg, Holsten. There are dozens of really awful beers that meet the old rules. The idea that ‘Reinheitsgebot equals quality’ is just wrong. “

Traditionalist: “Still, rules provide discipline. A true craftsman shouldn’t be allowed to disguise his lack of expertise by adding sugar or spices. “

Modernist: “But brewers are artists, too. Limiting their palettes to three or four colors is mindless tyranny. As long as it tastes good, beer should be made with anything the brewer chooses. “

Traditionalist: “That’s anarchy! Before you know it, they’ll be making beer with wormwood and chicken feet. “

Modernist: “Too late. I think Dogfish Head is already doing that. “

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IMAGINE ORDERING a nice, cold pint of beer in a bar, but before the foam has a chance to settle, the bartender pulls out a syringe and gives the glass a squirt of alcohol.

Forget about careful brewing methods or even enjoyable flavor. Just choke down your dose of ethyl alcohol like it’s medicine.

This was needle beer, and it’s the way America drank its suds during Prohibition, whose ban on beer came to a close 83 years ago today.

The practice seems alien in our age of fine craft-beer cuisine, but it was an everyday fact of life for a man who wanted to wet his whistle during the Roaring Twenties. All alcoholic drinks were illegal under the 18th Amendment, of course, but as with all such laws, there was a giant loophole:

Near beer, or de-alcoholized beer.

Technically, it wasn’t really beer; the labels called it “cereal beverage. ” It was completely legal and was sold locally with such names as Puritan and Birell.

One food authority of the time described it as a “wishy-washy, thin, ill-tasting, discouraging sort of slop. “

W.C. Fields famously cracked, “The man who called it ‘near beer’ was a bad judge of distance. “

How anyone could stomach it is anyone’s guess. But near beer was widely available, as was pure alcohol that had been distilled ostensibly for industrial use.

It didn’t take a genius to put the two together.

Though newspaper reports describe the widespread technique of spiking (or “thumbing”) individual glasses of beer, needle beer got its name from the illegal practice of adding straight alcohol by piercing cork-like keg bungs with horse syringes.

Armed with the giant syringes, organized gangs turned needle beer into a full-scale industry, running hidden operations at near beer breweries or warehouses.

Philadelphia in particular was notorious for its needle-beer syndicate.

In a series of newspaper articles in 1929, Mabel Walker Willebrandt, the Volstead Act’s most aggressive prosecutor, described how the city’s so-called Malt Brothers built a network of frontmen and delivery services to facilitate needle-beer distribution.

Willebrandt wrote of one beer racketeer who called himself the “fastest beer shooter in the state of Pennsylvania. ” With crooked Prohibition agents alerting him to coming raids, the gangster bragged that when the G-men left town for an hour, “he would shoot enough beer to hold them for a month. “

Adding alcohol to near beer did not magically transform the stuff into something palatable.

One old-timer in an oral history of Prohibition described it as “like drinking a bottle of 44-D cough syrup. “

In California, a federal judge made headlines by dismissing charges against a defendant accused of selling the illicit brew because needle beer was unfit to drink and therefore did not technically qualify under the 18th Amendment as an actual beverage.

Bad flavor was only the start.

Sometimes the beer had been spiked with antifreeze or Sterno or ether. Even worse was Jamaica ginger extract, a medicinal ethanol solution that, consumed in large amounts, could cause a paralytic condition known as “jake leg. ” (If you’ve ever seen Walter Brennan as an alcoholic in the classic film To Have or Have Not, you’ve seen jake leg. )

Beer drinkers had few other options, so needle beer became an accepted part of American culture. Jimmy Durante talked about it in the movies. Novelist Eudora Welty wrote about mixing it with bathtub gin. Newspaperman A.J. Liebling ordered up 25-cent glasses in Times Square.

As quickly as it grew, needle beer disappeared almost immediately on April 7, 1933. On that day, the Cullen-Harrison Act legalizing low-alcohol 3.2 beer went into effect. The following December, ratification of the 21st Amendment ended Prohibition completely.

With no reason to enhance that odious near beer, needle beer was laid to rest.

Until now. No story of needle beer can be complete without an actual taste. So I headed off to Acme for a bottle of Clausthaler nonalcoholic amber, and then to Rite-Aid for a syringe. I figured 50cc of 40-proof Tito’s Handmade Vodka would do the trick.

Spritzed into a mug, there was no notable change in appearance.

The flavor? It tasted like carbonated malt juice with a shot of vodka.

We’ve all had worse.

But, thankfully, these days we have a choice.

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There was a time in this city when everyone knew the name – and not just those who drank his family’s famous beer.

He raced in the Indianapolis 500, got into fistfights with cops, flew a Wright brothers biplane, and joined Pancho Villa’s rebellion in Mexico. He was a rogue, a draft dodger and a fugitive.

And 50 years ago yesterday, he died a madman.

Grover Cleveland Bergdoll, heir to one of the city’s greatest beer empires, never worked in a brewery. But the so-called Playboy of the Eastern Seaboard was surely the most notorious character in Philadelphia’s long, sudsy beer history.

His grandfather Louis J. Bergdoll launched the beer empire in 1849 with a small brewery at Fifth and Vine Streets. Within 10 years, the German immigrant moved his brewery to the other side of town, where it became one of the great anchors of Brewerytown. His Protiwiner Export and Philadelphia Lager Beer were world-renowned.

Louis Bergdoll lived like a king, building mansions in the city and suburbs. One of his estates featured a roller coaster. His giant, domed mausoleum is among the most magnificent at West Laurel Hill Cemetery.

Grover Cleveland Bergdoll never knew his grandfather; his father was a vague memory at best. Both were dead before the boy reached age 3.

Raised by his mother, Emma, in a mansion at 22nd and Green Streets, Grover was a classic third-generation scion – a hell-raiser with no interest in the family business, but plenty of money to burn.

By the time he was a teenager, Bergdoll was already well-known around the city and suburbs for racing fast cars made by his older brother’s Louis J. Bergdoll Motor Co. In one incident, a police officer tried to stop him for reckless driving in Ardmore only to find himself clinging to the running board as the privileged boy sped home.

For his youthful indiscretions, Bergdoll typically got off with a slap on the wrist and a meager fine.

His need for speed had no bounds. In 1912, he traveled to Dayton, where the Wright brothers taught him to fly and sold him a biplane. He built an airfield along West Chester Pike, where the Manoa Shopping Center now stands, and wowed thousands of spectators with his stunts.

On his first flight over Philadelphia, according to an often-told story, Bergdoll circled three times around Billy Penn’s hat above City Hall, then back across the Schuylkill.

In the next years, there were more arrests for reckless driving. Bergdoll went on to fly with Pancho Villa’s nascent air force during the Mexican border war, fighting against Pershing’s American force.

Later, he competed in the Indianapolis 500 against Eddie Rickenbacker, the American fighter ace of World War I.

It was during that war that Bergdoll achieved his notoriety as a “slacker,” a label then used for draft dodgers.

Refusing to fight against Germany, he fled the city in 1917, taunting authorities with postcards from his various hideouts, according to the Historical Society of Pennsylvania. His disappearance made national headlines. When he was finally tracked down in 1920, he was court-martialed and sentenced to five years in prison for desertion.

In an incredible chain of events, however, Bergdoll escaped once again, persuading his captors to accompany him to the secret location of a “pot of gold” he’d buried in the mountains of West Virginia. Along the way, they spent the night at his mother’s mansion.

The next morning, Bergdoll climbed through a window and sped off in a waiting car, eventually making his way to Germany.

The escape made headlines around the world, and though a congressional committee investigated allegations that the guards had been paid off, no one was charged.

President Warren G. Harding ordered the seizure of the family’s assets. During Prohibition, the Bergdoll brewery closed and finally died.

Bergdoll married a German woman and, over the years, faced down kidnap attempts by bounty hunters seeking to drag him home. He finally returned on his own in 1939 and spent World War II at hard labor in Leavenworth federal penitentiary.

His life after his release from prison was relatively quiet. He lived for years at his farm in Downingtown. He moved to Virginia. He divorced his wife.

With age, he slowly withered into dementia, living his final years in a psychiatric hospital. On Jan. 27, 1966, he succumbed to pneumonia at 72. He was buried in a modest grave.

The Bergdoll name is a just memory in Philadelphia, but remnants of the beer empire remain. The mansion on the northwest corner of 22nd and Green still stands. Part of the Bergdoll plant, at 29th and Parrish Streets, is now the Brewery Condominiums.

And the Wright brothers’ Model B biplane – the one Bergdoll flew around Billy Penn’s hat – hangs from a ceiling at the Franklin Institute.

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A lot of bad decisions are made in bars. Dancing with your pants on your head . . . Bingeing on a second cheesesteak . . . Drunk dialing . . . Sex with your ex . . .

But, c’mon, let’s give barrooms their due, for without them there’d be no libraries, no credit cards and no NASCAR.

Here are 10 great things that were born in bars.

1. The United States Marine Corps

Jarheads, who have been known to pound a few beers, take special pride that their beloved USMC was founded at Tun Tavern near Philadelphia’s waterfront on Nov. 10, 1775.

The Colonial inn had already served as host of various meetings and organizations around town when the Second Continental Congress tapped its manager to recruit marines. The tavern, which stood where I-95 now runs through the city, is long gone, but you can find a historical marker on Front Street near Sansom Walk.

2. “The Gift of the Magi”

The classic 1905 short story tells the beautifully sad tale of two struggling newlyweds who sacrifice their most cherished belongings to buy Christmas gifts for each other. O’Henry is said to have written it in a booth at his local pub, Pete’s Tavern on East 18th Street in the Gramercy Park section of New York.

Historians say there is little evidence to support that story, but I have no doubt he wrote the tale over beers. His real name, after all, was William Sydney Porter.

3. The gay rights movement in America

According to author June Thomas in The Gay Bar: Its Riotous Past and Uncertain Future, “gay liberation is the only civil rights movement that began in a bar.” That’s mainly because gay bars were not only “a refuge” in the 1950s and ’60s, they were also where people learned the ethics and tradition of gay culture.

The Black Cat in Los Angeles, Dixie’s in New Orleans and, most famously, New York’s Stonewall Inn, among others, are widely regarded as the birthplace of gay rights.

4. The city of Raleigh, N.C.

In the 1780s, a tavern built by Colonial landowner Joel Lane served as the first meeting place of North Carolina’s burgeoning general assembly. It was in this tavern that the legislature authorized the purchase of 1,000 acres of Lane’s land to establish the city of Raleigh as the new capital of North Carolina.

Today, the building has been restored as a historic home and museum and is listed on the National Register of Historic Places.

5. America’s first lending library

Before smartphones and Wikipedia, a must in any decent bar was a stack of books to settle arguments. In early 18th-century Philadelphia, however, most books were privately held – a problem that confounded members of Benjamin Franklin’s high-minded Junto discussion group as they sought definitive answers to their academic queries.

The group, meeting at the city’s Indian Head Tavern on Market (formerly High) Street, solved the problem by pooling their money to buy books, which they then lent to subscribers. Their original Library Company of Philadelphia still exists – not in a bar, but in its own building at 1314 Locust St.

6. NASCAR

Stock car racing got its start with Prohibition bootleggers trying to outrun the law in automobiles that were modified to go faster than police cars.

So it’s not surprising to learn that the National Association for Stock Car Auto Racing was founded in a bar – the rooftop Ebony Club at the Streamline Hotel in Daytona Beach, Fla. That’s where drivers and others met in 1947 to organize the sanctioning body, jotting down its first rules on cocktail napkins.

7. Credit card numbers

Pull out your credit card and look at the raised, square-ish numbers. That typeface is called Farrington B, and it’s one of the most familiar icons of our computer era. It was designed to be easily recognized by optical card readers in the days before credit cards came with magnetic strips or embedded chips.

David H. Shepard created the typeface in the 1950s, jotting down numbers on a cocktail napkin at New York’s Waldorf-Astoria Hotel.

8. Buffalo wings

The ubiquitous treat was invented with loose chicken parts at the Anchor Bar in Buffalo, N.Y., in 1964.

9. Martin Van Buren

The 21st president was born in his father’s tavern in Kinderhook, N.Y., in 1782.

10. Shark Week

The kitschy annual Discovery Channel series was the product of barroom brainstorming by a crew of TV executives in the 1980s.

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NOT TO NITPICK, but if Pabst’s new holiday brew were truly an accurate replicate of the original Ballantine Burton Ale, master brewer Greg Deuhs would’ve spent a couple weeks personally autographing every one of the 144,000 bottles.

And then the sixpack they sent me would’ve been labeled with my name on it.

Because that’s what P. Ballantine & Sons did a few generations ago when it produced what Deuhs now calls “the greatest beer never sold. “

The barrel-aged barleywine was Ballantine’s annual Christmas gift to favored customers and other friends. Meticulously blended in small batches after the Prohibition till 1966, it would be bottled, signed and personally labeled with the recipient’s name. Over the years, advertising execs, distributors and even President Harry S. Truman received custom bottles.

So rare was the brew that, today, it is the Holy Grail of bottle collecting. Enthusiasts pay $200 and more for a single 50-year-old bottle, to be cherished and ceremoniously uncapped on special occasions.

Though it’s long gone, it’s still revered by modern brewers. Fritz Maytag said it inspired his Anchor Old Foghorn, the first modern barleywine brewed in America. Sam Calagione paid homage to it with Dogfish Head Burton Baton ale.

Incredibly, most of the old bottles have stood the test of time; the strong ale is still drinkable after all these years.

Which is why – autographed label or not – the re-creation of Ballantine Burton released last month is one of the more surprising developments in the beer world over the last couple years.

The Newark, N.J.-based company went out of business in the 1970s, its retro label eventually scooped up by Pabst. In its most recent incarnation, the beer itself was wholly unremarkable, just another bland industrial lager, manufactured whoknowswhere and interchangeable with the likes of Old Style, Rainier, Stag, Olympia and Pabst’s many other labels.

Then, in 2014, Pabst shocked everyone and brought back Ballantine India Pale Ale – an old-time favorite that beer drinkers of a certain age remembered with fondness. Skeptics observed that the company – with sales of its flagship Pabst Blue Ribbon sagging – was merely cashing in on the IPA craze. Maybe, but who could complain about a decent, hoppy ale with 7 percent alcohol content at $10 a sixpack?

The release of Ballantine Burton should erase any doubts that Pabst has an eye on a bigger piece of the craft beer segment.

Admittedly, the new version is not an entirely genuine re-creation. As Deuhs conceded, the original was a blend made with ale that had aged in wooden vats for up to 20 years.

The old brewers would taste various batches and decide how much of each would be blended.

“How do you replicate that? ” Deuhs said. “It was very controlled. Having not had it fresh, it would be tough to know exactly what it tasted like. “

He talked to a retired quality manager from Ballantine who was familiar with the ale, and then he made some guesses.

Pabst made the beer at Cold Spring Brewing, an independent, 140-year-old brewery in Minnesota. There, Deuhs used a squat, 80-year-old metal tank that looked close to the dimensions of Ballantine’s old tanks.

The bottom was lined with oak spirals – wooden rods that are spiral-cut to increase surface area and infuse the beer with a distinctive vanilla or coconut aroma and flavor.

The ale is outstanding. It is bold, smooth and rich with the full malt flavor you’d expect from a barleywine. Though the label says 75 IBUs (international bittering units), its hop flavor is subdued. It is neither sweet nor – even at 11.3 percent alcohol – harsh.

A mere 6,000 cases were bottled and, though most were sent to the Northeast, this stuff is going to be hard to find. (It’s also available on draft, but I haven’t seen any, yet, in Philly. )

Deuhs suggests buying a case to drink now, and another to age, for a mellower character. That’s why the brewery itself is cellaring 500 cases.

If you miss it, that’s all the more reason to keep an eye on Pabst. With the majority of its 150 old-time brands currently dormant, expect to see more re-creations.

Deuhs hinted the next on tap is Andeker, a German-style lager that it ceased brewing in the 1980s.

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DO YOU know the first words spoken by Native-Americans to the Pilgrims after they landed at Plymouth Rock? “Welcome Englishmen . . . I’ll have a beer. ”

Or something to that effect, according to an account (see sidebar) of the first visit to the Pilgrims’ village by an Algonquin named Samoset.

The greeting comes to mind this season because it was those words that eventually led to the first Thanksgiving in America. That’s right – though our nation’s annual feast is traditionally washed down with wine, it actually began with beer.

The date was March 16, 1621.

The Pilgrims, essentially English religious separatists, had arrived in the New World the previous November following a 65-day voyage aboard the Mayflower. They eventually disembarked at Plymouth because they were running out of onboard supplies, notably beer.

Beer was a matter of survival for these settlers because no one could be certain if the local water was drinkable. Earlier American settlements had been wiped out by disease from drinking poisoned or dirty water. Beer, the Pilgrims knew, wasn’t merely safe to drink, it was a source of much-needed nourishment.

That first winter was brutal, as 45 of the 102 Mayflower Colonists succumbed to disease, starvation and lack of shelter. With few able-bodied men and little more than muskets for protection, they understandably kept their distance from the Native-Americans who populated the region.

So, when Samoset (his name means He Who Walks Over Much) wandered into their camp a few days before the arrival of spring, he was met with apprehension and suspicion.

The feeling should have been mutual, for the English were widely hated for kidnapping the locals and selling them into slavery.

Samoset, however, seems to have been naturally curious about the newcomers. He’d first met Englishmen in the fishing colonies they had established in what is now Maine, learning their language . . . and sharing their beer.

He is described in a diary of those early days as “a tall straight man, the hair of his head black, long behind, only short before, none on his face at all. ” He arrived in the settlement naked, except for a fringed leather covering around his waist.

“He saluted us in England [sic], and bade us welcome,” the diary reads.

And then he asked for beer.

It’s tempting to interpret Samoset’s request in a modern context – that he was trying to be sociable, to break the ice. In fact, he was probably just thirsty.

Nonetheless, I like to think of it as an attempt to bond over a bracing brew, for that meeting was the first of a string of fortuitous events that both rescued the haggard settlers from certain death and ultimately brought the Pilgrims and Native Americans together in peace.

In quick order, Samoset introduced the Pilgrims to a Native American from the Patuxet tribe named Squanto, who taught the settlers how to catch eel and grow corn. It was Squanto who would serve as an interpreter in the Pilgrims’ peace treaty with the Wampanoag leader Massasoit.

Sometime between September and December of 1621 – barely a year after they’d landed – the Pilgrims would celebrate their successful first harvest with the Wampanoag in a feast now regarded as America’s first Thanksgiving.

So, a simple beer gave us Thanksgiving.

Only, the record shows that the Pilgrims didn’t have any the day that Samoset wandered into their settlement. Instead, they gave him biscuits, butter, cheese, pudding and something they called “strong water,” which is presumably distilled spirits.

OK, so maybe we should be toasting next week with a bottle of Beefeater. But I wouldn’t let that get in the way of a good story, so here’s a six-pack of suggested locally brewed beer for your Thanksgiving feast:

1. Evil Genius Santa!! I Know Him! An aromatic saison brewed with rose hips, chamomile, black currants and dark Belgian candi sugar that goes with practically anything on the table.
2. Weyerbacher Double IPA #1. The first in a series of limited-edition imperial India pale ales cleans the palate after a plate of cheesy appetizers.
3. River Horse Tripel Horse. A strong (10 percent alcohol), spiced Belgian-style tripel that cuts right through the turkey skin.
4. Roy Pitz Gobbler Lager. A nicely balanced, German-style Marzen with just a touch of sweetness to complement those marshmallow-crusted sweet potatoes.
5. Dogfish Head Higher Math. At 17 percent alcohol, this golden ale brewed with sour cherry juice and chocolate is a liquid dessert that pairs nicely with tryptophan.
6. Flying Fish Exit 15. A golden IPA brewed with coffee – the perfect cuppa joe for hop heads.

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YOU HEAR IT at every beer festival – an excited buzz that flashes through the crowd like lightning:Did you try _____ beer, yet? You’ve gotta taste it!

It might be a super-funky sour beer, or an extraordinarily hoppy IPA. It’s always the Next Great Beer.

Twenty years ago this month, the buzz that lit up the crowd at the inaugural Philadelphia Craft Brew Festival was bigger than just the Next Great Beer. It surrounded Booth No. 406 at the old Philadelphia Civic Center, where two guys with a pair of half-kegs were pouring 2-ounce samples.

By the time they kicked the kegs, the buzz not only propelled the pair’s garage brewery into a legitimate business, it signaled the rebirth of the city’s entire beer scene.

That beer was Yards Extra Special Ale – ESA for short.

It was April 30, 1995, and more than 5,000 people descended on the Philadelphia Civic Center, in West Philly.

The festival was the brainchild of George Polgar and Mark Saunders, of the old KatManDu Club (now Cavanaugh’s Riverdeck), on Delaware Avenue, and David Cohen, who ran Revival Nightclub (now National Mechanics).

“We weren’t really beer guys, but we saw there was a passion for it,” Polgar said. “The thing is, nobody had done 5,000 people in one place, drinking beer. It was a frightening prospect. ”

Judging by the breweries that attended, the city was already seeing the beginnings of a decent beer scene. Tun Tavern, Stoudt’s, Red Bell and Dock Street were all on hand. So were Independence, New Amsterdam, Arrowhead, Celis and Rhino Chasers – all well-known brands that are now gone.

No one knew about Yards. The brewery, on a short, tight block of Krams Avenue in Manayunk, had gotten its license just three weeks earlier.

“It was our first batch,” said Yards founder and president Tom Kehoe. He and his former business partner, Jon Bovit, had decided that an English bitter would be their flagship brand because “it was a style we liked. We took a basic English ale recipe and beefed it up with more chocolate malt and more alcohol to make it a little more ballsy. ”

The beer was unfiltered, and the pair had stuffed a bunch of dry hops into the kegs to enhance its aroma.

They borrowed a draft-beer dispensing box from a bar in West Philly where Kehoe had worked as a bouncer.

“We weren’t sure if it would work,” Kehoe said. “We were mostly worried that the hops would clog up the draft lines. ”

The beer was cloudy, with a raw but full flavor.

Jim Anderson, a former bartender and beer entrepreneur who had recently launched Beer Philadelphia magazine, remembered getting one of the early tastes.

“I was astounded by the perfection of its blemishes,” he recalled in an email. “It was murky, musty, malty and deliciously bitter with a soft carbonation. ”

The buzz spreads

During a Q&A session with two other brewers, audience members peppered Kehoe with questions about the ale. Bar owners visited the Yards booth and put in orders for immediate delivery.

“We sold out all of our entire inventory in that one day, we had so many accounts lined up,” Kehoe said.

ESA drew much of its character from its cask-conditioning, in which the ale is re-fermented after kegging. It’s a labor-intensive step that was unheard of in Philly at the time.

Likewise, the locals quickly learned that the ale tasted best when served from a beer engine, a hand pump that bypasses the need for CO2 to dispense the beer.

For the first time in anyone’s memory, the city was getting a taste of authentic, old-style English ale, served in smooth pours at cellar temperature. Months and even years after the festival, people talked about their first taste of the beer.

Looking back, it seems like a turning point, when Philadelphia had a beer it hadn’t borrowed from the West Coast or New England.

“Not only did Yards ESA signal a new era of Philadelphia brewing,” Anderson said, “but it was also a welcome break from the ubiquitous amber ale that was killing the East Coast beer revolution nearly as soon as it started. ”

Yards Brewing grew and moved out of Krams Avenue. It now makes more beer in a single batch than it did in an entire month in Manayunk. Its ESA still thrives, but it’s far from a flagship brand. Tastes change; beer drinkers seem to be looking for something edgier.

But Extra Special Ale is still special and, 20 years later, worthy of the buzz.

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WITH NO FANFARE or explanation, Goose Island Brewing this year changed the name of its winter seasonal beer from Christmas Ale to Festivity Ale.

I suppose if I were Bill O’Reilly, I’d go into a spittle-spraying rage over yet another breach in the so-called “War on Christmas. ” The pagan in me, however, will instead point out that removing Christ’s name from the beer is not altogether misguided. That’s because Christmas beer is actually older than Christmas itself.

Way older. At least 3,000 years before the Nativity, brewers – mainly farmers – were likely making special beer each winter.

But instead of the birth of the savior, these neolithic brews celebrated the rebirth of god – namely, the sun – on the occasion of the winter solstice.

For early man, the sun was everything, the giver of warmth and light and life itself. Whether it was Utu, the Mesopotamian sun god, or Ra of Egypt’s Fifth Dynasty, or countless other solar deities, ancient civilizations observed their god’s progress across the horizon and celebrated his reemergence on the darkest day of the year.

Beer, whose mind-altering alcoholic properties were (and maybe still are) welcomed as a mysterious, spiritual gift from god, certainly would’ve flowed.

Indeed, most records of solstice celebrations indicate a good deal of drunken behavior: public nudity, overeating, slaves and owners reversing roles, the appointment of fake kings, fighting dwarfs, dice games, forced vomiting.

You know, like Wing Bowl.

It’s impossible to say exactly what kind of beer (or wine) filled the ancients’ solstice vessels. Chemical analysis by Penn archaeologist Patrick McGovern of drinking cups pulled from a 5,000-year-old Egyptian tomb has turned up of evidence of unusual ingredients, including thyme and pine resin – just like some of today’s holiday beers.

Since they were toasting god, we can also guess that, like many of today’s winter holiday ales, it was strong.

Certainly that was the case in Norway, where the ancient winter feast of Jul (or Yule) honored Odin with ample cups of farmhouse ol (or beer). Under law, this juleol, as it is still known, had to be made with as much grain as the combined weight of the farm’s husband and wife. A weak beer meant public shame and possible expulsion from the country.

These solstice celebrations faded and mostly disappeared in 350 A.D., when Pope Julius I established that Christ’s birth was on Dec. 25.

Was the choice of the date divine, as believers insist? Or was it, as some historians say, a calculated ploy to usurp the pagans’ solstice festivals?

It doesn’t really matter, for the impact on civilization was the same. Traditions surrounding the solstice festivals – gift giving, the yule log, feasting and, yes, beer drinking – became part of the celebration of Christmas.

So, call it Christmas beer – or solstice lager or Saturnalia suds or festivity ale. It’s all the same: a special beer made for the ages.

Here are six brews that are jingling my bells this season:

1. Stoudt’s Belsnickel (Adamstown): A dark, very malty, full-bodied Schwarzbier with a firm fruit flavor (plum, raisin) and a light, spicy finish. Named after Santa’s Pennsylvania Dutch alter ego.
2. Barren Hill Gingerbread Jesus (Lafayette Hill): This ginger-and-molasses Belgian dubbel was spawned by a Joe Sixpack holiday party, at which Roxborough’s homebrewing reverend, Kirk Berlenbach of St. Timothy’s Episcopal, shared a stash of traditional German Christmas cookies. The treats appeared to be made with communion wafers and, well, Gingerbread Jesus was born.
3. Samuel Adams Merry Maker Gingerbread Stout (Boston): Ginger gives this stout its snap, a nice complement to its sweet, full-bodied malt base.
4. Ommegang Adoration (Cooperstown, N.Y.): A classic strong, dark, Belgian-style ale spiced with coriander, mace, cardamom, grains of paradise and orange peel. With its label’s depiction of the three kings, this malty ale is worthy as the Gift of the Magi.
5. Scaldis Noel (Belgium): If there were ever a 12-percent-alcohol “session” beer, this would be it. With hints of marzipan and peach, this effervescent ale is both light-bodied and easy to drink.
6. Spring House The Martians Kidnap Santa! (Conestoga): This egg nog stout takes its name from the classic bomb, “Santa Claus Conquers the Martians,” a holiday matinee that I remember seeing 50 years ago at the old Brookline Theater in Havertown. It’s rich, creamy and makes a nice companion to the brewery’s other Christmas treat, the cherry-flavored Two Front Teeth Holiday Ale saison.

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WHEN LAST WE heard from Hohenadel Brewery, the 19th-century East Falls landmark was wincing under the weight of a wrecking ball.

It was 1997. Just one look at the stubborn but crumbling brick structure at Conrad Street and Indian Queen Lane told you it was time to pull the plug. The brewery that once proclaimed its “Well Earned Supremacy” could only sigh as it joined the likes of Gretz and Esslinger and Erlanger in the great Philadelphia pile of brewery dust.

Indian Queen Ale . . . Rival Porter . . . Trilby Export – the brands that Hohenadel brewed till it closed in 1952 were gone and mostly forgotten.

“I doubt very many locals even know a brewery stood there,” Steve Fillmore, president of the East Falls Historical Society, said of the lot where a dozen town houses are being built, just across the street from Billy Murphy’s Irish Saloon.

Yet, in one of those lovely turn of events that spark a bit of fun in Philadelphia, old Hohenadel is making a quirky, albeit temporary, comeback.

On Saturday, the type of beer that Hohenadel would’ve brewed before Prohibition – let’s call it East Falls Lager – will be poured at an open house in the former grand villa where the brewery family once lived.

It’s part of a “thank you” celebration thrown by the East Falls Historical Society in honor of the ongoing rehabilitation of the old beer baron’s mansion at 3617 Indian Queen Lane.

Vacant for years, occupied on occasion by squatters and defaced by graffiti, the house seemed headed for the same fate as the brewery. It was saved because a family of Oklahoma transplants navigated the city’s nightmarish zoning laws and landed a loan to pay for renovations.

That family – Felicite Moorman, her husband Sean Hawley and three kids – knew nothing of the mansion’s lineage. The place had only caught Moorman’s eye because it was near her tech company’s offices in the Masons’ Building at Ridge and Midvale avenues.

“Every day, I’d walk around the neighborhood, looking for a home for my family,” Moorman said. “Then this property comes on the market, and I fell in love with it immediately. “

It took nine months to secure the loan and rezoning, Moorman said. In March, the extensive repairs began.

“There were no light fixtures, there wasn’t even a ceiling,” she said. “It was insane to even start the project. I think people still think I’m a little crazy . . . but I’d just say, ‘Look at the woodwork, look at the stained glass. ‘ “

Moorman and Hawley learned after hours of online research that the home’s most notable owner had been John Hohenadel, the son of a German immigrant who had opened the brewery in 1875. The house was probably built around 1860, she said.

Historical brew

Hohenadel was not unlike the dozens of other small German breweries that dotted the city in the last half of the 19th century. Well-known locally, it never reached the national scale of Schmidt’s or even Brewerytown’s famous Poth facility. At its height just before Prohibition, it reached perhaps 30,000 barrels, about the size of Yards Brewery.

Unfortunately no production records or recipes remain, only advertising memorabilia.

But when the historical society sought to re-create the brewery’s old-time lager, it found the perfect guy: local homebrewer Tom Coughlin, who specializes in historic re-creations of pre-Prohibition ales and lagers. With a bit of detective work, Coughlin, working with former Dock Street brewer Lou Farrell, determined that Hohenadel had learned the brewing trade at the side of one of the city’s most famous beer barons, Louis Bergdoll.

“We guessed that Hohenadel would’ve secured his malt from the same fields in New York where Bergdoll got his,” Coughlin said. “So that’s where we got ours. “

Importantly, their recipe includes about 30 percent cooked yellow corn, commonly used by German immigrant brewers to compensate for the poor-quality barley available in the late 1800s.

Coughlin added Cluster hops, the type that would’ve been grown in upstate New York before blight forced the American hops industry to the Pacific Northwest.

And he cooked it all in water treated with mineral salts to imitate early 20th-century Philadelphia’s notorious hard water.

The result: a crisp, very light-bodied lager that I thought mimicked today’s Coors Banquet.

“I think the beer is a good representation of Hohenadel’s first day of operation,” Coughlin said. “Over time, he would’ve figured out how to build up the beer into something better. “

No one has tasted the real thing for more than 60 years, so who’s to argue?

Raise a glass

Try it for yourself on Saturday from 6 to 8 p.m. with a “sip back” in time at the Hohenadel House. The party features a pop-up museum of regional artifacts and breweriana, period-appropriate furniture staging, live entertainment by the Big Band-era’s Harry Prime, a cocktail menu, wine, cider and complimentary glasses of Coughlin’s reproduction.

Tickets are $40, available at the Epicure Cafe (Bowman and Conrad streets) or online at EastFallsHistoricalSociety.com.

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