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Sixpack Sez
Oct. 19 , 2007 | At lager-heads at beer fest, and at last: Victory
THE FOURTEEN medals won by Philly-area brewers last weekend at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver was the best showing ever for the locals. More than that, it was a tribute to some of the region's classics.
This year, though, some old names - names that you might've forgotten about in the pursuit of the next new thing - brought home the hardware. The most heartening was the pair of medals that went to Downingtown's Victory Brewing. Here is one of Philly's stalwarts, a highly successful outfit that produces one of the region's go-to's, the ubiquitous HopDevil IPA, an ale once named America's best beer by the British. And until this year, it hadn't won a thing from the GABF. I know a good brewery doesn't need a medal to prove its worth, but jeez . . . Well, never mind, because two of Victory's labels were finally honored: Festbier, a rich, perfectly balanced Marzen, won gold; Prima Pils, the German-style pilsner for hopheads, won silver. Both are longtime anchors of the Victory line that, well before their awards, seemed to define their respective styles. Festbier is exactly the toasted, malty beer that the Germans drank at Oktoberfest before they started dumbing them down a few years ago. It was made for sipping outdoors as the temperatures drop on sunny, Indian summer afternoons - an amber drink that brings to mind hayrides and the changing leaves. Meanwhile, Prima Pils is an easy-drinking, medium-bodied lager with a sweet underlying malt character that never fades, even in the face of all those hops - just as the Germans intended when they "improved" the original Bohemian pils 150 years ago. In lesser hands, Prima Pils would be a one-dimensional hop-slamming imperial pilsner; instead, it is complex and delicate, perfectly suited to a hot August night, or with a bowl of chowder in a snowstorm. Remarkably, the gold medal in that same German-style pilsner category went to a brewery just 15 miles up the road, to Phoenixville's Sly Fox Pikeland Pils. Here is a beer that is now so commonplace, it's sold in cans. I wonder how many Phillies fans who enjoy it on draft at Citizens Bank Park would guess that the brew they're sloshing in their plastic cups is a certifiable world classic. Brewer Brian O'Reilly has now won three GABF medals for this beer, including a second gold back in 2000, when he was working at the now-defunct New Road brewpub, in Collegeville. Sharp-eyed readers will notice a trend here: all of these medals are for lagers. Immediately after the awards were announced, the buzz on the floor was how Philly dominated the category. Portland, Ore., the vaunted craft-beer capital of America, took exactly one lager medal. Seattle won none. California brought home more medals (43) than anyone, all but two for ales. Half of Philly's 14 were for lagers. I won't pass judgment here (though experts will tell you that lagers - often forgotten in America's craft-beer renaissance - are more difficult to brew than ales). Instead, that mix tells me something about Philly's beer chops. Even as its brewers are innovative enough to win medals for sour ale (Iron Hill), aged barleywine (Rock Bottom), Belgian saison (McKenzie) and even a 2,700-year-old honey/grape/barley/saffron ale (Dogfish Head), they still have the skill and passion to honor and perfect the city's German lager-making traditions. Diversity, friends - that's the hallmark of a great city. Our blue-ribbon beers
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