Florida—the only state to have it’s own tag on Fark.  Becky recently coerced me into going down to the panhandle state for a nice relaxing weekend.  I went to visit Disney for the first time in my life, with the consoling thought that after a long day dodging strollers and waiting in endless lines I could relax by the pool with a nice cold local beer in hand.  I guess I’ve been living in Philly a little too long.  The local stores carry nothing that isn’t distributed by A-B, who has some large offices and brewing concerns throughout the state.

On the final day of our visit, we made our way to Ybor City (right outside of Tampa) to visit what turned out to be the best brewpub within a hundred miles of Orlando—Tampa Bay Brewing Company.  According to Google, there were two other breweries in that general vicinity, but the friendly folks at TBBC informed us that they were both bought out by A-B, and their brewing facilities were moved to more industrial locations suitable for moving the massive quantities now being produced.

TBBC has a very open brewpub layout, with nothing more than railings separating the indoor seating from the brewing area.  We were there at the day’s opening, and were greeted by a pungent malty fog that rolled out the door and settled on the surrounding block.  The beer list had great breadth (they even brew their own rootbeer!) and the beer flight got us decent sized samplings of all 9 beers for just $11.  I thoroughly enjoyed the Moosekiller, Iron Rat Stout, and Wild Warthog, while Becky went for the True Blonde and One Night Stand (hmm…)

I wish we could have brought some home, but we were informed that Florida has laws (that came were lobbied for by A-B) that prevent brewpubs that use beer in their recipes from being able to sell it in bottles (makes sense to… wait—no it doesn’t), nor can they offer growlers (although that would have been tough to get back on the plane).  So, if you’re stuck in Florida wondering where the good beer is, look up Tampa Bay Brewing Co. in Ybor City right outside of Tampa and have a few drinks.  Make sure to stop by earlier in the day—Ybor City’s beautiful to stroll around, but I was told that it turns into a Mardi Gras-esque scene after sundown.

It's here!  Sly Fox's annual goat race is all set to go for Sunday.  Anybody else going?

The winners for 2008 World Beer Cup were recently released on their website.
http://www.beertown.org/events/wbc/winners_list/winners_2008.html

If you are looking for good ways to stock your fridge, I would check out some of the winners.  I'm going to make it my goal in the next couple months to try as many gold medal winners as I can.  There are some locals that placed quite well in a few categories.  Enjoy!

Joe

This, our second meeting at Zot, was overall fairly disappointing. First of all, they didn’t open “Upstairs at Zot” because the bartended called out sick. This is disappointing for a couple of reasons. I am a fan of Zot’s beer list, but I was looking forward to $5 American craft draughts. Instead, I paid $7-$10 for their imported bottles. Also I feel the atmosphere “Upstairs” is more suitable for a beer club meeting.   Sitting downstairs would have acceptable except that they were short staffed and under supplied. It took longer than usual to get a beer and they appeared to be out of stock for many of their beers. While it may be that our members were choosing the most popular beers on the list and that’s why they were out, but it seemed to me that they didn’t have roughly half their menu. What’s the point of having a beer list of over 100 if you are only going to have 50 of them? Thursday night should not be night where this should happen. It is the unofficial start of the weekend and they should be fully stocked.

It’s not all negative - we did have decent turn out, picking up a random member, Sean Duffy, and having 2 first timers show up.

If anyone had a particularly delicious or atrocious beer at Zot, feel free to share it. It would be nice to get some discussions/debates going. Post it as a comment.

Take Care and Keep Drinking,
Joe

Please join us on Saturday, April 5th from 9:00 - Noon when we join the New Kensington Community Development Center in cleaning up Frankford Ave.  We will meet at the NKCDC Garden Center at Frankford and Berks and will help them clean trash off the Frankford Ave and surrounding areas.  There will be a BBQ afterwards which is sponsored by the Philedelphia Brewing Company.   Email Andrew or Joe if you have any quesitons.

Click here to view the location in Google Maps

I recently went home to Harrisburg for the Easter holiday and was pleased to find that my father had a case of Brooklyn Brewery’s Black Chocolate Stout hanging out in the fridge. What a wonderful surprise. My father is and always has been a fan of dark beers. He came to the Philadelphia Craft Beer Fest on March 1 and was able to sample the Chocolate Stout from Brooklyn. He instantly fell in love, and thanks to Brooklyn’s fairly wide distribution network, I was able to enjoy the stout all weekend. It worked quite well with the holiday ham and was awesome with my mothers lemon cake. Also, weighing in near 10%, it was powerful enough to allow me to take a few of those wonderful holiday naps.   All in all, a good holiday surrounded by good family and lubricated by a wonderful stout from Brooklyn.

Ouch.  That’s all I can think right now, as my calves, knees, and quads are still recovering from the 4 (and for some, 6) miler that Bryan and Suz put together this past Saturday.  We met on the Art Museum steps bright and early and took off down the river, over the South St. bridge and continued straight up Spruce and Baltimore till we hit Dock St.  We were the most law-abiding runners ever seen in Philly—nobody complained at stopping for red lights (and even a few green ones).  We still made it there in time to put a pitcher or two away before the 6-mile runners arrived.  Pizza and beer were abundant, although almost everybody put away a few cups of H2O before partaking in the other refreshments.

Thanks again to Bryan and Suz, Mike and Rosemarie at Dock St., and all of the beer-enthused runners who came out.  Next year promises to bring more running (and more runners!).  It was definitely worth doing, and made for a suitable return to a healthy lifestyle put on hold for two week of solid beering.  I was thinking about posting a Beer Week wrap-up, but there’s no way to do it justice other than to say, "You really had to be there."  If you missed it, go ahead and mark off March on your 2009 calendars. We hope to see a lot of you before then! Cheers, —Andrew

We went to Dock Street yesterday for a lecture from Philadelphia Area beer historian Rich Wagner. A decent crowd was gathered by the time he started, shortly after 6:00. He jumped right into the history (well short lived history, his starting point was 1978) and began going over all the previous Philadelphia craft breweries. While I found it fascinating that seemingly everyone who is involved in Philadelphia beer now got their start and worked together at some of these early brew pubs/breweries, I was a bit disappointed that he didn’t go deeper into the history. However, he did pepper his lecture with tales of his own experiences at certain breweries and his pictures were certainly interesting. Overall, I’m glad I went, I did learn a few facts, and as always, the Dock Street food and beer were amazing.

Some happy and some sad thoughts come to me now that Philadelphia Beer week is coming to an end. I have a new found respect for alcoholics, who can drink night in and night out. At this point I’m a bit beered out, but I’ll push through the last couple events. Up next for us, is the beer run tomorrow at the art museum. Andrew sent out an email earlier so hopefully some of you can make it! Take care and keep drinking,   —Joe

Last night had PBC drinking brews from both of Philly’s famous divorcees, Philadelphia Brewing Company (PBCo from here on) and Yards Brewing Company.  There has been much speculation and rumor flying around, which the recent Philly Weekly article (Tanks for the Memories) did surprisingly little to clear up.  Here's what we discovered:

It turns out that Yards has not been bought up by a major beer conglomerate, as I had previously heard.  They are, however, caught in a contractual obligation to distribute their beer through a single distributor, which is going to make Yards slightly more expensive than we were used to (supposedly somewhere around the 25% mark).  The recipes, however, remain the same.  Or so I thought.  At the Bishop’s Collar last night, we tried both the Philly Pale Ale and the Tavern Porter.  Both tasted noticeably different from what I was used to and it turns out it’s because Yards is currently brewing in the Lion Brewery in Wilkes-Barre.  Different water, different equipment, different brewers—I’ll withhold judgment until they get their Delaware Ave location up and running (which, from what I hear, could be anywhere from April to June) on their own equipment and using real Philly water.  I still think they should be labeling it “Wilkes-Barre Pale Ale” for the time being.  And I’m still more than a little annoyed that one of the Yard’s guys at the Brewer’s Plate swore up and down to me that the beer I was drinking was definitely from their first batch produced on Delaware Ave.  I won’t mention names, but c’mon guys—do you think we won’t find out?!  [[One thing I forgot to mention--Tom Kehoe did set the record straight at Bishop's Collar.]]

PBCo, on the other hand, will continue to self-distribute their beer, dropping off their own kegs and cases across the city as they had previously as (old) Yards.  We met the brewers Josh and John last night at the London Grill, who are both the kind of guys I would expect and hope to see brewing at PBCo.  They share a great deal of the Barton's vision for Kensington, and it definitely shows in their beers.  On tap were the Kenzinger and the Rowhouse Red (which coupled with the Newbold IPA at Tap Room leaves only the Walt Wit left to find—let me know if you see the pencil tap handle!).  I definitely have a preference for the IPA (finally—an IPA that isn’t just about the hops!), but the knowledge that all of the PBCo beers you can find right now are straight from the first batch of each definitely adds a little special something to each glass.

Also at the London Grill was an Anheuser-Busch rep (sorry—I’m horrible with names once I have a beer or two in me) who set a few misconceptions straight for me.  He promised me that when AB buys rights to distribute a beer, they do not change the recipe or force any other changes on the brewer.  He said that beers like Hoegaarden, Stella, and Leffe (all of which they were handing out samples of) are brewed in the same towns using the same recipe as they always were.  AB’s sole purpose in distributing these beers is to provide a larger audience.  I still think that producing beer on the scale required to distribute world-wide leads to changes in the recipes and methods, even if the impetus for that change doesn’t come from external mandates…  But hey—with the amazing selection of Philly local beers, very rarely do I find myself reaching for a more worldly brew.

I arrived at the Independence Visitors Center at 5:30, a bit early but I was kind of hoping for a sneak peak at the night's festivities.  After sitting around and waiting for it to open, I couldn't have been more excited when 6:00 PM rolled around.  Once inside, I immediately began questioning the location of the event.  The Independence Visitors Center only offered one faily narrow corridor which housed the 21 restaurants and 21 breweries.  With nearly 200 VIP tickets sold and who knows how many regular ones, it seemed like it would get crowded, and fast.

Being one of the first ones inside was a pleasant treat however, since we were able to sample many of the foods and beers at our own pace, before any lines formed.  It was here that I tasted the Belgian stew from the Abbaye and the Sly Fox O'Reilly stout.  Both were an exquisite beginning to a memorable night.  The stout was as crisp and flavorful as the stew was delicious.  An excellent pairing which blended beautifully.  While I probably won't take the time to elaborate on all that I tasted, I'll be sure to mention the highlights.  Fork and Dogfish Head was another excellent pairing.  The shrimp ceviche worked with fruitiness of the Midas Touch. Their dry body of Midas worked well to cut through the fattiness of the glazed ribs.  The Rose Tattoo oysters worked wonders with the Double Simcoe IPA from Weyerbacher.  If you remember, Weyerbacher was the first official tasting that Philly Beer Club participated in, many month ago in McGillians.  Since then, I've gained a much more sensitive tongue and loved the combination of raw oysters with the briskness of the IPA.  Last on my highlights page, although I can truly say that I love every morsel I put into my mouth, is the Beeramisu from General Lafayette Inn.  This was amazing.  A true culinary delight.  It worked so well with the Chocolate Thunder Porter (which it was made from) that my mouth was in serious flavortown.  Magnificent.

Upstairs, away from the riff-raff, was a quieter VIP section which was well worth the money.  A spread provided by Di Bruno Brothers with Victory, Southampton, and Brooklyn Brewery being poured like water, was the main attraction.  This, along with tables made for sitting, was definitely worth the extra money I paid to be a VIP.   The true icing on the cake were the tastings, the first of which was conducted by none other than Garrett Oliver, who needs no other introduction.  He paired 6 beers with 7 distinct cheeses and let us all tap into his vast knowledge of both.  What I wouldn't give for that man's mind and his appreciation for flavors.  The second tasting was conducted by the equally as knowledgeable Marnie Old, who also took us on a wonderful flavor journey.

Sadly the night did have to come to an end, not without a few photo ops with various brewers, owners, Philly beer elite, and of course, Philly Beer Club.  Thankfully, however, beer week is just beginning.  After a well executed Brewer's Plate, I'm looking forward to the rest of beer week where I hope to get to know some brewers, owners, etc, more intimately and get the Philly Beer Club name out there.  Next meeting will be tomorrow night (Monday, March 10)  at Triumph Brewing for Ultimate Beer Trivia with IPA.  Hope to see you there and as always, keep drinking.    -Joe