Beyond Rolling Rock: Brewing Renaissance Makes Philadelphia a 21st Century Beer Mecca

January 17, 2009 at 2:42 PM | by Victor Ozols | 0 Comments

I love a good brewery, and I'm all for the proliferation of high-quality, small-batch beers around the U.S.A., so I read with great interest a story from the Sunday New York Times travel section on the burgeoning Philadelphia brewing scene. As with most industrial towns on the east coast, Philly's beer-brewing industry was going gangbusters back in the 19th century, but Prohibition all but wiped it out, and for most of the 20th century, area drinkers had few alternatives to the insipid mass-market lagers that flooded the market after Repeal Day. Fortunately for anybody with taste buds, this is no longer the case.

According to the article, six breweries and specialty pubs have opened over the past couple of years, ranging from tiny beer-geek boutiques run by people who can recite the Reinheitsgebot from memory to bigger operations that hope to create the city's new hometown brew. Among the more intriguing beer destinations is Earth Bread + Brewery, a mostly organic restaurant and brewery that makes a black gruit ale called the Bradley Effect and Berkun's Finger, a Baltic porter with a hefty 7% alcohol content. The Dock Street Brewery and Restaurant draws area hepcats with brews like the Belgian-style Born Again Triple and Man Full of Trouble Porter, a tribute to one of Colonial Philadelphia's first public houses. The beer menu at the Manayunk Brewing Company (pictured), meanwhile, runs the gamut from the simple Bohemian Blonde American-style pilsner to the bolder Double Down Brown, a brown ale made with Sumatran coffee that seems like a perfect way to start the day. A weekend in Philadelphia has never sounded better.

[Photo: The New York Times]

Related Stories:
· Breweries of Brotherly Love [The New York Times]
· Earth Bread + Brewery [Official Site]
· Dock Street Brewery [Official Site]
· Manayunk Brewery [Official Site]
· Brewery Coverage [Jaunted]

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