Thoughts of Philly, Craft, Beer and Festival (Not Necessarily in that Order) - The Review Part Two

The Third Annual Philly Craft Beer Festival was March 7th at the Navy Yards. This was the first session of 2 occurring from from 12:30-4:30. 4 hours of sampling an assortment of local and non-local craft beers led to a flurry of tastes, discoveries and drinking. To give a sense of the madness that we were able to collect, here is a rundown in fairly chronological order. First the beers.

Breakfast Beer: Franziskaner Weiss- While not suggesting as a daily habit, certain beers do tend to pair well with breakfast food. The wheat beer and similar styles make a safe choice for pairing with the usual breakfast items such as eggs. This Weiss matches perfectly with our breakfast and is great by itself. One of my personal favorites in the category, it is a solid, filling beer taste with that hint of zing found in Weiss beers that makes it interesting.

(New) The Up and Comer: River Horse Honey Weizen Bock- The up and comer status is not necessarily for the beer itself, but the brewery. River Horse is located in Lambertsville, New Jersey. While being around since 1996, it hasn't really been prevalent until recently. Last year is the first time I can remember seeing their products readily available so it is pretty new to us. Either way their new beers are starting to seem to always impress. The oatmeal milk stout which we reviewed previously is very good and this one is as well. A little darker than most Bocks it still fits the style nicely and the taste of honey adds a nice touch. It is quickly becoming one of the go to choices at the Responsible Drunk.

The Fruit Beer That Wasn't: The Breury Black Orchard- Fruit beers seem to be gaining a lot of popularity recently. While before rarely taking up taps at local bars, now seems to often take up one if not two taps in a lot of places. A lot of this popularity seems to be focused on the lambics, which tend to be very fruity in taste and might be trying to draw in new tastes and tasters. The Black Orchard on the other hand is trying to do something different. The fruit like taste in this beer is complimenting the beer instead of overpowering it. The black wheat style's heavy and darker taste and the fruit taste match really well together. The Bruery's website mentions the use of Chamomile, Coriander and Citrus peel which creates a fruit like taste in the beer. At first taste it gives off the taste of black raspberry. It'd be nice to have more fruit beer go in this route of working to compliment and add a nice complexity to the beer instead of just overpowering the beer itself.

Home Brewing is the Best Brewing: Keystone Homebrew Belgian White- Keystone Homebrew is a homebrewing store located in Montgomery County that sells a variety of homebrewing supplies so people can brew their own beer. They just happen to brew a bit of their own too. Make that quite a bit. Keystone had one of the largest selections of beer on hand to try. Trying the Belgian White, it is a great matching of style and the Homebrews seem to have more flavor packed in to them. I'm sure the freshness and small batches help this process.

(New) The Lager of Bocks: Yuengling Bock- While Jim has given most of the description needed for the Yuengling Bock (look at Part 1 for his review) here are a few other things to note. In general we agree about its taste. After a couple of beers it seems like it would be very hard to tell the difference between Yuengling Lager and Yuengling Bock. However, the mild differences in taste does add a complexity unknown to the Lager and does fit Bock in style. The other note is on the availability side. While watching our World Champion (that will never get old) Phillies in Spring Training at Clearwater, Yuengling Bock on tap was available, so maybe it might also be available at Citizen Bank Park during the regular season and be a chance to try it, if you haven't already gone and done so. I will be looking into this as soon as I can make it to a game and keep everyone updated.

Here is Brighthouse Field's place to get beer. An amazing selection for a baseball stadium and there is Yuengling Bock; middle tap on the right hand side.

The beer fest was too large and grand to fit in one entry so a continuation will soon follow with the rest of the beers and thoughts of beer fest.

Philly Craft Beer Fest - The Review Part One

Oh wow guys, so sorry this is about a month late, but this was so good I needed to take a month to think about how good it was and put it into words. Quite honestly, this was the best forty five dollars you or I or anyone could ever spend. If you have a beer loving loved one in your life, purchase them tickets for next year's fest. It will surely please them mightily.

The Responsible Drunk official Beer Fest Festivities began bright and early at 11 AM at my place for a special breakfast of eggs, bacon and a solid wheat beer, which in this instance was the lovely German variety Franziskaner. After boarding the train to go to the fest we quickly realized that most of the city had the same idea. If you weren't going to beer fest, you were probably going on the Erin Express and thus riding the R6 at 11.30 AM with a nalgene full of Coors Light. Way to go Philly! World Fucking Champions indeed!

On to the fest. Basically, organizers FTW here folks. In essence the organizers found the perfect balance in the beer to people ratio that bordered somewhere between that of a Wednesday night frat party and a swinging local bar on a Saturday, only increased the scale by a factor of 10 and set it in the lovely Philadelphia Naval Yard facility. To give you a feel for the room, it was about a football field long, sides lined with beer and just the right amount of people. To be honest, Harry and I waited in exactly one line all day. That translates to about 4 hours straight of beer sampling from that nifty 6 oz souvenir glass (do the math).

And boy was that glass raised a lot that day. One beautiful if too-obviously macho thing about beer fest is the organic crowd cheer that I like to call the beer-wave. If you are at beer fest and the dude next to you raises his glass and starts bellowing, you and all around will be impelled to mimic his bellowing until the entire building is bellowing along with you. Then you all drink and for a moment, all is right in the world.

When you are trying over 25 new beers in one day, it can be a little hard to get a handle on what you liked and didn't like, what is good and what is not. There were a few newsworthy highlights, and I'd like to run them down for you all here:

Yuengling Bock - Our beloved hometown brewery has begrudgingly given into the seasonal beer craze and brewed its first new beer in 180 years. I say begrudgingly because if you go into this beer expecting much more than a glass of Yuengling, well, you will be dissapointed. Yuengling Bock is basically a darker, ever so slightly maltier version of its Amber predecessor. In this way, Yuengling has nodded to the movement of craft beer without succumbing to any of the pretension, and in essence pulling one over on the non-local beer-o-philes.

The Bruery's Saison Du Lente - This California Belgian influenced brewery does a wonderful job of mimicing styles from across the pond. I particularly like a good saison because the philosophy of a table beer is something that I think is lost on a lot of craft brewers, especially in the sweep of monster beers that has nearly taken over the industry in the last few years. This one is light, crisp but maintains a satisfying maltiness. It makes a great anytime beer.

Blue Point Brewery - This brewery from out on Long Island had a really solid representation with a Toasted Amber Lager and a RYPA (IPA made with Rye). The RYPA especially stood out because it seemed to be a popular style across the board at the fest and in my opinion this topped them all.

Alright, this is part one of four. Stay Tuned for Harry's analysis and then a recap of our epic post-fest bar crawl!