Jack Curtin’s LIQUID DIET

The prez knows how to celebrate a holiday…

…and so does my man Hagar.

HAPPY FOURTH,

EVERYBODY!

Tags: Holiday Fun // 1 Comment »

….I make a bold prediction about Sarah Palin’s future.

Remember you saw it here first. Well, not here. There. You know what I mean. Don’t make me have to smack you.

Tags: Deep Thoughts, Fun Stuff, Politics // 1 Comment »

While I was at Sly Fox yesterday getting all the news about the Phoenixville pub re-location, I ran into Tom Kehoe of Yards, who stopped by because he was in the area picking up “some antique bar stools” from a old bar in Pottstown, he said, which augers well for the long-promised Tasting Room/Brewpub/Whatever at their new brewery, I’d guess.

Seeing Tom reminded me of something I’ve been meaning to post for a while: a shout-out to Tim Roberts and Frank Winslow, the Yards brewing team.

Tim never go the respect and acclaim he deserved while at the doomed Independence Brewpub downtown, so we owe him one. And he more than deserves our accolades now for the spot-on beers he’s turning out down on Delaware Avenue. Tim’s the production guy, while Frank, who came over from Flying Fish, is the quality control guy, and that’s an aspect of brewing we often overlook when throwing around the praise, a mistake I’m not going to make here.

Job well done, gentlemen.  Thank you.

The other member of the Yards management/brewing team is Steve Mashington. I suppose we have to assume that he’s also doing whatever it is that he does very well, since we’ve never quite figured outs whatever it is that he does, however improbable such a leap of faith might seem to many of you. It’s only fair.

Tags: Brewers, Philly // Add Comment »

I believe we can all now agree that Brendan Hartranft and Leigh Maida are certifiably nuts.

To the benefit of every beer lover in the area.

Brendan and Leigh will sign a lease on… Well, let’s let Leigh tell the story in her own words:

“…the space known as (up until last night) Yello Bar, at the corner of Grays Ferry Avenue and Catharine Street. We’ll be renovating and redecorating the innards and (if all goes right) plan to be open by the first week of September. This is kind of break neck speed, even for us, but I think we’ve got the team assembled that can pull it off.

The name will be Resurrection Ale House, and we’re hammering out a menu now that we think fills a gap in the neighborhood—casual, beer-centric, someplace you can feel like a grown up and be catered to with care but not have to spend a ton of money to feel like you got some real value out of your experience.

We’re focused (as always) on a stellar craft beer list, but we’re equally focused this time on the dining side of things as well. For now we’re sort of working under the term ‘beer bistro’ as a guiding principle, for the menu, the decor, the over all vibe of the place. We’re hoping for the same kinds of laid back, food and beer savvy, mixed-bag of cool guests that we get to meet at Memphis and Local 44.

Brendan’s planning a drive down to Baltimore to (hopefully) pick up a keg of Resurrection Ale from Brewers Art for the opening. yay!”

Yay indeed.

Tags: Beer Buddies, Beer People, News, Philly, Taverns and Bars // 3 Comments »

I’m not sure I’m supposed to be posting this yet but I did promise you folks some big news a while back, this is pretty much common knowledge around the Phoenixville area at the point and, well, what the hell…

The lease has been signed. Sly Fox Brewhouse & Eatery will move into a brand new facility in the shopping center on the other side of Rt. 113 this fall. The new, larger pub will feature three handpumps and an automated growler filler similar to the one which has been such a hit at Victory’s revamped brewpub since it opened last year. The current brewhouse will be moved to the new location. A date for the move has not yet been set.

There’s another big Sly Fox story breaking as well.

Sly Fox first shipment of cask ale firkins is due to arrive tomorrow. These are the real thing and real cask ale will be brewed for them. The cask ale program is schedule to begin after the move to the new location has been completed but Brian O’Reilly told me an hour ago that he might not be able to wait that long so the first firkins might actually go on at the current location.

More details on the new pub will be forthcoming, probably posted at the brewery website and the Beer Yard and then linked from here. O’Reilly’s off for a week’s vacation but I hope to get up an interview with him about the cask ale program around the middle of the month.

Oh, and here’s something for you Baltimore readers: the bottling of a new batch of Brewers Art Resurrection Ale was going on when I visited Sly Fox’s Royersford brewery earlier this afternoon.

Finally, for those of you who do not subscribe to the Sly Fox Newsletter, the new edition was sent out this morning and can be read online here.

Tags: Breweries, Brewers, Brewpubs, News // 6 Comments »

Things started quietly enough over in The Sandbox with a nice congratulatory note about the Craft Ale House 6-month anniversary event Monday night and then all hell broke loose. Not as dumb as some of the classics, but not bad for an early summer evening.

Tags: Hilarious Hilarity, Taverns and Bars, WTF? // Add Comment »

From this morning’s Beer Business Daily. Bold emphasis mine:

Beer once again beat out wine and spirits as Americans’ preferred beverage in the annual Gallup Poll. Four in 10 drinkers say they prefer beer, compared with 34% naming wine and 21% liquor. Beer has been the top-ranking alcoholic beverage every year since 1992 (the poll’s inception) except in 2005, when wine edged slightly ahead of it. Spirits have consistently ranked third, named by between 18% and 24% of drinkers.

The majority of men say they most often drink beer; half of women choose wine. There is also a significant generational difference in preferences, with younger adults favoring beer and older adults favoring wine. As a result, there is a particularly wide gulf between younger men and older women, in terms of drink preferences.

Tags: Beer Industry, Fun Stuff // 2 Comments »

Reports on the internets this morning indicate that craft beer sales are holding up just fine in the lousy economy, up 9% in the month from mid-May to mid-June in Nielsen scans of off-premise purchases. On-premise sales were down somewhat in the last figures I saw, but craft drinkers are definitely taking the goods home.

On the other hand, online porn is suffering. When you see the whole world constantly being screwed, you’ve seen enough apparently.

Plus I have noticed a definite decline in Richard Ruch spam emails, which have dropped well under the one-an-hour pace he was maintaining not so long ago.

All these things may relate to one another.

Richard is clearly an outlier in the beer calculations, but I’d suspect that his several hours spent daily at the Victory brewpub may, in fact, be the sole reason that on-premise sales are not as low as might be expected. And, if he’s not spammin’ what they’re crammin’, the downward trend in porn also makes perfect sense.

In Chaos Theory, something as simple as the flutter of a butterfly’s wings can cause unpredictable results.

I rest my case.

Tags: Deep Thoughts // 1 Comment »

Scoats.

Not nearly as many answers as I might have hoped, and the fact that they were split between FaceBook and here sorta killed the whole concept. Plus the humor, while good, was entirely insufficient.

Do I have to do everything around here?

Anyway, close your eyes now and picture Scoats going about his day-to-day stuff, with an eager beaver with a clipboard following behind him. Tell me that isn’t scary.

Also, the fact that two different people chose Big Dan is very unsettling.

Tags: Fun Stuff // Add Comment »

All my beer thoughts today (so far) are going into paying work but I did find time to post the below and an accompanying cartoon over at Mermaids and I am, as you might have noticed, not above pimping one website with the other.

Here be the cartoon which inspired the poster.

Tags: Cartoonery, Fun Stuff, Hilarious Hilarity // Add Comment »