Jack Curtin’s LIQUID DIET

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.

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.

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.

Great story on one of Philly’s greatest “dive-bars” in this morning’s Philadelphia Inquirer. McGlinchey’s merits a major asterisk in the history of the modern Philadelphia beer scene. The inimitable Fergus Carey was a bartender there in the early ’90s and became friendly with Tom Peters,  bar manager at the next-door  Copa Too!. Then Carey opened Fergie’s Pub, he and Peters opened Monk’s Cafe and the the most important publican “tree” of the modern era was born.

Gratuitous Extra Link: Dick Weiss of the NY Daily News remembers the heyday of The Palestra.

No, I did not. And now, rather than do so, I’m going to open the floor to guesses.

Which of these local beer luminaries strikes you as the most improbable choice to have an eager young apprentice hanging on his or her every word this summer?

Lew Bryson

Tom Peters

Brian O’Reilly

Sam Calagione

Scoats

Matt Guyer

Dan Bengel

Suzanne Woods

Dan Weirback

Ron Barchet.

Only one answer is correct, but many of the possibilities are intriguing, are they not?

It’s where my creative urges have taken me today. But there’s no sense all of you folks who tend to stay at hom missing out on, so here, as a public service, are links to

An update on Buddy’s health (with photos of course)…

the wisdom of Farrah Fawcett...

and a cartoon series for the depraved (you know who you are).

Go, Have fun. I’ll be here when you get back.

I’m not much for organized religion, but these guys have an approach that could change my mind.

Plus, you can figure out if they are truly doing god’s work when you see what beer it is they hand you.

You can’t save your soul with Coors Light, that much I know.

(Thanks to the ever-vigilant Carl P for the heads up)

Anheuser Busch INBev intends to smash the three tier system to smithereens. Or maybe not.

Bill Gates wants to make a beer keg which acts like a can of Coors.

Brauhaus Schmitz is set to open on Monday. Maybe even Sunday night.

See, I finally got to something you really care about.

It turns out that my old college roommate (one of several, not only wives find it difficult to live with me) moved to Chestnut Hill five years ago. We finally got in touch a couple of weeks ago and when he offered me his sofa for the night whenever I wanted to go up that way to visit Tom and Peggy at Earth Bread + Brewery or to down a few pints at McMenamin’s, I leapt at the chance.

After my brief sojourn at Monk’s (see previous post), Gerry C. picked me up at the Allen’s Lane station on the R8 transit line. We found a parking space right off Germantown Ave. and right around the corner from McMenamin’s. But first we walked down the block to EB+B for dinner, where we shared a spicy artichoke dip appetizer and I had the wonderful Seed Flatbread and he had the evening’s Special Flatbread, which feature Kilbasi (the boy is Polish, but not mean like some others of that persuasion). We had pints of Keeper, a biere de garde, and Blind Oyster Pale Ale with the food. Would you believe me if I told you they were excellent? I thought so.

Miss Peggy was bright and cheery and looking good; I told her this new life was clearly working for her. Mr. Tom, not so much. At least not last night, which was supposed to be his night off but there he was, slaving over the pizza oven…

You will note that smile seems a tad forced. It seems the person who usually does that task took the night off…to go to Monk’s to try Isidor (again, see previous post), rubbing salt into the wound. When Tom and Peggy sat down to chat with us a bit after we’d eaten, I told him he was living up to Lew Bryson’s description of him as a dour “Russian without the vodka” and that cheered him up a bit, to the point where he accompanied us up to McMenamin’s for a few more brews (except he drank scotch). Sitting at the EB+B bar as we were leaving, by the way, was McKenzie Brew House head brewer Ryan Michaels, who apparently lives right around the corner.

This is the view coming in the door of McMenamin’s, recorded here strictly for historical purpose since it shows the Phillies finally(!) winning a damned baseball game on the tube there above the bar.

Gerry and I ordered pints of the Sly Fox Mild on the handpump and kicked the keg instead, each getting a free half pint out of the deal. We followed with pints of Weyerbacher Zotten, which, as you must have surmised, is high on the top of my favorite beer list these days. Tom ordered his whisky and then bar-hopped the place chatting up people. Apparently the drinking part this new lifestyle agrees with him just fine.

Then it was off to Gerry’s apartment where he had available, of all things, Genny Cream Ale, about which we talked her just recently. I had me a can, then joined him in the bourbon he’d been looking forward to all evening as we reminisced long into the night.

This morning, probably to make sure that I left, he got up and drove me out to the Beer Yard and my car rather than merely getting me back to the train station. What a guy.

Father Isaac, the Prior of Abbey De Koningshoeven in the Netherlands, was at Monk’s Café last ngiht as was Isidor, the beer pictured above shortly before I downed it. It was his first visit to the U.S. and he was here for a Koningshoeven promo event which featured the American debut of Isidor, a right tasty 7.5% amber ale brewed with Perle hops grown on the monastery grounds. A few bottles were airlifted in for the event (Isidor will reach local shelves in August) at considerable cost, so getting to taste it was a special treat for those who crowded into the fabled back bar.

Note the use of the old La Trappe brand on the bottle, a name the monks had to give up in this country after local Trappists objected. Russell has the skinny on that.

Many of the usual suspects were in attendance: George Hummel, to smugly inform me that Isador was all gone before I arrived (he lied); Mrs. and Mrs. M. Haynie of New Jersey, because they are freakin’ everywhere; the inimitable Scoats, who is planning a !3 Events in 13 Hours thing for August 15, the Grey Lodge’s Thirteenth Anniversary, and Gordon Grubb of Nodding Head, about whom more in a minute.

I didn’t to talk to the Prior since I was only there for half an hour (see subsequent post for why) but I did at least exchange greetings with Gisj Swinkels, the layman in charge of brewing operations at the monastery. And I did manage to get these photos of Tom Peters and Father Isaac…

In this first one, I believe Tom is holding up five fingers to stress what he is saying to Gordon. “You’ve already had five Isidors, let’s leave some for the rest of the guests.”

And here, Father Isaac is astonished to learn the dimensions of Gordon’s transgression. Whether he offered the miscreant Confession or not, I don’t know, because I had to leave. The night was still young and there were things still to be accomplished.