Beer Is Brewing With New Distinction

Sidled up against the polished cherry-wood bar, watching the bartender tip a tall, slender glass at a perfect 45-degree angle beneath the shiny brass spigot, creating just the right frothy head on the amber ale I had ordered, an image flashed through my head: Boy, had my beer-drinking come a long way since the days I sat with my college friends on a park bench in the median on Broadway, passing around a bottle of Colt 45 hidden in a paper bag.

To look around at all the brew pubs, microbreweries and specialty beer establishments I visited in the last couple of months, it was clear that I wasn't alone in my newfound appreciation of an increasingly sophisticated beverage.

Ordering beer at some of these microbreweries can almost require a degree in chemistry - that is, if you want to understand exactly how your beer has been made. Using slick literature or prominent blackboards, most places oblige with detailed descriptions of what's on tap that day, from the beers' alcohol content and bitterness units to fermentation periods. If you really want to become educated, many offer guided tours of their beer-making facilities.

Beer production was a thriving industry in Pennsylvania in the mid-19th century, when nearly every town had its own brewery and brewers were proud to show off their wares. (It was far less important in New Jersey then, and state law makes it harder now.) After years of decline, handcrafted beer now is big business. Hundreds of brew pubs have popped up around the country in abandoned warehouses, shopping centers and malls as the taste for specialty beers has grown.

In Pennsylvania, the number of breweries has mushroomed from a dozen in 1993 to more than 50 today, according to Lew Bryson, author of Pennsylvania Breweries, who says Pennsylvania ``probably has a wider variety of beers being brewed than anywhere in the country.''

Here's what we found.

Dock Street. In style and ambition, this upscale restaurant and brew pub full of dark wood paneling and oversized abstract murals is a cut above the other microbreweries in town, serving bistro-style cuisine and beers that are fashioned after the best in the world. The brewmasters do a lot of experimenting here, producing more than 70 styles of ales and lagers throughout the year. Some are a great success, like the Double Bock, a rich-bodied, malty-flavored, red-amber beer; others tasted like they were still in the experimental stage.