Nine-day beer festival under way

You could savor on opening night a regulation four-ounce pour of sweetly malty, chocolaty Pig Iron Porter from Iron Hill or far hoppier local brews. You could listen to easygoing bluegrass combos or have spit-roasted pig and vinegary potato salad to the spirited marches of the Eine Kleine Oompah Band, with James Zoller of Birdsboro, Pa., playing a silver, double-B-flat tuba once used in Sousa bands a century ago.

Back before that tuba was even born, Philadelphia was one of the beer-making capitals of the country, with breweries lining Brewerytown to the west (where barrels were cooled in caves cut in the banks of the Schuylkill), and to the east the massive brewhouses of Kensington.

German beer gardens flourished under arbors. Leather-aproned teamsters drove horse-drawn wagons of lager. That was, of course, until brewing migrated to the Midwest, and finally, Prohibition put the Hammer of Ignominy down on a lively beer culture.

The last industrial brewer here, Schmidt's, shut down in the late 1980s, just as Yards, the first of the small, craft brewhouses got its start.

But at the Visitor Center celebration, it was all about the present - and the future.

Outside in the Market Street evening, a couple from Berlin - unaware of the event - puzzled over a map.

Was there any chance, they asked a passerby, if they could still visit the Liberty Bell?

Sorry, not at 9 p.m., they were told. But if they wanted to have a nice meal and wonderful Philadelphia beer, well, the night was still young.

Contact Inquirer food columnist Rick Nichols at 215-854-2715 or rnichols@phillynews.com.