Before things got under way at Philly Beer Week's "Opening Tap" Friday evening, you couldn't help but notice one of the early arrivals at the Independence Visitor Center, Sixth and Market.
He had a touch of Robert De Niro about him, and he wasn't wearing the regulation T-shirt or shorts, but a sober suit and the collar of an Episcopal priest.
He also had, if you looked closely, a tidy ponytail, his black hair pulled back neatly, and an open - even extroverted - manner.
He was Father Kirk Berlenbach, 41, and in a manner of speaking, this whole deal was his event: "I'm the permit holder," he volunteered.
Actually, it was more than in a manner of speaking: His church, St. Timothy's Episcopal on Ridge Avenue, across from Roxborough Hospital, was the official sponsor of the festivities - an arrangement cobbled together after the Beer Week folks found out that their nonprofit status wasn't quite the right fit to meet the ever-shifting letter of state Liquor Control Board law.
The church, on the other hand, passed muster, albeit after filling out some daunting paperwork, and holding lengthy sit-downs with the board's State Police enforcement officers.
If it was going to sign the papers, the police said, it couldn't just be a paper tiger; this had to be St. Timothy's own event, not a front for another guy's party.
So it came to pass that it was St. Timothy's Opening Tap. And in the end, after all the bills are paid (for the rousing Irish pipers, for the beer, and the insurance), the church will end up with what looks to be "several thousand dollars" for its church fund and a home-building mission in a poor pocket of Kentucky.
It might seem a stretch - a brewers event sponsored by a church. But setting aside the European tradition of monastic brewing (not to mention wine's essential role in religious ritual), there's a more obvious reason that St. Timothy's - itself a historic church - stepped up.
Father Berlenbach is a bit of a beer geek, who had met Beer Week executive director Don Russell, another Roxborough resident, through the local beer scene. And he was also the founder - at a congregant's instigation - of a beer club that meets monthly (when the youth group and other groups aren't) in the church basement.
