NEWS
May 24, 2012 | Joe Sixpack
YOU THINK WE have a pretty good beer scene now? You should've seen this town back in 1879. Every neighborhood had its own brewery, and every corner had a saloon. In the preceding 30 years, more than 250 breweries had opened — many of them closing quickly, but others becoming national powers. A census by Western Brewer magazine counted an astonishing 94 breweries up and running. The city's population was barely half of today's, and yet it had 12 times the number of breweries we boast of in 2012.
NEWS
May 18, 2012 | Joe Sixpack
TOO MANY COOKS may spoil the broth, but too many brewers never ruined the beer. The proof is all those fabulous one-offs featuring two, three or more brewery logos on the bottles. These so-called collaborative beers are made by beer-makers from competing breweries who share the brewhouse for a day in the spirit of artisanal camaraderie. That professional friendship is one of the important traits that makes craft brewing appealing to so many. Once again, Philly Beer Week will show off a bunch of collabs, including Speciale Belge, made in Belgium by Iron Hill brewer Chris LaPierre and by Olivier DeDeycker of the famed Belgian Brasserie Dupont.
NEWS
May 18, 2012 | By Sam Wood, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
A West Chester high school swim coach was arrested Wednesday on charges that he posed as a swimmer's father, plied her with beer, and had sex with her. Kenneth William Fuller, 47, head coach of the Bayard Rustin High School swim team, was charged with felony sex assault and corruption of a minor. "This was a despicable violation of trust," said Chester County District Attorney Tom Hogan. A member of the team, a teenage girl, told police that Fuller took her to a Kennett Square hotel April 27 and gave her "multiple" beers, court documents state.
NEWS
May 10, 2012 | Craig LaBan
Here are tasting notes on some of my favorite Italian beers tasted recently in the Philadelphia area. Prices are retail, unless otherwise noted. Bruton Bianca , 750 ml, $19 at Pizzeria Stella (Second and Lombard) — similar to a Belgian wit, but creamier in texture due to the use of Tuscan spelt, with finely woven coriander, orange peel, and white pepper. Bruton 10 , 750 ml, $28 at a.Kitchen (135 S. 18th St.) — a big barley wine with 10 percent alcohol, but stunning lack of burn, rich with licorice, tobacco, and caramel.
NEWS
May 10, 2012 | By Craig LaBan, INQUIRER STAFF WRITER
The word birrificio may not yet quite roll off the tongue. But if Philadelphians continue to plunge into the exotic new beers that have recently begun appearing here from Tuscany, Piedmont, and Emiglia-Romagna, brewed with everything from chestnuts to barbera grapes, chinotto peel and myrrh, the Italian word for brewery should become a familiar one, indeed. The unfamiliarity is understandable. In a country better known for vino like Chianti and Barolo, the craft-beer industry is still in its infancy, dating only to 1996, when Teo Musso and Agostino Arioli opened their pioneering breweries in Piedmont, Birreria Le Baladin and Birrificio Italiano, respectively.
NEWS
May 4, 2012 | Breaking News Desk
It's been 139 years since they served beer in Haddonfield's Indian King Tavern. But that will change Saturday when barrels of Colonial style beers will be tapped at a fund-raiser for the museum and historic site, meeting place of the New Jersey Rebel Assembly in 1777. Since Haddonfield has been dry since 1873, organizers have obtained a special permit from the state to sell beer to help pay for renovations at the tavern. Philadelphia's Yards Brewery is supplying the beer and food will be served.
NEWS
May 3, 2012 | Joe Sixpack
LAST MONTH'S media reports that beer consumption makes you smarter ranks up there as one of the no-spit revelations of all time. The "revelation" stemmed from a paper called "Uncorking the Muse: Alcohol intoxication facilitates creative problem solving," by scientists at the University of Illinois at Chicago. It concluded that test subjects solved certain problems more quickly after reaching a blood-alcohol level of .075 percent. Alcohol, the researchers proved, helps the brain access remote areas and develop ideas beyond the confines of typical linear reasoning.
NEWS
April 26, 2012 | Joe Sixpack
FIVE YEARS AGO, the whole notion of a "beer week" was as unknown as a black IPA. There simply was no such thing. Today, if you plug the term into Google, you'll get more than 2.3 million results. There's an entry on the subject in the new Oxford Companion to Beer. San Francisco beer writer Jay Brooks, who wrote the section, has compiled an online list of nearly 100 beer weeks worldwide, from Alabama to Yakima. They now celebrate beer week in Tokyo; Toronto; Newcastle, Australia; and Washington, D.C. Next week, I'm headed out to San Diego for the annual Craft Brewers Conference to participate in a panel discussion about the beer-week phenomenon.
NEWS
April 19, 2012 | Joe Sixpack
IT'S A MOONLESS Thursday night in North Wales, Montgomery County. Down a dead-end street just past the giant Merck & Co. pharmaceutical plant, tucked along the SEPTA R5 railroad tracks, a darkened industrial building attracts a young crowd. The unpaved parking lot is full, light sounds of live jazz seep from the rear door, and the air carries the familiar aroma of malt. Welcome to Prism Brewing's Tap Room, one of the region's best-kept beer-drinking secrets and, it turns out, a harbinger of a remarkable surge of suburban breweries.
NEWS
April 15, 2012 | By Walter F. Naedele, Inquirer Staff Writer
Martin M. Beer, 88, a mathematics teacher at Haddonfield Memorial High School from 1953 to 1983 who also led cycling tours of Europe before and after his retirement, died of pulmonary hypertension Wednesday, April 4, at Kendal-Crosslands, the retirement community near Kennett Square. In 1964, Mr. Beer and his wife, Winifred, organized Haddon Cycle Tours, first for students and later for adults, a part-time business that they continued until 1992. He met his wife in 1950, at a Quaker meeting in Cambridge, Mass., while he was taking summer courses at Harvard University.