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Sunday, August 12, 2007

Independence brewpub closed

Don Russell is reporting that Independence brewpub in the Reading Terminal building has locked its doors:
Indy shuttered*
Independence Brew Pub in Center City was shut down on Friday (8/10). No details yet, but employees, including brewer Tim Roberts (who was in the middle of a brew at the time), were evicted with no notice. Signs on the door say the closure is temporary. This does not look good.
*Thanks to John Ahrens for this tip.
I'm with Don on this one: this does not look good. Just when brewpubs were starting to rebuild their reputation in Da City O' Brotherly Love, another one falls on its face.

5 comments:

Dan Berger said...

I know this place had nothing do to with the old Independence, at least to my knowledge, but this is another tick on the "Independence" name saga. Hopefully it comes back.

Anonymous said...

I don't think this is a big deal for the beer scene. They never really focused on the beer there. The banners for Corona and Miller Lite were way more evident than signage for their house beers.

I'm not saying that they didn't have talented brewers from time to time. They did, and I have memories of good beer to (sort of) prove it. With the exception of (ironically) Jim Bell (and he never actually got to run the place), they never had management that articulated it was first foremost a brewpub.

Independence never really hit anyone's radar for beer in Philadelphia which is pretty much down to management. The high overhead I'm sure didn't help either.

Anonymous said...

Having been there a few times myself, I agree with scoats post.

The BIG beers advertising tended to dominate the place. The beer was good, though not outstanding and the food, in my opinion, left something to be desired. There was nothing negative about the beer or the food, it just never seemed to stand out.

That piece of real estate will probably become a club or something else.

Lew Bryson said...

I just got a lengthy comment on this whole situation that I'm going to decline to post, because it makes a number of assertions that would lead to criminal prosecutions if true...and I don't need to get a libel suit if they aren't. My apologies to the poster: large parts of that comment are stuff I would post, but some of it is just too touchy.

I think it IS safe to say that this is going to be a contentious issue, and that we haven't heard the last of it.

Can Collectors said...

I never walked into a place looking at what signs were in the window. As you all well know that a good beer drinker goes to a location to drink the watering hole's specialty beers.