Yards Report

I ran into Tom Kehoe at Tuesday's big Philly Beer Week meeting (more on that very shortly) and of course asked him what was going on with the new brewery. You know, the one that was supposed to start "some level" of brewing this month? Has any microbrewery ever opened on schedule?

"We're putting in screw piles tomorrow," he told me, with that "damn, I'm screwed, but hey, we're all screwed, right?" grin of his strung across his face. Screw piles? Big screws -- really big, like thirty feet long -- that get screwed down into the ground for support. "Then you put a steel haunch on top," Tom added -- Haunch? What? Look, suffice it to say, the Yards brewery right now is down to a dirt floor, and they're going to be building up on the screw piles to a heavy reinforced concrete (or "ferroconcrete," as the Brits call it, a much cooler word) floor to support the brewing equipment.

So, when? A while, looks like. Meanwhile, as was the backup plan, Kehoe is having two beers -- one being Philly Pale (the other I can't remember: ESA? IPA?) -- brewed under contract at The Lion. The other beers will be coming from stocks built up at the Kensington brewery, which is now, of course, Philadelphia Brewing (which has some interesting session-looking beers up on their 'coming soon' brews list).