The Session #21 -- My Favorite Beer

It's The Session, beer blogging on a common topic, and this month it's "What is your favorite beer and why." See all the links soon here at A World of Brews.

You've got to be kidding me. I don't have a "favorite" anything. Despite Matt C. saying "BS everyone has a favorite", well, I don't. I don't have a favorite beer, a favorite whiskey, a favorite restaurant or brewpub, a favorite cheese, a favorite movie -- actually, there's a good example of why I don't do favorites. Let's go with it.

Say I had a favorite movie [beer]. I'd own [stock] that movie [beer] on DVD [in a kegerator], and I'd watch [drink] it, what? Three times a week [day]? Good God, how soon would I be bored senseless [bored senseless] by it. No, instead, we joined Netflix [go to the local beer bar] and we watch [drink] different movies [beers] all the time. And sometimes we watch [drink] an old favorite again -- like The Quiet Man [Augustiner Maximator] or Big Trouble in Little China [Tröegs Nugget Nectar] -- but not that often.

Get it? The thing I love about the beer scene in Pennsylvania, America, the world is that I can get a lot of different beers, almost whenever I want them. If not one particular beer, well, something like it -- or something completely different that I may find I like as much or more. A lot like Netflix, which is the multitap beer bar equivalent to Blockbuster's JAFSB. My favorite beer is a different beer. Doesn't mean I don't like repeating -- I remember the first night I got a glass of Philly Pale Ale I liked it so much I had three more -- but I don't get stuck in a rut either. Even when I go to Düsseldorf and get stuck into an all-day session at Uerige or Schlüssel -- oh, happy days -- you know...I come home, and have a HopDevil, or an Old Heathen, or a Stoudt's Pils, or a Walt Wit.

BS? I don't think so. Just too ornery to go along with The Session this month? Well... maybe.

Big Daddy and more oysters

Friday morning we got up early and walked out in the brisk, breezy morning, up the hill to Dottie's True Blue Cafe. Great timing: we walked right in the door and sat down at a table, and didn't miss the usual wait in line at all (by the time we left, the line was out the door). Lots of good coffee floated us through breakfast; I had a lamb-fennel sausage and goat cheese scramble with their buttermilk dill bread, Cathy had a whiskey fennel sausage omelette with grilled cornbread. Plenty of good chow, and neither of us felt a need for more till about 6:00 that night.

We walked back to the hotel and got to work on set-up for WhiskyFest: setting up the tables for registration and sales, putting up our signage (we've gone pro with retractable stand-up banners, but one of them needed some banging and convincing to work properly), and sorting the hundreds of ID bands for VIP and regular guests. By about 11 AM we were done. We went up to the room, cleaned up a little, and walked down to 4th Street Bar & Deli.

I know I've said places are JAFSB (Just Another Freakin' Sports Bar), and 4th Street largely was...but we weren't there for sports TV or wings, we were there for beer. I started with a Speakeasy Big Daddy IPA, the beer that John had told me they had here. Great stuff: not just hoppy, it's built on a base of solid, sweet maltiness, a nice solid West Coast IPA. Then I got to looking at the full beer menu -- got a taste of Speakeasy's White Lightning, a surprisingly pleasant filtered West Coast hefe (real style-snake biting its own tail, there) -- and lo and behold, there was Russian River Damnation. JAFSB? Well, not quite! After I finished that little beauty, and Cathy finished her iced tea, she went off to shop for make-up at Sephora (what a look she had on her face), and I went back to the room.

I hadn't more than sat down when an idea hit me: call Jim McGinley, husband of our events manager, Joan. Jim's a fun guy I don't get to hang out with enough, and he's usually up for a beer. I got hold of him, and we were soon hiking up to Johnny Foley's. It was time for Guinness! We grabbed two pints and lubed our conversation. Damned good jars, poured properly, and didn't it drive me to get a half-dozen oysters on the half-shell? Yes indeed, and they were delish. (Weird moment: recognized the song on the sound system as the Boomtown Rats "Someone's Looking At You," a song I haven't heard anywhere except on my own stereo for years.) Another pint, some great stories, and then we headed back to the hotel to get spruced up for WhiskyFest.
Things were a bit rough this year at first -- our first time at this hotel, which always takes some adjusting -- but soon ran very smoothly. We had some amazing whiskies that distillers had donated to raise money for charity (San Francisco's FoodRunners): five years of the Glenfarclas Family Casks, five bottles of Glenlivet Cellar Collection, and four one-time, one-bottle special bottlings of The Macallan, selected by four current and past distillery managers. That was just kind of cool to see the labels sporting "Bottle 1 of 1." Cathy wound up pouring the Glenfarclas, and had a fun time with it.

And once again, I ran into Ethan Prater. It's all webs, folks. Hmmm...they're calling my flight. Gotta go. More in a while, including why I'm catching a flight.

Sic Transit Gloria Brewpub, Sic Transit Gloria Philadelphia

Dan Gross reports at the Philadelphia Daily News website that the locked-down Independence brewpub will rapidly become a sports bar, confirming what Uncle Jack and Don "Joe Sixpack" Russell said at the time of Independence's abrupt closing. The particulars:

THE OWNERS of the Public House (18th & Cherry) will soon open the Field House (1150 Filbert), a giant, high-end sports bar on the site of the former Independence Brew Pub, which closed abruptly last month.
Brian Harrington confirmed yesterday that he and partner Gary Cardi signed a lease last week on the property and are hoping for a Nov. 15 opening.
They're going for a similar American fare menu to their popular Public House, and Harrington says "it's not your onion rings and frozen appetizers type of place." The bar will have a raw bar and the pair hope to attract conventioneers as well as catering to a local crowd.

Sigh. I guess I should be happy it's at least a local "giant, high-end sports bar", and not another damned ESPN Zone.

But you know? I'm not. I'm still pissed that this great site for a brewpub never reached its full potential. I blame Jim Bell and his pissing contest business tactics, I blame the Dock Street management folks for not committing immediately to the brewery expansion that was desperately needed, and I blame the following owners for their constant announcements of big changes right around the bend that somehow just never occurred. I blame the beer geeks who could never see past the Guinness and Miller Lite taps to give this brewery-handicapped place a fair chance and support the beers that Tim Roberts did such a great job brewing.

Nodding Head's great, Triumph is excellent, and although Manayunk suffers from the same beer confusion Indy did -- I just got a press release about a Corona event there -- there's still damned good beer being made there. (Whoops. Forgot Dock Street. Sorry, haven't had a chance to get there since it opened!) But where the hell are all the brewpubs that should be in this town?

You'd think that with the big Belgian jones this town obviously has -- Bridgid's, Monk's, Eulogy, Abbaye, Zot, the brand-new Belgian Cafe and the Beneluxx Tasting Room -- that a Belgian-beer brewpub like Brewer's Art would be up and running... Anyone? Anyone? Iron Hill, by God, I love you guys, but why no Philly Iron Hill? Can't be the money, right, they've got a big building fund warchest.

Gordon-Biersch builds big lager palaces like mad in Virginia; does Lagerville USA get one? Nope. I'll tell you what: if I were Dick Yuengling, or one of his daughters (okay, try not to think about that one too visually), I'd open a Yuengling brewpub in Philly. It's a freakin' natural, and done right -- like in the Independence site -- it would kill, and they'd sell even more Lager...and maybe we'd finally see some of those specialty recipes from the old days that they used to tease us about. A game menu for that upstate touch, decor like the brewery taproom, a big giftshop, a big promotional on the first day of deer season...you don't have to pay me for the idea, Dick: it's yours. Free.

But no one does anything. All we do is yap about how great we have it here. Well, you know, it's pretty good. Yeah, yeah, I know, I can get a very wide variety of beers, and there are some excellent bars -- I don't really have any complaints about the places that are here, love 'em -- and there are restaurants with real beer lists. I know that, hell, I've said it too, I've been a big friggin' cheerleader for this town.

But I've also been to both Portlands, I've been to Pittsburgh, I've been to DC, I've been to Madison, I've been to Köln and Düsseldorf, and I'm telling you, we could do better, a lot better, and more people should be saying so. Philadelphia needs more brewpubs to truly be a great beer town.

The floor is open.