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By Root 1289 0

é co-owner and Belgian beer guru Tom Peters, the Philadelphia Daily News columnist Don Russel, and the late Bruce Nichols of Museum Catering Company. Nichols first brought the writer Michael Jackson to Philadelphia in 1991 for a tutored beer-tasting dinner at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, a smash success followed in years hence by some dozen others, during which time he joined forces with Peters and Russel to create Philly Beer Week, an annual ten-day June bacchanal drawing thousands of visitors to over a thousand events throughout the city and the first such event in the nation, which has spawned scores of similar fetes. The only limit is time. Maybe we should call it the City of Brewery Love?

ITINERARIES

1 – DAY

The Foodery, Standard Tap, Monk’s Café, Local 44, Memphis Taproom (Philadelphia)

3 – DAY

One-day itinerary plus Victory Brewing Company, Yard’s, Teresa’s, 700 Club, Jose Pistola’s, Bridgid’s (Philadelphia)

7 – DAY

Three-day itinerary plus Capone’s (Norristown), the Farmhouse (Emmaus), Grey Lodge Public House, McGillin’s Olde Ale House, Yuengling Brewery

Philadelphia

THE STANDARD TAP

901 N. 2nd St. • Philadelphia, PA 19123 • (215) 238-0630 standardtap.com • Established: 1999

SCENE & STORY

In a charming three-and-a-half-story structure dating back to at least 1810, the Standard Tap’s headquarters has been a bar many times over, as well as a pharmacy and drugstore. It’s also been an apartment, at least on the third floor, when former Samuel Adams brewer Will Reed lived there while working with his partner Paul Kimport to help revitalize Philly’s stricken Northern Liberties neighborhood. They’d thought about brewing beer there, too, but the spaces were a bit confining, so they decided to open a beer bar instead. The building had the right bones, and was also just a half block from the site where a brewer named John Wagner became the first American to successfully produce lagers. Reed and Kimport have built a distinctive two-story pub with an ambitious menu (duck confit, anyone?) and solid reputation for taking care of their beer and their customers.

PHILOSOPHY

Good beer and food for locals, by locals. Reed and Kimport felt the area breweries weren’t being well represented, and that the city needed to get behind its own residents working hard to remake the area’s historic brewing scene. So the beers are exclusively from eighteen local and state breweries and always on draft or cask. “We looked at places like Portland and Seattle, and we wanted people to be really proud of where their beer came from,” Reed recalls. “So we’re just going to do all local beer and we’re going to do all draft beer. I love the Belgian stuff and everything, but I don’t want to be a Belgian or a British pub. I don’t want to be an Irish pub. I want to be a Philadelphia pub.”

KEY BEER

There are twenty taps, two cask engines, and a single bottle: Lord Chesterfield, an antique recipe still brewed by Yuengling. Avoid it unless you’re just one of those irredeemably curious cats. Troëg’s is a favorite tap handle; look for the piney, 6% ABV Simcoe dry hopped Hop Back Amber on cask. It’s soft, dry, quenching, faintly sweet, and bitter all at once, just as a good cask-conditioned beer should be.

THE FOODERY

837 N. 2nd St. (across the street from Standard Tap) Philadelphia, PA 19123 • (215) 238-6077 fooderybeer.com • Established: 2006

With more than eight hundred labels of beer available and a vaunted deli, The Foodery also has an especially good selection of large format bottles from U.S. and Belgian craft brewers. The Northern Liberties location is across the street from Standard Tap, so there’s no reason not to take a spin through. There are picnic tables inside and the owners sponsor frequent tasting events.

KHYBER PASS

56 S. 2nd St. • Philadelphia, PA 19106 (215) 238-5888 • khyberpasspub.com Established: late 1970s

SCENE & STORY

The Khyber Pass, which has been a drinking establishment since the 1850s, takes its name from a remarkable story about its Maryland-born