New brew review
Submitted by dtomko on Tue, 2006-10-10 19:43.New brew review
Thirty breweries converge on Newtown for a beer festival
By Joseph Simek
Philly EDGE Correspondent
“I’ll have a lager.”
It’s a phrase echoed time and again in bars from Philly to the suburbs, and nine times out of 10, speaking it will get you a pint of Yuengling without much hesitation from the bartender. It’s a respectable local phenomenon involving a tasty product from a semi-local brewery, and if nothing else, it makes you feel at home in unfamiliar bars.
But when the rest of your friends order pints of imported beers and fancy microbrews, do you feel like you’re being boring by going the “lager” route?
If so, it might be time to expand your beer guzzling horizons -- to pop the top on something new.
Your best bet is the Newtown Brewfest on Oct. 21, an event that will feature over 30 breweries, beer tasting seminars, and live music. Twenty-five bucks gets you a 2-ounce mug and access to a smorgasbord of beer samples, which depending on the drinker, can be considered either a beer snob’s heaven or a novice’s baptism of booze.
“So often when you go out and get a beer, you’re locked into your favorite that you usually drink,” says Chris Ortwein, manager of Newtown Main Streets, the non-profit organization that is the beneficiary of the town’s first annual brewfest.
“A brewfest really gives you a whole new way of looking at beer in terms of what to look for, the different tastes, and the whole field of what’s out there,” Ortwein says.
And for this particular brewfest, the field is pretty impressive. Participating brewers hail from across the United States, from Rogue in Oregon to Dogfish Head Craft in Delaware. A number of imported beers will also be featured, including popular names such as Stella Artois and less familiar brewers like Canada’s Unibroue.
Even more impressive is the large cross-section of Pennsylvania breweries. According to Newtownbrewfest.com, over 14 brewers from across the state will be serving beer at the event, including local favorites (Yards, Victory, River Horse) and a few beer crafters located closer to Pittsburgh (Straub, Penn Brewery).
Helping you navigate through this ocean of suds will be Lew Bryson, a Newtown resident and author of a handful of books on breweries in Pennsylvania, New York and other northeastern states. Bryson will be at the brewfest giving seminars on beer tasting, explaining, as he says, “what's there in the glass, and how it gets there.”
“The idea is to help you figure out what it is you like (about a beer), and then find more beers like that,” he says.
According to Ortwein, Bryson has been instrumental in getting a few of the breweries to sign on to do the event. She said the event’s organizers were using Bryson’s book on Pennsylvania breweries as a reference, only to later realize he lived in Newtown. Bryson says he’s excited about having all these breweries setting up shop in his own backyard.
“Yards and Victory are always favorites, and I'm glad Legacy and Weyerbacher will be there as well. I'm also happy to see The Lion is coming, an old brewery from Wilkes-Barre. They don't do many fests, and this is kind of a personal favor from the brewmaster (Leo Orlandini), a friend of mine.”
It's going to be great to have a beer festival right here where I live; I'm planning on riding my bike,” Bryson says, “But being involved in a first-time fest is always nerve-wracking.”
The Brewfest is not only brand new to Newtown, but also Bucks County as a whole. Ortwein says her organization was searching for an original fundraiser that would work in a place like Newtown, with its small-town-Pennsylvania appeal.
“After we started to research and get a committee together, we realized that there really wasn’t an event like this happening in the Bucks County area. We didn’t feel like we were duplicating something that was already going on.”
Ortwein said that the event’s organizers, which include local merchants and restaurants such as main sponsor, and beer heavy-pub, Isaac Newton’s, are hoping for a turn-out of about 1000 people. Their goal is to both raise some money and spur interest in their town.
“We’ve been this wonderful little community that has been a hidden treasure, overshadowed by Doylestown and New Hope,” she says. “In the past couple of years, we’ve come into our own.”
If you’re not a Newtown resident and able to ride your bike like Bryson, Ortwein says there will be parking on site as well as a number of spots nearby. She also said precautions would be taken against drunk driving, including a discounted price of $10 for designated drivers.
“The brewers that are going to be there, this is their livelihood. They take this seriously and they do a lot of screening as to whether they are going to continue serving someone or not. …This doesn’t tend to be that type of event. If someone wants to drink and get drunk, you’re not going to pay $25. You can go buy a case of beer and stay home and watch TV.”
Or, you could head to your nearest corner bar and order that beer you’ve had 100 times before. But how boring is that?
And besides, Yuengling will also be at the brewfest.
First Annual Newtown Brewfest
Saturday, October 21, 2 p.m. to 6 p.m.
Stocking Works,
Tickets are $25 in advance; $30 day of event.
Call 215.968.3440
Go to www.newtownbrewfest.com
Hop quiz
A beginner’s guide to a few local breweries featured at the Newtown Brewfest
Yards | www.yardsbrewing.com
Located in the Kensington neighborhood of Philadelphia, Yards is one of the only production breweries inside the city limits. Roughly 80 to 90 breweries used to exist along the Delaware River before Prohibition forced them to close. Those bastards! Luckily, Yards survived to carry on the old-fashioned tradition of using open fermentation vats instead of sealed vats like other big-name breweries. Yards makes a bunch of different ales, including “three historically correct ales” that use the authentic recipes of three guys you may have heard of : Ben Franklin, George Washington and Thomas Jefferson.
Legacy | www.legacybrewing.com
You would think hedonism and beer go hand-in-hand, but that combination got this Reading brewery into some controversy this year. After releasing its Hedonism Ale, Legacy received complaints from distributors in Lancaster who thought the beer’s label -- which featured bare torso-ed characters getting a little fresh -- was “obscene.” Some distributors went so far as to wrap the cases in brown paper bags so they could continue to sell the beer. This brew-haha (sorry, couldn’t resist) and subsequent media coverage quickly made Hedonism Ale the brewery’s flagship beer. But along with that, they produce their Midnight Wit Belgium-styled ale, Reading Pilsner and Triple H (Heavy Handed Hops), among others.
Triumph | www.triumphbrew.com
Although now a staple of
River Horse | www.riverhorse.com
Across the Delaware River from Triumph is River Horse Brewery, a small but respectable outfit just off the bridge in Lambertville. Most people along the river are familiar with their Lager, but River Horse also brews a handful of other beers including the seasonal Summer Blonde Ale and Belgium Frostbite Winter Ale. Besides beer, River Horse’s warehouse will also house a Halloween horror film festival on October 28 and 29. Organizers of the Lambertville Film Series call this installment “a kind of haunted house/history of horror movies interactive space.”
Victory | www.victorybeer.com
Ever wonder which beer those red “V” tap handles belong to? That would be Victory, one of the area’s more popular breweries. Victory has been extremely successful with its core of beers: Hop Devil Ale (whole flower American hops meets German malts), Prima Pils (dry, pale lager) and Victory Lager (German Helles-styled lager). And then there’s Golden Monkey, Belgium-styled ale that features a Budda-ish monkey on the label. With its infinite wisdom and huge alcohol content (9.5%), I’ve seen the Monkey put more than a few big dudes straight on their ass.
