Archives for January 2019

January 29, 2019 by Tupper 1 Comment

At Pub 27 in Pompeii

Rusty Rail Rail Spike IPA, Mifflinburg, Pa.

Date: January 29, 2018

The Story— Mifflinburg is a tiny town in the Susquehanna River Valley that has had to reinvent itself as its core industries melted away over the years. The owners of the Rusty Rail Brewery point out that unlike most small towns with successful 21^st century breweries, there’s no university, no hospital and no serious tourist attraction here. If you don’t live here, you’re probably here to visit Rusty Rail Brewery.

The people at Rusty Rail have bet the farm, so to speak, on a “if you build it they will come” destination brewery, restaurant, event location and sort-of hotel. From what we could see, they are winning the bet. On a pleasant spring Saturday only a few spaces in the three large parking lots remained open and empty seats were even scarcer.

A sizable stainless steel brew kit gleams from the floor below through a large glass wall. The main hall is enormous, rivaling a German beer hall in its expanse, with a long bar and separate bar area in the center. A good sized patio with rows of picnic tables fills in good weather. A gas fire pit helps on a cool evening. On the second floor a pub-like game room features enough stuffed heads to make a PETA person pass out; a sign warns that they bite.

One of the most spectacular suites we have encountered in writing our Mid Atlantic guide to beds and breweries looks out on the Mifflinburg countryside from the sky-high third floor of the old brick building. You can’t forget you’re in a former industrial space as you walk the long hallway leading to the eight suites. High ceilings and post- industrial décor at a four star level grace a living space that would be quite sufficient as a residence. It’s all open, but along its enormous length are separate areas for sleeping, eating and living. The amenities are remarkable: a king size bed, full size two door refrigerator-freezer, dishwasher, microwave, large center kitchen island, two large flat screen TVs that display one of the most extensive channel lineups we have seen in a hotel. The refrigerator contains a variety pack of Rusty Rail beers, which you can drink in the logo glasses provided. You can also bring beers from the bars downstairs. No wonder they enforce their 11 AM check out so rigidly — we’d stay on and on…..

A wide range of beers give you plenty of choice and plenty to talk about over an evening’s self-guided beer tasting. Food is quite good, which is fortunate since you really don’t want to get in your after settling into this beer palace. Almost all the beers are good craft versions of the style, though if you can find a reason why God created cockroaches, you might be able to explain why someone thought producing an Imperial Peanut Butter Hefeweizen was a good idea.

The Beer— Five hops and most of them show up for roll call. Some metal, some soft fruit, some grass and a touch of spice over an even clean malt with light toast. We could happily drink this all night if it had a lower abv than its 7.1%, but what the heck, the only vehicle you’re driving is the elevator to the third floor. We drank it all night and took one to the room.

Value — Very good. $5.50 for an honest full pint is a good price for an average beer, and this beer is well above average.

Values: “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

For a couple of weeks, we’re presenting some fun towns to explore and have a beer. There’s all within a few hours drive if you live in the Mid Atlantic. Most are near enough a place to stay that you can walk back to your room. We’ve found these in researching out first US Beer publication: Brews and Snooze-– Breweries you can visit and walk back to a fine place to spend the night. Look for it later this year.

Did you miss our Ten Beers for the New Year? Links are below.

Jailbreak Coffee Dusk Till Dawn, Tröegs Mad Elf Grand Cru, Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, Boulevard Manhattan They’re Cask Still Ale, Ommegang Game of Thrones Series: Mother of Dragons, Lickinghole Creek Carrot Cake Imperial Amber Ale, Colbitzer Heide-Brauerei Schwarz, Lickinghole Creek One Lion Imperial Stout, Founders Dank Wood, Stone Woot Stout.

We’re often asked to share our tasting notes on over 33,000 beers; this blog is in answer to those requests. Not all our notes, though. The great beer writer Michael Jackson admirably followed the Thumper Rule, and we’ll try to do the same. (“If you can’t say something nice, don’t say nuthin’ at all.”) All the beers we post are from the top half of our ratings and most are from the top quarter. Of greater value, we think, are the stories behind the beers, and we try to give you enough about the brewery, the style and the places to find great beer to help you on your own beer journeys. At CulturAle Press we try to write books and publish posts that will help you “Drink Well and Travel Safely.”

January 28, 2019 by Tupper Leave a Comment

At Pub 27 in Pompeii

ZerØday Brewing Firehouse IPA, Harrisburg, Pa.

Date: January 28, 2018

The Story–In the late 18^th century the Pennsylvania state legislature decided to flee the unhealthy environs of Philadelphia and moved the capital to Lancaster. A few years later in 1812 John Harris Jr. donated four acres of land along the picturesque Susquehanna for a new capitol and Harrisburg has been the state capital

It’s been a center of craft beer since the mid 90s when Tröegs and Appalachian opened within a short walk of each other. Appalachian remains; Tröegs has moved on to its showpiece in Hershey, but a host of newcomers have filled the void and the beer in Harrisburg is better than ever.

Theo, the founder, took five months to hike the Appalachian trail which passes not far away. Zeroday takes its name from a hiker’s log–a day off from the trail to relax. Comfortable tables and a long bar provide good opportunities to enjoy that day off, and the beers might make you consider taking another day off tomorrow. The tap room feel is pretty typical of the new wave of modern small breweries. Located in a long unused space that had housed a bit of the local theater and a plasma donation center, it’s open and cheery and squeaky clean.

The brewery bar has twenty taps, but demand had been such before our midwinter visit that less than half of them were in use. They had put the Firehouse Ale on tap even though the plan had been to pour it exclusively at the relatively nearby Firehouse restaurant.

Most of the beers were simply excellent, but the star of the crown, was the Firehouse IPA, a 6% dank-in-your-face hop head’s dream. Some fruit and a firm foundation gave it enough balance for Ellie to steal some of Bob’s second pint of it, and if the brewery hadn’t closed at midnight, Bob might have been drinking it until dawn.

Unlike many of the beers we list here, there’s a very good chance it will still be available when you get there, though you might have to visit the Firehouse to find it. The Firehouse, by the way, is one of the oldest of its kind in the state and matches its exceptional decor with a wide range of well-prepared foods.

The Beer— DANK! Sweet malt with some soft citrus but planks of pine and a richly dank enveloping finish. A hint of lemon peel as it drinks and just a touch of heat-spice (hops? alcohol?) leads into a chewy, slightly toasty and echoing dankness. Ellie liked its excellent meld with late herbs

Value — Excellent. This was one of our top rated beers from 2018.

Values: “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

For a couple of weeks, we’re presenting some fun towns to explore and have a beer. There’s all within a few hours drive if you live in the Mid Atlantic. Most are near enough a place to stay that you can walk back to your room. We’ve found these in researching out first US Beer publication: Brews and Snooze-– Breweries you can visit and walk back to a fine place to spend the night. Look for it later this year.

Did you miss our Ten Beers for the New Year? Links are below.

Jailbreak Coffee Dusk Till Dawn, Tröegs Mad Elf Grand Cru, Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, Boulevard Manhattan They’re Cask Still Ale, Ommegang Game of Thrones Series: Mother of Dragons, Lickinghole Creek Carrot Cake Imperial Amber Ale, Colbitzer Heide-Brauerei Schwarz, Lickinghole Creek One Lion Imperial Stout, Founders Dank Wood, Stone Woot Stout.

January 27, 2019 by Tupper 1 Comment

At Pub 27 in Pompeii

Root Down Tripel, Phoenixville, Pa.

Date: January 27, 2018

The Story— Sly Fox put Phoenixville on the map decades ago. The original Sly Fox brewery was on the outskirts of town– you had to drive there, but it was worth the effort. Brian O’Reilly, a truly gifted brewer, brewed a single hop pale ale (and some years a single hop IPA) each month. In late fall, he’d put them all on tap and it was as close to a low budget brewing school you could find. Brian has moved on to a new project in Philadelphia, but Phoenixville has blossomed as a craft brew weekend destination.

The town has a kettle of breweries, a first rate beer store, a decent semi-historic hotel and more restaurant choices than you need. Many of the restaurants are BYOB and all the breweries sell growlers. Restaurants are usually good about packaging food to go, so another choice is to take the food to the brewery.

If you time your visit for the second week in July, make reservations way in advance and get tickets on line for Blobfest. The Colonial Theater in Phoenixville was the location for the shooting of the iconic panic scene in The Blob of the theater emptying. These days moviegoers reenact the scene — without the blob. Even if you can’t get tickets, it’s something of an event to see everyone pouring out onto the street in terror.

You have many choices and you may not be able to get to to them all if you only have one night. But we recommend that you don’t omit the Root Down brewery, located in a former factory; it brews some of the best beers in town in a welcoming historic atmosphere.

Our choice– and it wasn’t easy for this town or even for this brewery– is the Root Down Tripel. We love Belgian Tripels when they’re done well, which, outside of Belgium, is not very often, Tripels need to be delicate, with some metal and maybe a hint of banana in a bit of a tropical sojourn. Most of all, they’re delicate and intriguing with some metal almost serving to hold all the other flavors together.

Most American breweries miss the mark when they attempt tripels. They’re often too thick, too heavy handed with obvious booze and crushing tropical fruit from big hop additions. This one approached authenticity.

The Beer— Slightly heavy for the style but unusually echt for a US brewery. Metallic and quite spicy with a nice bit of pepper and tropical that increases as it drinks. Ellie found a long bitter and some salt from the alcohol.

Value — Good. a $4 taster (about four ounces as best) is pricey, but this one is worth the dough.

Values: “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

For a couple of weeks, we’re presenting some fun towns to explore and have a beer. There’s all within a few hours drive if you live in the Mid Atlantic. Most are near enough a place to stay that you can walk back to your room. We’ve found these in researching out first US Beer publication: Brews and Snooze-– Breweries you can visit and walk back to a fine place to spend the night. Look for it later this year.

Did you miss our Ten Beers for the New Year? Links are below.

Jailbreak Coffee Dusk Till Dawn, Tröegs Mad Elf Grand Cru, Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, Boulevard Manhattan They’re Cask Still Ale, Ommegang Game of Thrones Series: Mother of Dragons, Lickinghole Creek Carrot Cake Imperial Amber Ale, Colbitzer Heide-Brauerei Schwarz, Lickinghole Creek One Lion Imperial Stout, Founders Dank Wood, Stone Woot Stout.

January 26, 2019 by Tupper Leave a Comment

At Pub 27 in Pompeii

Turkey Hill Mid Summer’s Night Saison, Bloomsburg, Pa.

Date: January 26, 2018

The Story— Bloomsburg is a cute Pennsylvania town that seems ideal for a local brewery or two. A brief run by the Eagle Brewery ended in failure long before Prohibition, but by the 1980s you could find a range of good beer in their best beer bar. That bar, whose name we cannot recover, dropped some serious cash moving a Brickskeller Tasting event — including us and the owner of the Brickskeller to Bloomsburg.

But it wasn’t until 2011 that Marley’s Brewery opened in an historic hotel building in downtown Bloomsburg. It was an instant success — to summarize their story, they were too popular for their space and moved to a new site, albeit quite impressive, outside of the downtown area, leaving the quaint old town brewery-less again. Today when you visit Bloomsburg, you’ll have to get out of the central area to find freshly brewed beer.

Happily not long after Marley’s opened its doors, The Inn at Turkey Hill (named for a nearby geographical feature and not a Deli Chain) decided to add additional dining options and a brewery to its barn. Blown flat in a viscious storm, the barn was reconstructed — as a barn– and then converted to a restaurant and pub in the way they originally envisioned. They hired Donny Abraczinskas, a local homebrewer, to do the brewing and we still don’t think they understand how lucky they were.

Homebrewing and commercial brewing have similarities, of course, but a very good homebrewer doesn’t always make a good commercial brewing. At home, if you run out of beer the Subtotal Beer Market down the street will keep you going and allow you to age that doppelbock six more weeks if it needs it. A brew pub has to pour beer. A good plant manager can mean as much to the success of a brewery as a good brewmaster. The homebrewer suddenly has to manage both trades with minimal training in one and no training in the other.

Some homebrewers make the switch with grace and speed, and Danny was one of them. We tasted his beers within the first year of production and were more than impressed. We returned recently for a full night at the Inn as well as a full night’s session in the pub. The beers were still constantly impressive.

We’ve chosen a saison for the beer of the day today because we almost never do. We’ve run into dozens of pleasant saisons, but very rarely do we run into one that makes our top 20% of all beers. Dupont does it too well, and the style varies too much for us to set our Dupont aside for another taste of a US version

We’re not claiming that Turkey Hill brews as well as Dupont– only that it’s plenty close enough to enjoy the comparison — and that it’s one of the best Saisons we’ve tasted on this side of the Atlantic. That’s reason enough to book into Turkey Hill, but the brewpub will give you eleven other reasons to make you glad you made the trip here.

The Beer— Very even and smooth, creamy, gold saison with just a touch of fruit that leads to tangerine, soft malt and a yeasty late bitter. Chalky, creamy with some metal and a combination of accessible flavors that make it, astonishingly moreish. Late pepper adds balance. DuPont’s saison is cleaner, but this is a masterful interpretation of the style.

Value — Very good. $4.50 for about 10 ounces of excellent beer.

Values: “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.

For a couple of weeks, we’re presenting some fun towns to explore and have a beer. There’s all within a few hours drive if you live in the Mid Atlantic. Most are near enough a place to stay that you can walk back to your room. We’ve found these in researching out first US Beer publication: Brews and Snooze-– Breweries you can visit and walk back to a fine place to spend the night. Look for it later this year.

Did you miss our Ten Beers for the New Year? Links are below.

Jailbreak Coffee Dusk Till Dawn, Tröegs Mad Elf Grand Cru, Goose Island Bourbon County Stout, Boulevard Manhattan They’re Cask Still Ale, Ommegang Game of Thrones Series: Mother of Dragons, Lickinghole Creek Carrot Cake Imperial Amber Ale, Colbitzer Heide-Brauerei Schwarz, Lickinghole Creek One Lion Imperial Stout, Founders Dank Wood, Stone Woot Stout.

January 25, 2019 by Tupper Leave a Comment

At Pub 27 in Pompeii

Great Beer Weekends in the Mid-Atlantic #10: Wyomissing, Pa. Chatty Monks Revelation Ale, British Porter

Date: January 25, 2018

The Story— Walk-able, drinkable, and artsy, Wyomissing is a suburb of sorts that sits on the high hills overlooking Reading. Pennsylvania. In the 1990s it was home to Camelot Brewing, a pioneering Peter Austin system brewery that produced exceptionally good IPAs and did fairly well with other styles as well. It was a victim of the late 90s early 2000s retraction. On our last visit we <think> we recognized the location, but there’s no trace of it left.

Reading has struggled to regain the beer glory it once had when Reading Beer was a draw throughout the East. It lost its ability to support a big regional (think Yuengling) but hasn’t, as a community, really engaged with craft beer either. The lofty heights of Wyomissing, however, have made a spectacular comeback since Camelot’s demise. it’s not only become the place for craft beer in Reading, but it’s become a bastion of brewing for all eastern Pennsylvania. Chatty Monks opened shop several years ago, it was joined recently by Broken Chair brewery and even more recently by a Sly Fox tap room.

Chatty Monks, our focus for today, has pictures of various monks on the walls in various positions of self-abuse who probably were not so chatty, but it’s a fine place to enjoy pleasures of this world while you contemplate another. It’s an old storefront place on the main Wyomissing drag. Oldish townhouses are now converted to boutiques: handmade soaps next door, spas, etc. and more dentists than you could count teeth in the city. This is a small, usual new craft brewery decor with pale wood, at least one raw brick wall; a long side bench that looks like a pew; a few high tops but mostly small dining tables in front, with a small bar in back. The monks hanging upside down, however, were decidedly not usual brewpub on either side of the Atlantic.

An experimental blend of hops graced a strong IPA, and the regular Monastery pale ale is sip-worthy over an evening. The best of the bunch, though, was a Revelation Ale – a strong British porter (5.5% strong for Britain, not for the US).

The Beer— Chewy roasted malt with some smooth Marris Otter underneath. Hops are mild, herbal and slightly spicy. Typical of understated local beers. Chewy with good flavor, though and more dark as it drinks. HOPS: Pekko is supposed to have a “tea like flavor” – maybe you’ll find ti quicker than we did.

Value — Good to very good. Excellent beer at normal brewpub prices.

Values: “fair” is a good beer at an above market price, “good” is worth the money, “very good” is a bargain, and “excellent” is a steal.