|
If there’s one thing this region has, it’s good beer. But if there’s one thing this city needs, it’s some sort of festival to celebrate all the good beer we have.
Okay, so that might not be the one thing this city needs, but a beer festival would be pretty nice. Fortunately, the Norman Mailer of beer writing, Lew Bryson, thought the same thing and has come up with the best idea ever, even better than Phillyblog Day):
We kick things off with a Friday night “simul-tap” across southeastern Pennsylvania, New Jersey, and Delaware, with the mayor of Philadelphia (assuming the new mayor of Philadelphia isn’t a teetotaler like John Street) tapping a symbolic firkin in the courtyard in City Hall as breweries in Harrisburg, Princeton, Allentown, Easton, Wilmington, Lancaster, and across the five-county area all tap up at the same time.
The first weekend is anchored by the familiar Michael Jackson dinner and mass tasting at the University of Pennsylvania Museum on Saturday, and a big real ale festival on Sunday. I’ll also be running the annual Golden Age of Philly Beer pub crawl tour with Rich Pawlak on Saturday.
Through the week we’ll have five to ten events a night. We’re thinking about a Belgian trolley night, with a trolley running a circuit among Philly’s best Belgian beer selections, and a craft trolley night, the same thing for American micro taps. There’ll be beer dinners, tastings, and “meet and greets” where you can meet brewers from across the area, the country, and the world. Guest brewers will be brewing in local breweries a month before to release special beers during the Week, more will brew during the Week in brewery open houses. We hope to have sponsorship connections with mass transit to make getting around easier and safer.
Then the final weekend will feature the return of this year’s Philly Craft Beer Festival on Saturday, and Pawlak and the vans and I will head west for the Great Western Suburbs Beer Hunt, a swing through Chester and Montgomery County brewpubs and bars we’ve been longing to do. We’re hoping to line up one more big beer event on Sunday, and yes, that’s actually ten days, not a week.
It’s tentatively scheduled for next year, March 7-16, which means it’s even longer and better than a week. Ha! Simul-tap. I just got it.
Philly Beer Week 2008 [Seen Through A Glass via Foobooz]
Sept. 1, 2006: Worst. Idea. Ever.
|
Nothing is better than PhillyBlog day. Whenever that might turn out to be.
Great to see news of Philly Beer Week getting further out; thanks!
But this was hardly my idea. It was largely a simultaneous creation of Tom Peters (Monk’s Cafe), Bruce Nichols (University Museum Caterers, who put on the big Michael Jackson beer tasting every spring), and myself. We’ve since involved a number of other folks who’ve added a lot more ideas. Credit deserves to be shared.
And…my mom’s concerned by “the Norman Mailer of beer writers.” Heh.
Lew Bryson