All Week
Today is the first day of Beer Season! This is our 17th Annual Beer Season. Wow hard to fathom. 17 years... a lot of years, a lot of beers, and a lot of t-shirts.
Beer Season begins on the Monday after Thanksgiving, which not coincidentally is also the first day of Deer Season in Pennsylvania. In all these years, the deal hasn't changed. Beer Season runs for 13 weeks. Catch all 13 beers of the week, one a week, and receive a free limited-edition, not for sale, not available in stores, not as-seen-on-TV, non-toxic T-shirt. We create a new design every season, so the shirts are instant collector's items, for those who collect such things.
This year we are featuring iconic beers, either beers that have been along so long that they have achieved iconic status or beers that are a benchmark for their particular beer style. I suspect a lot of people might be like me, skipping the icons for new beers that flash quickly (and brilliantly) and are gone. This will be a great way to rediscover some old favorites that we may have forgotten about.
For week one, we start off with DAB, which is a benchmark for the Dortmunder style. From Wikipedia: Dortmunder Export or Dortmunder is a pale lager that originated in the then industrial city of Dortmund in Germany. Originally brewed by Dortmunder Union in 1873, this soft pilsner style beer became very popular with industrial workers, and was responsible for Dortmunder Union becoming Germany's largest brewery and Dortmund having the highest concentration of breweries in Germany. DAB, an acronym for "Dortmunder Actien Brauerei" (Dortmund Joint Stock Brewery), is Dortmund's only surviving brewery.
So what makes a dortmunder different from other golden lagers? Wikipedia again comes up with the answer: The beer from Dortmund is a pale lager influenced by the golden beer from Pilsen known as Pilsner, though is mainly labelled as Dortmunder Export. Like all other pale lagers the beer is a pale gold colour, with a moderate bitterness from the noble hops, a lean, well attenuated body, and a crisp carbonation. The local water contains a fairly high amount of sulfate,[3] which gives the beer's taste a slight element of sulfur and bring out the hops – see Burtonisation. It also contains more calcium carbonate (chalk) than average which tends to give a sharpness to the flavor of the hops. Brewers use less hops to avoid the harsh hop notes, giving the beers a subtle emphasis on the malt flavors.
With all of that knowledge, I for one am looking forward to drinking some DAB.
Wednesday
Wednesday is Quizzo with Quizmaster Pete. As usual, Quizzo is Wednesday, 8pm, on our 2nd floor.
Friday
Friday is Blackout Night, with the local debut of 2012's Great Lakes Blackout Stout. For Blackout Night, we will be under blackout conditions, which means no electric light, just candlelight (within reason - bathrooms will still use electricity). If you have candles lying around you don't want, please bring them in. I will be buying a load at IKEA this week, but more candles will be better.
Blackout is a 9% Russian Imperial Stout. It's named after the infamous "Blackout of 2003" that left much of the northeastern United States in complete darkness (Philadelphia was spared), Though I image if you drank to many of these 9%ers, the name might have a second more personal meaning. So be moderate and don't do that.
Saturday and Sunday
On Saturdays and Sundays, we serve brunch from 10am to 3pm (our regular menu is available too). This weekend we will have a brunch special, Pumpkin French toast with walnuts and bourbon syrup.
This Sunday at the Cottman/Frankford/Ryan Aves Triangle, from 1pm to 4pm, it's the Mayfair Christmas Craft Village and Tree Lighting. The Grey Lodge will be there with Philly Winter Wunder in pints and growlers. The Tree Lighting ceremonies begin at 4pm with caroling, hot chocolate and a visit from Santa! The tree gets lit at dusk. This is a very nice time for all ages. And the weather is supposed to be very nice.
Draft Beer Update
Kicked: Oskar Blues Dales Pale Ale, Oskar Blues G'Night, Susquehanna Centennial Fresh Hop Lager.
Tapped:
Victory Festbier - one of our last festbiers for 2012, if not the last.
Duck-Rabbit Schwarzbier - a Bavarian style black lager. Duck Rabbit, from North Carolina, specializes in dark beers, so expect good things.
Summit Old-152 Kentucky Common - One of Summit's Unchained beers, which allows their brewers to do some interesting one-off beers. "This Unchained beer is based on Kentucky Common, a popular beer style in and around Louisville pre-prohibition. The style disappeared after prohibition in favor of the lagers that we’re familiar with today. Old 152 will feature Cluster hops, one of the only hop varieties available in the U.S. in the late 1800s and early 1900s." So long story short, this beer recreates a lost style of US regional lager.
I just realized that all three freshly tapped beers are lagers. We didn't plan that. Historically microbrews have pretty much been ales, since ales are quicker and cheaper to produce.
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