If you plan on stopping by the brewery over the course of the next week, you may notice something a bit unusual. No, no… I’m not referring to the cask conditioned Sorachi Ace APA (that IS supposed to taste lemony and cedary)! Sadly, what you will notice is the absence of your friendly local brewers! Fear not, this is all for the best. You see, for the past two days myself, Kevin (assistant brewer Media), and Kyle (assistant brewer NW) have been on the road, headed to Chicago by way of Pittsburgh for the annual Craft Brewers Convention (Larry flew out over the weekend. This man knows how to travel!).
The relativley short journey to Pittsburgh from Philly was a breeze; good weather, great tunes, and some seriousley killer beers waiting for us upon our arrival. After anchoring the car at a friends house, we reenergized at Artillery Park with some fresh baked bread, cheese, and a bottle of our tripel (it’s amazing the things that hitch a ride with you on trips like these… who knew 4 bottles were hiding under my passenger seat ). After a little bit of frisbe throwin’, we headed of to our first beery destination, Church Brew Works. Wow. What a cool space. If you’ve never been, the brew pub is actually housed in an old church, and from the outside it still retains all of it’s church-y charms (So much so that Kyle actually thought that we were playing a trick on him as we entered the building looking for beer and not forgiveness). We met up with Jason and Matt, brewers extroadinare, and drank some of their beautifully fresh Czech Pils and Belgian Black Ale. After checking out their brew house and bottling line (6 head Meheen, same one I operated at my old brewery… I feel your pain guys!!!) we headed across town to Susquehanna Street, where we found a big red run down looking warehouse space. No windows, and a few unmarked doors… that’s pretty much it. After snooping around a bit, a spray-painted stencil on the last door on the warehouse indicated that we had found what we came to see; East End Brewing Co. Pittsburg’s self proclaimed “microest” brewery! East End produces some well crafted beer for the fine local folk of P- Town. Their Blabber and smoke session ale was killer and paired super well with the take out pizza that was had at our gracious host’s house in the pm. A little Wii bowling and some East End big hop sent me off to dreamland.
Today we make the sojourn to ChiTown for the conference!
-Jean