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

We just tapped a firkin of Sorachi APA. Sorachi Ace is a new (to us) Japanese varietal of hop. Our friends at North Country supplies were just as excited as we were about this hop, and hooked us up with a bunch to play around with. Sweet! To test the Sorachi-y waters, we dry-hopped half a dozen firkins of Ironbound with an inordinate amount of our new hop. The result? A super lemony pale ale with nuances of cedar and vanilla. What a beautiful miscreant of a hop! Look out for an all Sorachi beer (belgian pale? biere de mars? saison?) to hit the taps within the next month or so.
Also, our oak fermented, 100% Drie Brett pale ale, Dr. Drie is on tap for your funkified pleasure.
-Jean

The Mrs. and I will be hanging out with our friend and local chocolate artist Christopher Curtin Master Chocolatier for Éclat Chocolate this evening. We are doing a Beer and Chocolate Pairing. That’s my kind of Friday night for sure. Whitney will be bringing some of Victory Brewing Companies fine malt beverages, and I’ll have few of my own in tow. I can’t wait. If you know me, you know I’ve got a serious sweet tooth. and to me Chocolate, Theobroma cacao, the Food of the Gods, is one of my favorite flavors. People say that red wine and chocolate make for great pairings. I say, “Try it”  You might get a match in 10% of the situations. Now grab some Russian Imperial Stout and try THAT with chocolate. It won’t even be close. The beer and chocolate pairing is incredible.

Wine-os still fight me on this one. Here’s my thought. Just because we’ve been told for years that chocolate and red wine go together doesn’t make it so (flat earth, anyone?) Chocolate was a drink long before it took its current form. The cooked, roasty, toffee, and vanilla flavors prevalent in many beers dovetail exquisitely with the same flavors in the chocolate because they are prepared in the same way! Beer also has a secret weapon: Carbonation! The bubbles in beer refresh and reset the palette, washing away heavy tongue coating fat and revealing Cacao’s deep dark flavors.

I digress….The Chocolate at Eclat is world-class. Get thee on over for some soon. Note: tonight’s tasting is sold out….but fret not. We will be doing another soon! In the mean time, grab a little chocolate from Eclat and a bottle of Russian from Iron Hill and have your own tasting. I’ll come!

The summer beer festival season is right around the corner. the Manayunk Beer Fest used to be the event that kicked off the season….it’s coming up by the way, but now I can say without a doubt that it’s the Brewer’s Plate that signals the spring. This event combines two of my favorite things into one: Eating and drinking. Did I mention the eating?  Let’s start with the important stuff. The Brewer’s Plate is an event that features fresh local beer paired with fresh local food. It is a fundraiser for both Fair Food and Buy Fresh, Buy local. It features some of the very best brewers and restaurants in the area showcasing Cuisine a la beer. Now, that’s kind of right up or alley, nice.

After we set up our booth I made ’the rounds’ with my friend Jen Hatton. We started right out of the gate with a total winner: Varga mac and cheese with bacon. Now i’m a self professed Meat-a-tarian so this stuff appeals to me in may ways. 1) it’s mac with cheese. Real cheese not yellow powder. 2) piles of bacon make this taste like heaven and it’s so good that even a couple of cow lovers I know were sneaking platefulls of it while fully aware if the porky component. Good work gang. I’m loving Varga’s selection of local and craft beer too!  The rest of the day was a blurr of great beer and great food including more chocolate than you can shake a stick at (although notably no Eclat this year….Hmmmm I’ll have to ask my friend Chris about that), a brisket sandwich I’m still dreaming about, gelato, oysters, tons of local cheese from the Pennsylvania Cheese Mafia,  and of course, our pairings which were Braised Lamb Shoulder Shephard’s pie with FE10 and Humbolt Fog  ripened goat’s milk cheese from Cypress Grove with Saision. MMMMM.

It’s competition time again. Every year we enter the Great American Beer Festival. It’s the largest beer festival and commercial beer competition in the United States and MAN is it a good time. More about the GABF another time…although you should click through to the link there’s a pretty cool little video there called GABF in a minute. Anyway, there’s another big comp every two years called the World Beer Cup. As the name implies it’s an international competition.  I’m always stoked about WBC ’cause we get to go head to head with european brewers and we get to see how the european judges rank our products. This is a pretty big deal to us especially since Bob B. from Delaware county Pennsylvania and Head Brewer of Iron Hill Media actually beat out the largest and oldest producers of true Lambic beer a few years ago at this very event! Nice! It’s not that I’m a super nationalistic guy or anything, I just like it when we measure up…or frankly, plain old beat, the world class producers of our favorite styles in blind professional judging. If you’ve seen the movie Bottle Shock imagine Bob is the blonde kid whose dad’s Chardonnay beat the French, except that Bob is the kid and his dad rolled into one. O.K. so that was a little off of the story. Oh, that’s a photo of the award for our Abbey Dubbel a few years back for WBC. Beat the Trappists! I say “bring it” to the monks.

As usual we have an intense and exhaustive program for deciding which of our beers will be heading to the comp. I think some of the toughest competition for an award is actually on OUR table. Lots of great beers never get entered ’cause we can only enter one per style.  We taste each style that we’ve brewed blind in a head to head competition to pick an entrant. This year Russian Imperial Stout was a really stiff category. There were at least 3 different versions and all of them were world class. No suprise, Bob’s Russian won the day. Nice work! That guy is a machine

Our beers are on their way to Chicago and we will be joining them shortly. Good luck to everyone.

It’s time for everyone to be Irish! Come and celebrate the Patron Saint of Ireland with us this Wednesday. We will have a ceremonial tapping of our World Famous Irish Dry Stout. Come in for fresh pints of this Irish wonder…or for a little Irish Red Ale. No green river or green beer here, just the real live authentic Irish experience. Erin go beer!

Check out what Joe Sixpack Has to say about this.

Had dinner at the Southwark last night. It was my favorite kind of meal. Lots of great localbeer, a bit of wine, bacon as an entree and good company. Southwark has an old school feel to it. In addition to the local beer selection they stock TONS of Gin and Burbon. I’ve got a soft spot for drinks that look like a Manhattan.

 The evening started out with a couple of pints at the now completed Yards Brewing Company tasting room. Get on over there to Delaware Ave and see the place if you are anywhere downtown. I’m stoked ’cause Yards is right across the street from Penns Landing which means I’ve got a place to have a real beer before or after riverside shows. Nice. Old School Victory employee Bill Heaton happened to be in town too and it was a pleasure to share a pint with him. He and his wife now own a small brewpub in Western Mass called the Pittsfield Brew Works.

Happy hour finished and we trucked it down the Southwark. A few times a year a large group of local brewers get together for one reason or another. there actually used to be a regular ‘Rubber Boots Society’ meeting at a bar in Fairmont called Bridgid’s. This convo was a little less formal: new Presidend and CEO of Hop Union was in town and had been tasked to buy us dinner. Super nice!  There’s always a little business at these gatherings, but mostly we exchanged beers, adolescent jokes, and stories of late nights, early mornings and lately KIDS! Seems like everyone around has progeny anymore. I really thought we were in for a long night of consumption but I had knee surgery last week and I just ran out of steam when my belly filled up. Long story short, it was great to see everyone, and get thyself to the Southwark!

Have I got something cool to tell you about! Check it out, we are going to team up with the Chester County Historical Society to offer a series of beer appreciation classes. I case you have no idea who they are the CCCH is a killer museum right across the street from us. They have a room that is just the right size for this kind of get together. Here’s the skinny:

Join us for a fun and educational series of classes with an emphasis on tasting beer . Each evening will start with reception including light snacks and a beer provided by Iron Hill Brewery and Restaurant, followed by a tutored tasting of four beers related to the topic of the day. Your guide through the world of  beer is renowned local brewer and beer expert Larry Horwitz. All classes are held at the Chester County Historical Society. Must be 21 with I.D. to participate. Classes are $49.95 each but we encourage you to purchase the entire series in advance for $109.95 for a substantial discount.  Classes are as follows:

• The  Armchair Beer Tour of Belgium Tuesday April 27, 2010 6:30p.m.-9:00p.m. There are almost as many beer styles as there are breweries in the tiny country of Belgium. Sample beers influenced by monks, wild yeast and ingredients, and centuries of truly individual beer culture. Brewers call Belgium the Disneyland of beer. Come see why!
• Bread in a Glass: World Class Wheat Beers Tuesday July 20, 2010 6:30p.m.-9:00p.m. Come enjoy a sampling of beers that draw unique character from, or whose primary ingredient is wheat.  From a beer Napoleon called ‘The Champagne of the north’ to the rich, strong, rummy, Wheat Bock of Munich we will drink our way through excellent examples of Bread In a Glass.
• I can’t believe That’s Beer! Blurring the line between grape and grain.  Tuesday September 28, 2010 6:30p.m.-9:00p.m. Wild Fermentations, barrel aging and the use of fruit herbs and spices give many modern artisanal malt beverages complex flavors and aromas that meet or exceed the profile of event he finest wines.

Call or Visit us at Iron Hill Brewery in West Chester to purchase tickets. 610-738-9600

Classes will be Held at:

Chester County Historical Society
225 North High Street
West Chester, PA 19380-2691
610.692.4800 (Voice)
610.692.4357 (Fax

Hey Gang, today is our first mug club party of the year. We are starting around two, so come on by for some Mug Love. Malthra the destroyer is now on tap, we’ll have food, super secret 3 liters, prizes, and general brewery love for all of you. If it’s time for your renewal this is a great chance to get in and get it finished quickly as I’ll have a few folks here set up to get you processed quickly. See you there!