AMERICA'S BEST BEER FESTIVAL

I'm willing to stick my neck out now and then with regard to various areas of contention and opinion (remember the World Series prediction of "Phillies in 6, maybe even 5"? Well, shaddup already, especially you obnoxious, finger-pointing Yankees fans), and in beer aficionado circles, the "best" beer festival is always fodder for serious suds talk. I rank the Oregon Brewers Festival in Portland and the Great American Beer Festival in Denver among the finest examples of beer festing in America and I'm still waiting to go to my first Toronado Barleywine Festival in San Francisco someday. But for 12 years I've been attending the best beer festival in America, and only in the past few years did I come to realize it.



I'm talking, of course, about Friday the Firkinteenth at the Grey Lodge Pub in Philly, the only beer celebration dictated by the calendar: it occurs only on Friday the 13th. 2009 has been a very good year for FTF; this Friday's FTF will be the THIRD one this year!



They start tapping the firkins at NOON this Friday. Here are the details, excerpted from the Grey Lodge's website:




Kitchen will open at 11am serving our full menu.
Number of firkins is still TBA. We expect 20+.
With 20+ firkins, we should have cask ale going until at least 9pm. Time permitting Scoats will be updating the news page and tweeting throughout the day with cask status.
7 firkins will be pouring at any time (except when we get down to less than 7), tapping a new one as one kicks. The order of the casks will be random, but hey there should be no stinkers in the line-up.


Current Cask List (likely to change, it always does): more to come!


Arcadia London Porter, a robust London style porter 7.2% ABV
Clipper City Heavy Seas Loose Cannon, a triple hopped IPA 7.25% ABV.
Coronado Islander IPA, West coast IPA . 7% ABV
Cricket Hill Col. Blide's Bitter, 5.5% ABV
Dock Street Rye IPA, an aggressively hopped American Pale Ale 6.8% ABV
Dogfish Head 75 Minute IPA, a blend of its 60 and 90 Minute IPAs 7.5% ABV
Duck Rabbit double-dry-hopped Brown, 5.6% ABV.
Earth Tappist Pale Ale, ? ABV.
Flying Fish Grand Cru, strong golden ale. 6.8% ABV.
Iron Hill Totally Inappropriate. An Octoberfest primed with fermenting Quadruppel and dry hopped with American hops. 6% abv.
Iron Hill Hopzilla IPA. Classic rendition of an English IPA. 5.8% ABV
Lancaster Celtic Rose, traditional Irish Amber Ale. 5% ABV.
Manayunk Old Ebenezer Barley Wine, traditional English barley wine 9% ABV.
Nodding Head Anomaly, an unusual beer without any unusual ingredients… 5.25% ABV.
Philadelphia Brewing Co. Joe, brewed with locally-roasted, fair trade coffee, 5% ABV.
Sixpoint Otis, an accentuation of stout beer. 6% ABV.
Sixpoint Vienna Pale.
Sly Fox Chester County Bitter, dry -hopped, quaffable session ale. 4.5% ABV.
Sly Fox Rte 113 IPA, big, strong IPA for all the hopheads. 6.6% ABV.
Stoudts Winter Ale, a new version from Stoudts. 6.2% ABV.
Troegs Hopback Amber 5.6% ABV.
Victory Yakima Twilight, 8.7% ABV.
Weyerbacher Double Simcoe, a double IPA using exclusively Simcoe hops! 9% ABV.
Yards ESA dry hopped with East Kent Goldings True British cask conditioned flavor 6.3% ABV.



I expect to get there at the midway point. Hope to see you there!