PBW 2010: A Week Like No Other

The momentum has been building since before the beginning of the year, and it is about to reach a fever pitch the likes of which few cities have ever seen. And I'm NOT talking about the Flyers and Blackhawks in the Stanley Cup.

LET'S GO FLYERS!!!

What I am referring to is PHILLY BEER WEEK 2010, far and away the biggest (and likely the best) beer festival ever held in this country.

The schedule is both a beer geek's dream and a beer geek's nightmare. The festival's website boasts 1,000 events at 195 venues across the Delaware Valley. 1,000 EVENTS.

That is beyond impressive.

I would only be repeating the writing of hundreds of others across every medium from newspapers to Twitter, so I'll just encourage you visit the PBW 2010 website, as well as check in with prodigious bloggers such as Jack Curtin (his Liquid Diet is a must-read) and Lew Bryson (Seen Through A Glass will be blogging from all over town, I suspect) and Joe Sixpack (he's the Festival Director, so expect and insider's look at things on his Beer Radar blog).

I am still (mostly) undecided as to which events I'll be able to make, but I'll let you know as soon as I know. But for now, drink it all in, folks, it's gonna be a terrific, extended week!

LET'S GO FLYERS!!!

The Hop Angel

DER HOPANGEL?

Really cool and good news for a change: as reported first by Jack Curtin on his Liquid Diet website, and the website for The Beer Yard, our buddy Mike "Scoats" Scotese is at last taking that momentous step at expanding the Grey Lodge empire with the purchase of the old Blue Ox Bistro in the Fox Chase section of Northeast Philly (7980 Oxford Ave) and renaming it the Hop Angel Brauhaus. Opening is scheduled for late summer.

His immediate plans are to keep many aspects of the German history and flavor of the place, which has been serving German food and drink for over a century (the building dates back to 1683), but you know it will soon be enlivened with that Scoats brand of irreverence and general mischief, two of the many reasons his Grey Lodge Pub has become one of the most popular and well know beer destinations in the city (and one of Esquire's "50 Best Bars in America" just a couple of years back). I am imagining some kind of Fox Chase Festivus, and surely one uber-Oktoberfest.

And so, the empire begins.....