Grid Philly - March 2009 - (Page 22) eer Us B sto yw ry b e a n · portraits by da ill d nm u rp hy hen Schmidt’s brewery closed in June 1987 after being bought by Wisconsin brewer G. Heileman, Philly officially switched from a beer-producing to merely a beer-drinking city. Although Schmidt’s wasn’t a taste explosion (my dad used to refer to it by a similar sounding expletive), the demise of the Northern Liberties brewer that once fermented a million barrels a year was a sign of the consolidation of a once thriving local industry. In the 19th century up until the early 20th, our city was home to over a hundred breweries; there’s even a whole neighborhood, Brewerytown, named for our beer-making past. Prohibition killed some of them, and the rest died out or were bought by larger competitors. When Philly brewing officially ended, an Inquirer article at the time bemoaned, “It’s more than an exercise in nostalgia we’re talking about. With every regional food and drink we lose, America’s tastes become more homogeneous, more bland.” Recently, that trend has begun to change. With the craft beer boom of the past decade, Americans have rediscovered the varied tastes of specialty beers, which are often brewed and sold locally. Philly has seen its share of brewpubs and microbreweries in the past few years, and now boasts two production breweries: Yards and the Philadelphia Brewing Company (PBC). Yards was founded in 1994 in a Manayunk garage and has since grown from a three-barrel operation into Philly’s preeminent craft brewer, producing 1,000 barrels a month. Tom Kehoe, co-founder of Yards, like many craft brewers, started discovering different beers in high school. “I was getting into the dark imported beers,” he says. “I came across an Anchor Steam [one of America’s first microbreweries, located in San Francisco] and I tried it and thought, ‘Wow, I guess there isn’t any reason you can’t have a really flavorful beer made in the US.’ ” Inspired, he started making his own beer in college and, after working at a microbrewery in Maryland, made the jump into production brewing. Since then, Yards has moved twice, landing in 2008 at a new spot on Delaware Ave., and become a staple at many local bars. Philly also has numerous brewpubs that make and sell their own brew, like Nodding Head, Triumph, Earth Bread + Brewery, and Dock Street, W 22 g r i d p h i l ly. c o m march 2009 http://www.gridphilly.com
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