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After a couple days on the road in beautiful, rural NW PA, we’ve arrived in the Steel City and are enjoying litres at the Hofbrauhaus before catching an early dinner at the Church Brew Works.

Posted by Steve

Straub Brewery was, as noted in an earlier post, the impetus for this entire trip. Jim and I had spent two years listening to Mike explain the glory that is the Eternal Tap, so to say expectations were high would be an understatement.

Mike had sent an email to the brewery during the final planning stages of our trip, and followed up with a phone call that went something like:

“Hi, could I speak to the person who fields incoming email to the brewery?”

“I’m sorry, but she’s not here at the moment. Could I help you with something?”

“Sure, well my name is Michael and I had sent an email regarding a trip I’m taking…”

“Wait, are you the guy from Philadelphia?”

“…Yes”

“Oh your emails been passed around the brewery the past few days! Hold on, Vince from our sales department wants to talk to you!”

“Vince” turned out to be Vince Assetta, General Manager of Sales and Marketing, and the person who met us at the brewery when we finally got there. Vince has only been at Straub for about five months, but he’s a Siebel graduate who has been around the Straub brewery for most of his life.

Straub is located in St. Mary’s, Pennsylvania, which is close to… well, nothing. It IS, however, a quaint little hamlet located in some beautiful countryside. The brewery itself is in a residential neighborhood surrounded by homes. We arrived shortly before closing time and proceeded directly to the Eternal Tap to wait for Vince to arrive. Let me say that tasting this adjunct American lager so fresh changes your opinions about what can be achieved in the style. In fact the Peter Straub Special Dark is surprisingly tasty.

Vince arrived promptly and motioned for us to stay when the announcement was made that the brewery was closing for the day. What followed was an hour and a half long personal tour encompassing every part of the brewery, from the loading area for the grain to the bottling line and all points in between. Straub is a fascinating throwback, with a mix of equipment from the very modern diatomaceous earth filter to the copper grant, parts of which are from the original brewery. What impressed us most might have been the use of gravity for so much of the process, with most of the equipment located in a vertical arrangement four or five stories high versus the modern arrangements we see elsewhere utilizing pumps to move products around. Also of note is their strict adherence to traditional brewing techniques and high quality ingredients. For example, the corn flakes used in the mash are, in fact, more expensive than the barley!

A short(ish) blog entry simply isn’t enough to convey all that was seen and experienced during our visit, but I can comfortably say that we left Straub with a newfound respect not just for this 138 year old family owned brewery, but for the American Adjunct Lager, and the style’s ability to be genuinely craft brewed. The future for Straub also looks bright. They continue to invest in their future, from building an in-house lab to hiring guest head brewer Matt Allyn (of the respected craft brewery Voodoo). I would say to stop by if you’re ever in the neighborhood, but you won’t be. There is seriously nothing out there.