phillybeerguy.com

posted by Jim

After two whirlwind days of tours, tastings, and talks with brewers, a day of just showing up and drinking seemed like a welcome respite.

Our first stop was at North Country Brewing in Slippery Rock, PA.  We showed up shortly after they opened for lunch and saw a pretty crowded pub.  Three seats at the bar were waiting for us, and within minutes we had two full sampler trays in front of us.  All of the beer was solid with a few real standouts.  Emma’s Pale Ale and Jodi’s ESB both had incredible balance, and Paleo IPA had a clean, fresh citrus hop nose.  Surprisingly Northern Lite, the American-style lager, had some real flavor to it, and the Raspberry Fruit Bowl, while being neon pink in color, was quite restrained on the fruit and had a nice base beer underneath it.

We chatted with the owner, Bob McCafferty, about our trip and asked him about the history of the pub.  The building was originally two separate structures, a cabinet maker’s shop and the county morgue.  He purchased both and did some significant remodeling to create the brewpub.  Nearly everything in the place was hand-carved wood from the bartop to the bathroom doors to the sampler trays.  Every single one of these pieces was created by Bob himself.  It was all really impressive and added a feel to the pub that you couldn’t get anywhere else.

Our second stop for the day was at the Hofbrauhaus in the Southside area of Pittsburgh.  While it’s a much more commercial operation than all of the other places we’d visited to that point, we still wanted to check it out (if only for the kitsch factor).  The beer is brewed on premises though, and the liter of hefeweizen I ordered was quite fresh and just about perfect.  We efficiently worked our way through two rounds of beers, rocked out to the musical stylings of Mr. Oktoberfest himself, Joe Maloy, and headed off in search of some grub (and more beer) at Church Brew Works.

If you haven’t been to Church Brew Works, let me tell you that it needs to go on your list of places to see if only for the surreal experience you get from drinking inside this historic building.  Now I went into this visit knowing that this was a church-turned-brewpub, but I think I expected there to be renovations and a lot of transformative redecorating.  But instead it was a shock to see that 90% of everything in there is original to the old church.  It’s almost like they just plopped down a bar and a bunch of tables and opened for service.

As for the beer, it wasn’t quite to the level of some of the top brews we’ve had on the trip, but there were some really solid offerings plus a truly excellent foreign-style stout.  After putting down some top-notch food and doing a number on two sampler trays, it was time to head in for the night and catch up on our growler drinking.

All in all, a much more low key day, but it was nice given the whirlwind that the past two days had been.  It allowed us the energy to actually stay awake once we got back in the evening and have a blast sitting out on the back porch shooting the breeze with Mike’s cousin and drinking our spoils from the past three days.  Overall, an excellent day.