Entrance to the Victory Brew Pub

Victory Brewing Company is only about 40 minutes from where I live.  They are in Downingtown, Pennsylvania.  It’s funny because when I first started this Year of Beer project a few weeks back I actually complained a bit about how hard it was going to be to meet my goals living in Reading, Pennsylvania.  For one, I talked about the crazy liquor and beer laws that we have here in this state but I also felt like there just weren’t a lot of great places to go.  I could not have been more wrong.  I may not have any homebrew stores close by but within an hour I have an excellent selection of Microbreweries and Brew Pubs.  Enough to reach my goals with ease if I can keep the pace.  Philadelphia is a little over an hour away and they have quite the impressive beer culture in the city.   I am happy to say, I live in an area that is abundant with great beer and am more confident than ever that I will be able to reach my goals and then some.  I am very excited to be living where I am with so many great breweries and bars within an hour drive.

Okay, enough about how wrong I was.  Today was all about Victory!  I have been a fan of Victory for a long time, long before I ever thought to do this year of beer.   I have been to the brewery before but never took the tour.  When we arrived today, I was amazed to see how the place had changed.  When we were there years ago, the brewpub was much smaller, it’s at least 3 times the size now.  It was really great to see how it has changed but it was even greater to see that they are in another phase of expansion.  Craft beer is alive and well in Pennsylvania.

I got there just in time to take the tour, my wife and kids came with but my kids are only 3 and 18 months so they grabbed a table while I accompanied the group on the tour.  The most disappointing part of the tour is that we barely got there in time so I was unable to grab a beer before hand.  That’s right, I had to stand there, surrounded by beer, for close to a half hour before the tour was over and I could finally grab a pint for myself.

Aside from that, the tour was really good.  It started in a room right outside the brew house where the tour guide gave us some background and history on the company.  The brewery was founded in 1996 by Bill Covaleski and Ron Barchet, two friends that have known each since childhood.   Both of them went off to college, got degrees, entered the corporate world and hated it.  They both wanted more out of life but didn’t know what life was going to deal them.  Bill decided that he was going to enter the world of beer and went over to Germany to apprentice under a Brewmaster for 2 years.  After those 2 years were up, he came back to the states and worked at several breweries on the east coast.  When Ron found out what his friend had been up to, he thought it was a great idea and followed suit.  He went over and apprenticed under the same German brewmaster for two years.

When he came back to the states, Bill and Ron decided to start a brewery of their own.  They went and collected as much money as they could from friends, family and anyone else they could.  As a business owner myself, I know how difficult that is.  No one can really understand the difficulty that comes from starting your own business if they haven’t done it before, especially when it’s a business like brewing beer where the equipment is anything but cheap.  They collected what they thought would be enough, came up with a plan and a name.  The name they originally decided on was Independence Brewing.  Given their close proximity to Philadelphia, they thought that Independence would be a good and relevant name.  Unfortunately, when they went to register the name, they found that it had already been registered by a now defunct company just two weeks prior.

They were very upset, as you would expect, and headed to one of their houses to drink their sorrows away.  After a few pints, one of them said, “It will be a Victory if we ever get this brewery off the ground” and the lightbulb went off and the new name had been conceived.

It was a long hard road I am sure but now Victory Brewing company sells beer in over 20 states.  They sell close to 50,000 barrels a year which is 100,000 kegs.  When we were there, they had a long line of 200 barrel fermentation tanks.  Next week, they are adding 4 new tanks that are twice the size.  That’s right, four 400 barrel tanks.  It’s part of there current expansion project.  I wish I wasn’t working on that day, it would be fun to go and see then truck those tanks in.

The brewhouse was pretty neat, I would have loved to show pictures of inside the brewhouse but like a friggen idiot, when I went to take a few pictures, I realized I left the card for the camera at home.  My wife had her camera with her but that was no help since she was sitting out in the restaurant waiting for me.  Oh well.

When the tour was over, I headed back out to the restaurant to join my wife and kids.  Our friend Steven arrived to join us for lunch.  The food was excellent and of course, so was the beer.  My wife had a Victory Lager which was quite tasty and I had a Storm King Stout.  After I finished my Storm King, I ordered a flight of samples.  I had a sample glass of Kolsch, Hop Wallop, Festbier, and Donnybrook Stout.  I had also asked for a Sunrise Weissbeir but unfortunately, they had just run out so I didn’t get to try it.  I really enjoyed most of the beers I tried today.  They were all new to me.  The three that I had before today were Hopdevil, Golden Monkey and Prima Pils.  I am a big fan of Hopdevil but of all the Victory beers I have had, Hop Wallop was my least favorite.

I am looking forward to drinking more Victory beer and tend to review as many of them as I can during my year of beer.

Well, my wife made up for it and then some this Saturday.   She had my Mom take our kids for the day and surprised me with a Brew Crawl.  I guess it’s really called a pub crawl but most of our stops were Breweries.   We left our house at 11:30 and headed to pick up some of my friends, we picked up Andy and Tiras and Eric followed behind us.  I still didn’t know what we were doing as we headed out towards Harrisburg.   As soon as we passed the Troeg’s Brewery the light bulb finally turned on.  It was the first brewery we saw but it wasn’t our first stop.

Appalachian Brewing Company

Our first stop was the Appalachian Brewing Company.  I have never had one of their beers but I had always wanted to try it.

When we pulled up in front of the building, it was pretty old and looked a bit run down to me.  When we stepped inside, however, my opinion was the exact opposite, it was really well done.  Both the brewery and the brewpub were well-designed with plenty of charm and character.  We had gotten there a few minutes late so the tour had already started but they let us join the tour in progress and I don’t think we missed much.  I believe they have always been in that location but I can’t say for sure since we missed that part of the tour.  What I do know is they bought the whole building for $1.00 from the city of Harrisburg.  The building was in bad shape, unoccupied and had gone up in flames at one point so it was in pretty bad shape.  I am sure it cost them a pretty penny to restore.  The tour itself was okay, there were a lot of people on the tour so it was hard to hear what he was saying.  The tour guide didn’t seem thrilled to be there that day.  He didn’t give a bad tour but it wasn’t great either.  They brew 5000 barrels a year and all the brewing and production is handled by 6 full time brewers.  Appalachian doesn’t brew with any fillers, it’s all water, grain, hops and yeast.  No preservatives added.

After the tour they had poured a table full of samples and each person could grab one.  Each sample was about 3 ounces.   For my sample, I tried the Trail Blaze Organic Brown Ale.  This is a fairly new beer for them, they launched it in December of 2008 and it is the first beer in Pennsylvania to be certified organic which I thought was pretty neat.  After the samples we sat down and had a bite to eat and a few pints.  I tried their Susquehanna Stout and the Celtic Knot Red Ale.  Both were delicious.  The stout was very chocolaty and smooth and the Celtic Knot was one of the best Irish Red Ale’s I have ever had.  I am only just beginning to learn how to discern flavors and describe beer so I am going to keep any in-depth reviews of beers I tried for a later date.  The food was pretty decent as well, my wife and I split an appetizer sampler platter and everything in the sampler was delicious.   Definitely a place I would want to revisit and brewery that is going to get more of my money.

Please excuse the above pic, I grabbed that from there site.  We were late for our appointment at Troegs and didn’t have time to take a picture.  Actually, I dropped the ball on pictures, I should have been snapping away but was just too excited and that kind of fell by the way side.  Oh well, I guess that is just another excuse to do it all over again in the future.

Troegs Brewing Company

Our next step was the Troegs Brewery.  It was only 5 minutes from Appalachian Brewing Company and their tours are only on Saturday.  Appointments are highly recommended.  We had an appointment for 2:30 and in true Brian fashion we got there late.  Thankfully, once again they let us join the tour and we hadn’t missed much.  The tour at Troegs was much better than the one at Appalachian, it was more interesting, more in-depth and the guy had a lot of passion for the beer.  But then again, he is one of the owners so he better have the passion   That was what impressed me the most about the tour, Troegs is owned by two brothers, Chris and John Trogner and they do all the tours themselves.  No wonder they only do them on Saturday’s.  Our tour was done by John Trogner and he even made himself available after the tour for quite awhile for any other questions or comments.  Very impressive and his passion for his beer shone through.

The brothers started the brewery back in 1997 and they didn’t make a profit the first 4 years of operation.  They are still in the same facility they started in, they just have a lot more equipment now and use a lot more of the space.  They did 19,000 barrels last year and are expecting to do 22,000 this year.  They have a very simple philosophy for figuring out what they want to brew.  They brew what they like, they don’t do market research, they don’t do any kind of testing, they make good beer that they themselves want to drink and then they put it out on the market.  I think the theory is, good beer is good beer and if it’s good it will sell.  It’s obviously working well for them.

I'm the tall guy in the back

After the tour, it was time for more beer.  They did have small free samples that you could request but they also had what they called their Brewers Tray which was 7 4 oz samples for $7.  It was a great deal so we opted for that.  The brewers tray had the Hopback Amber Ale, Troegenator Doublebock, Rugged Trail Ale, Dead Reckoning Porter, Troegs Pale Ale, Dreamweaver Wheat and Java Head.  We split the sampler tray (except for Tiras who opted for his own Dreamweaver Wheat).  My favorites were the Rugged Trail Ale and the Troegenator Doublebock.  I wasn’t crazy about the Java Head but the rest of the beers were all worth more tasting.  I know, it’s going to be tough to re-sample all those delicious beers but I think I am up for the challenge.  They have a nice gift shop, cases of their product and a separate area to buy growlers and get them re-filled.  Troegs is most certainly going to get more of my money.

Bubes Brewery

Bubes (pronounced boobs, seriously, how can it be bad) Brewery is different from the two previously places we visited.  It’s a brewpub and all the beer they produce is sold there in their various restaurants.  Since they produce small batches they are constantly changing their selection.  It’s a pretty big place and has been around since the 19th century.  It’s all one place but because of it’s size they have split it up into 4 different restaurants which give you 4 different experiences.  The restaurants are called Alois, The Catacombs, Bottling Works and Biergarten.  When my wife and I were just dating, we came here for the first time and had dinner in the Catacombs which was a really fun experience.  Under the restaurant there is a cave system that was used at one time to store barrels of wine.  It was also used as part of the Underground Railroad that brought slaves up from the south.  The food and beer were great but we just never managed to get back to Bubes until this trip.  This time around we went outside and enjoyed more beer and food in the Biergarten.   I ordered another sampler but this time, I was mostly on my own.  My wife was the designated driver so she stopped drinking, Eric had to leave and Tiras and Andy don’t like hoppy bears.  Just my luck,  most of beers that Bubes was currently brewing were pretty hoppy.  The sampler had 5 6 oz beers, it had their Brown Ale, Saison, Pipers Scoth Ale, Requiem Wet Hop IPA and a Honey Wheat Blond Ale.  All of the beers were good but I really liked the Wet Hop IPA.

After the sampler I spotted a beer from Shipyard Brewing company that I had been hearing a lot about and wanted to try so I ordered a pint of the Shipyard Pumpkinhead Ale.  It was very good, it was different from the only other Pumpkin ale I had ever had before.  It had a nice clove taste and really reminded me of pumpkin pie.  It was delicious.  I could have had another but alas, we had finished our food and it was time for the next step.

At this point, I started to realize that 5 breweries may be a bit too many for one day but we soldiered on to the next step.

Lancaster Brewing Company

By the time we got to Lancaster Brewing Company, my friends were tired and had enough beer for one day so I don’t have as much to say about these last two places.  We would have stayed longer but Tiras just wouldn’t stop moaning.  He is the little guy in the pictures above so you can understand why, he just doesn’t have a lot of room for beer in that tiny man-boy frame.

Lancaster Brewing Company is in Lancaster PA and has a nice selection of beer on tap and food on the menu.  We had already eaten a lot so my wife and I split an appetizer.  It was figs stuffed with blue cheese and wrapped in bacon with some kind of berry sauce drizzled over top.  It was delicious.  For beer, I ordered a pint of Milk Stout (yes, at this point I couldn’t face another sampler).  The Milk Stout was pretty good but didn’t blow me away.  I had tasted the Celtic Rose which is what Tiras and Andy ordered and I liked it better, it was quite tasty.  Lancaster Brewing company is a place I am going to have to go back to, for both the beer and the food.  But, my wussy crew was done and ready to leave.

Iron Hill Brewery

Our next stop was the Iron Hill Brewery in Lancaster.  Iron Hill is a pretty interesting place, it’s a brewpub so the beer they make is only made for their own restaurant but it’s a large and growing endeavor.  They started out in Delaware and have grown to 8 different locations.   They have two brewpubs in Deleware, five in pennsylvania and one in New Jersey.  According to the bartender we had, they have plans on expanding Iron Hill Brewery to 100 locations across the US.  A pretty aggressive endeavor for a brew pub but I think they have the formula down.  The place is always packed, the food was delicious and the beer was great.  I was the only one that was still drinking at this point, I had the Saison which I liked more than the one I had at Bubes.  It was very tasty.

But, by this point, Tiras, Andy and Stephanie were completely done and it was getting harder and harder to ignore Tiras’ bitching so we called it a night.  It was a great night, ton of fun and there was a single place we visited that I wouldn’t want to go back to.

My two favorite places for beer were the first two stops we made, Appalachian and Troegs.  My favorite places for food were Appalachian and Iron Hill.