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.