CHEF OF THE FUTURE

I’m a lucky guy. Not only do I have a wonderful traveling partner in Janet, but she also LOVES to cook and, most importantly, she cooks well. Of course she’ll be self-deprecating and tell you anyone can cook if you can read a recipe.

For Janet cooking is a hobby. She enjoys scouring the internet and cook books for unique recipes. Sometimes we cook together, but mostly she enjoys doing it all by herself. While eating we’ll critique the meals, i.e. is it a keeper, and what would we like to change if anything.

MEALS AS EVENTS

Yes, if you’re going to be cheap and a homebody that travels sporadically, like Team VFH, it’s best to make your meals an interactive event, rather than simply one for subsistence. If you need food, that’s why God created peanut butter. Or, you can go to the Wawa for a sub and some chips…Oops, showing my NJ roots. SUBS are called HOAGIES around here.

But, if you slow down and enjoy the whole process of deciding on recipes and shopping for ingredients and preparing and cooking you can have a great meal AND you call yourself a gourmand. You’ve instantly elevated yourself into foodie stratum!. Though you may be cheap and the whole thing may be time-consuming, you’ll not only impress friends, but you’ll have fun too. Janet impresses me every day and I count my blessings by the forkful.

FUNKY BUT CHIC

The latest trend in our household is the use of meal kits. The industry has exploded recently and there’s much competition for your dollars   Meal kit services deliver pre-portioned meals with all the ingredients and cooking instructions, taking roughly 30 minutes of prep and cooking for meals that we perhaps would not readily consider. Three meals are delivered to our doorstop which cost around $10 per person. Janet works her magic with the savings coupons offered by the various companies and suspends subscriptions when necessary so unwanted meals are not sent to the house. If you subscribe to a service and do not make a selection they have preordained menus that they feel will suit your tastes, so it’s important to monitor. Yeah, Janet is on top of this completely. Readers of this humble travel blog know that Janet is the true captain of the ship.

The savings also comes from not having to go to the market for that odd spice, all are provided in the kits and so there’s a time savings as well. What’s nice is that from the lists Janet can also select meals low in carbs or calories. At first I had thought this was just a fad but have come to appreciate the quality of the food and the choices of meals available to us.

Though this is a rather new cottage industry, in the early 2000s I received a similar kit for a Christmas present that also included a dessert. Though I don't remember the company now, and I was skeptical when it arrived, I remember being rather impressed with the result. This service really got started in the past few years with Blue Apron and now several companies offer the meal kit for delivery. All are good. Janet has said she prefers Home Chef because of the selections available.

Here are the three that we have selected from over the past number of months but there are many others.

HOME CHEF

BLUE APRON

HELLO FRESH 

Here's a history of this tasty industry.

A SHORT HISTORY OF THE MEAL KIT INDUSTRY

Bon appetit!

STEALING MEMORIES

MARKING TIME WITH BEER STEINS

Come on… admit it… you’ve stolen a glass or two from a bar. What citizen of Montgomery County Pennsylvania DOESN”T have a Trappe Tavern glass, or one from the Railroad Street Bar in Linfield? If they didn’t want you to steal it, then WHY would they put their logo on the pint? Why should you try to impress guests with fancy beer glasses purchased in some department store when you could pour a brew into a glass filched from Sly Fox or Crooked Hammock in Lewes, Delaware?

 RAILROAD STREET BAR

Afraid you’ll get caught? It’s a science and I’ll give you some tried and true tips later on.

THE TRAPPE TAVERN 

COLLECTING OVER THE YEARS

I’ve been a cheap S.O.B. for years and have traveled quite extensively around the world, for work and pleasure, stealing shit to take home. For a while it was actual beer cans, which proved unwieldy and though I once partied with a guy in Chicago with similar aspirations, the look of all those beer cans ringing his apartment displayed on little shelves, seemed like overkill. While admiring the fellow roadie’s collection he had nudged me with his elbow and proudly said, “I drank every one of those beers.”

As a young father with young children the collecting of beer cans was not plausible and the cans I had gathered from all over the world were collected in boxes and kept in the garage before I gave them all to the Appalachian Brewing Company in Collegeville to add to their collection mounted on the wall of their pub.

For a time it was beer labels too, but I kept tearing them when I tried to remove them from the bottles.

Then it was bottle caps. Consider the artwork on such a small space! Some bottle caps are the only identifying mark of the beer like the Westvleteren Trappist beers from the Saint Sixtus Abbey in Belgium. Some, like Ballantine Ale, had little puzzles to solve printed on the underside of the cap.

 

WESTYS

Beer caps proved to be easier to horde and I could drop them in a specially designated drawer in my office to open and admire whenever I got thirsty. For a while I tried to put them in plastic sheets usually used for slides or coins, but this soon proved ludicrous.

PRACTICAL STEALING

Stealing beer glasses seemed like the most natural progression. Heck, I didn’t just have to look at them, I could use them.  I have glasses from Sweden, Ireland, England, France, Spain, Germany, Japan, and Australia, and from joints all across the U.S.

Also, I have a number of commemorative glasses from different events I’ve attended over the years. Before they got too big for their britches and moved out of Lambertville River Horse Brewery hosted a beer garden at the annual Shad Fest in Lambertville and sold glasses to go with their beer at this very well attended weekend excuse to party. When they pulled up stakes and moved to Ewing, the party left town and there were no more excuses to wade through the crowds of tourists that descend on Lambertville every last weekend in April..

River Horse also hosted Oktoberfest events at their brewery along the canal and a very well attended chili cook-off with area restaurants vying for your vote as the best chili. Plenty of beer to wash down the fiery concoctions served in commemorative glasses.

Stoudt’s in Adamstown outside of Reading also has glasses given out at their Oktoberfest and different charity events like, Pour For Pups held in Phoenixville wait patiently for us to fetch them from our shelves for a beer, and if you join the Iron Hill Brewery Mug Club you get a massive ceramic mug to take with you. Yeah, we got a bunch of those too.

Don’t let Janet’s prissy goody-too-shoes ways influence you. She loves to filch a glass as much as I do. We’re quite a pair.

Here’s the way to do it:

SLEIGHT OF HAND and A BIG POCKETBOOK

Make sure no one is watching! They probably won’t care.

GO TO THE BATHROOM WITH YOUR GLASS

Just make sure you leave the bathroom “without it”. From Paris to Lewes this works the best for me… Just make sure you zip up your fly.

TELL THE BARTENDER YOU’RE GOING TO STEAL THE GLASS

Make sure you leave them a good tip.

OUGHTEN DO IT

Seriously though, we’ve been to places in Belgium where they will NOT serve you a beer if they did not have the proper glass for it. The beer label must be prominently displayed on the glass and when poured both the bottle and the label on the glass must be placed so you can readily see them. The beer culture is so sophisticated in Belgium it would be sacrilegious to steal a glass where beer is ambrosia 

.

Now, it  you really want a Westmalle Tripel glass that badly, go to the store and buy one, or GO TO THE ABBEY and steal it there. There it is advertising just like the Trappe!

That’s what we did at the Halve Maan Brewery in Bruges…  It’s not a Trappist monastery but they make a great quad. 

Yeah, we snatched one from there too! 

HALVE MAAN BREWERY

Happy collecting.... Thanks for reading. 

WADING THROUGH THE BREW

It has been said that before Europeans came to North America a squirrel could travel tree to tree for the length and breadth of the continent without ever having to go to the ground; such was the thickness of the forests. Today one can cross the United States going from one brewery to another easily holding their breath between destinations. Such is the current popularity of craft brewing.

Okay holding one’s breath is not plausible…perhaps holding your water would be a more apt metaphor?

Actually the stat I’ve read is that 80% of the U.S. population lives within 10 miles of a brewery. There are over 6,000 breweries in the country and the number is growing every month. No longer having to settle for the yellow fizzy beers of our fathers, craft brewing has become big business. Anyone with the desire and patience can become a brew master.

But, is this a good thing?

Even I made a number of batches a bazillion years ago. I had great fun brewing, bottling, designing labels and glowingly watching friends savor my home brew. It’s a lot of work though and I soon discovered it was much more satisfying to taste the craft beer made by others. My passion was in drinking and not brewing I guess.

With this incredible explosion of craft beer, seemingly everyone is trying their hand at it and new places are popping up daily. Many of the beginning stories of those entering the craft brew market are similar with a home brew kit and a big pot. Sadly though, despite the passion, there are no guarantees the results will be palatable. At the risk of sounding like an asshole; because beer really is just a wonderful extension of the day no matter the final brew, some of the stuff that’s coming out is just plain weird, some hedging on bad. Just because you call yourself a brew master and you feel the need to experiment with all kinds of ingredients and flavors, doesn’t mean you should.  And, when should home brewing transcend hobby and become a business?

WHAT IS CRAFT BEER? 

YELLOW FIZZY BEER NO MORE

When I was a young man the only exceptions to the yellow fizzy rice beers were far from me in California or the Pacific Northwest., specifically Anchor Steam from San Francisco, Sierra Nevada out of Chico, CA and Red Hook out of Seattle. Not readily available on the east coast at the time it was impossible to get a cold one unless I traveled out there. Thankfully I had the great luck to travel a bit for work and was able to imbibe. My first Anchor Steam was in the San Francisco airport waiting to board a plane to Japan. As I traveled across the country I always tried to taste the local beers. I guess I wanted to experience the local culture; that is if beer can be considered “culture driven”?

RED HOOK BEER

ANCHOR BREWING

SIERRA NEVADA  

BEER SNOB?

As I look back on the beginning of the craft beer revolution and how I have slowly evolved into the beer snob I fear I may have become, I cringe when I realize how dimwitted I was in my beer knowledge. At one time, I couldn’t find Belgium on a map. The English only drank warm bitter beer. The French only drank wine and the Germany purity laws sounded like National Socialist propaganda. My beer IQ has increased, but, my snobbery dissipates when it comes to all those fizzy beers. Of course there’s a place in this world for all that Bud, Miller and Coors and the people who chug them. You want to drink them… go ahead I won’t be snooty and look down my sparge arm at you. Personally there’s nothing wrong with an occasional PBR on a hot summer’s day, but this is an article about the unwieldy explosion of micro brews and craft beer. Has the movement tilted into haughty arrogance?

THE ROAD TO HELL IS PAVED WITH GOOD INTENTIONS

Graham Greene once wrote that converts to a religion are more devout than those raised by rote. Readers of this humble travelogue know that Team VFH is passionate about a few things and drinking a good beer is an epiphany. While we do like most of the craft, micro and nano beers that are being produced nowadays, we believe the phenomenon has with some brewers become pretentious. To what point is gained by experimenting to the point of silliness. Is it apostasy to question why strawberries, or butterscotch, or kiwi is in our beers?

Brew masters are often overly enthusiastic and try for whatever reason to make something different because they can and think they can walk down supermarket aisles to find things to throw in their beers. I’ve had beer with pronounced tastes of chocolate, strawberry, currants and grapes. Some infuse avocado, honey, pine needles, ham and bull testicles in their beers. Okay, I wouldn’t even ask for a taste for that one, but here’s a list for you to wince through.

YOU PUT WHAT IN YOUR BEER? 

ROCKY MOUNTAIN OYSTERS

YOU’RE DOING IT WRONG!

Okay, if you’re still reading I want you to know that I am not alone in my thinking about some craft brewing. Here is a fantastic article about getting it wrong…at least when it comes to brewing Belgian-style beers, including a Tripel.

YOU ARE DOING IT WRONG

TASTE BEFORE BUYING

To avoid a mouthful of yuck sloshing around your palate, the best advice is to get a sample first. Most breweries will happily offer up a sample and some even say if you’re not satisfied with a pour to hand it back. If you are unsure, get a taste before you purchase. I had once ordered a triple at a craft brew pub without tasting it first and it was a big mistake. To me it smacked of lipstick and I’m sure they served it in a clean glass. Even though all the other beers we had at this particular craft brewery were very good this one was off-tasting.

ONE AND DONE

Experimenting with different beer styles is part of the charm of craft brewing, but it can also be frustrating, especially when you find a beer you really like and it is gone when you make a return visit. You can always go to Victory for their Hop Devil, Dogfish for a 60 Minute, Triumph for their Bengal Gold or Iron Hill for their Bedotter Tripel, but those are the exceptions. Too often when a beer kicks, it is permanently gone.

WHERE TO GO?

We are truly blessed here in south east Pennsylvania with the available choices of craft brewing. Even the corner gin mill is liable to have two or three interesting beers on tap and several in bottles and cans beyond B, M, C coordinates of fizzy beers. Nearly half the Pennsylvania craft breweries listed here by Food And Wine magazine are in the general area, but there are many many many more.

30 PENNSYLVANIA BREW PUBS

Here is a quick list of some of the craft brew pubs we’ve visited in our neck of the woods with ratings of Beer, Atmosphere and Food:

APPALACHIAN BREWING COMPANY

Collegeville

Beer: you can drink them. Flagship and Seasonal selections.

Atmosphere: it’s a weird dark building; like an abandoned mall. Inside the pub it’s airy and pleasant

Food: standard fare

(Wish this small chain offered better beers because I can LITERALLY hold my breath and walk here from the house)

APPALACHIAN BREWING CO

ROOT DOWN

Phoenixville

Beer: rotating tap… Lot’s of IPAs

Atmosphere: cavernous, dark but airy

Food: Nice selection of different things… WHEN the kitchen is open. You have to order and pick up food at a window. No table service

ROOT DOWN BREWING 

TRIUMPH BREWING

New Hope

Beer: Rotating tap. Usually the award winning Bengal Gold IPA is available

Atmosphere: Sit outside to watch the steam engine train trundle into the station

Food Small plate half price specials. Excellent burgers.

(When I lived in Lambertville this was my go-to place. Great Happy Hour and Tuesday Brewski specials. Small chain... New Hope is dog friendly)

TRIUMPH NEW HOPE 

IRON HILL BREWING

Phoenxville

Beer: Flagship and specials are all very good. Look for the Bedotter Tripel or the Wee Heavy if on tap, but any will do.

Atmosphere: Lots of sunlight and friendly staff

Food Voodoo Chicken pizza every time for me, Look for burger specials

(Prices have come down a bit with the influx of competition in Phoenixville. It used to be Iron Hill cornered the city market now there’s a lot more to choose from. Originally a New Jersey brewery but there are currently 9 franchises in the commonwealth of PA)

IRON HILL BREWERY 

VICTORY

Downingtown

Beer Some places you can find a beer to drink. At Victory it’s hard to settle on which one! Golden Monkey is my friend and my enemy. Hop Devil on hand pump!!

Atmosphere Vast open noisy and family oriented. Always crowded Located in an industrial park. Friendly staff

Food Pulled Pork sandwiches, grilled chicken and burgers

(Love this place…also located in Kennett Square and Parkesburg)

VICTORY 

CROWDED CASTLE

Phoenixville

Beer Great example of not finding a beer on a return trip. Their Mod Quad kicked and won’t be made again…

Atmosphere Airy, pleasant, pretty. Sit outside and smoke your cigar with your beer.

Food Very limited menu. Can order from area restaurants who will deliver

(Janet and I like this place. The Castle though never seems crowded. We fear it won’t survive….Get out there and support them…Mod Quad be damned)

CROWDED CASTLE

STABLE 12 

Phoenixville

Beer Definitely ask for a taste before buying here

Atmosphere Nice outdoor seating area. Live music, special events like cornhole tournament

Food Very limited menu. Come for the tournaments

(It’s at the southern end of town. It’s okay. But not a steady diet)

STABLE 12 

SLY FOX

Phoenixville (and Pottstown)

Beer 113 IPA is solid. Incubus Tripel when available. Royal Weisse for a hot day

Atmosphere Phoenixville is friendly. Outside seating carved out of the parking lot. Pottstown much busier in an industrial park. Lots of outdoor seating, but no real bar. Wait in line to order food and beer. Hosts a KanJam for Octoberfest. Music and free

Food Great black and blue burger Excellent fries

(One of the original brew pubs…check their website for different events including the Maibock goat something or other)

SLY FOX 

TIRED HANDS

2 locations in Ardmore

Beer DON’T FRUIT THE BEER AND IF SOMEONE ASKS FOR THE ONLY DIPA ON YOUR MENU DON’T CORRECT THEM WITH THE “PROPER” NAME… JUST SERVE IT

Atmosphere Pretty building…beautiful patrons… staff is haughty snooty pretentious and I’ll never go back to this place

Food For Goodness sakes… DON”T ask to alter the menu item…THAT”S how the chef created it…Piss them off ASK FOR KETCHUP

(Beautiful place …I’ll never return)

You want the website…look it up yourself

HIDDEN RIVER BREWING

Douglassville

Beer They never make the same batch twice, which can be frustrating. Still good IPAs and DIPAs. Always a number of good selections

Atmosphere Located in a 300 year old supposedly haunted building. Live music. Outdoor deck. Located on a river. Very pleasant staff … Limited hours… close early on Sundays

Food Limited but interesting selection. Great pulled pork sandwich.

(I can never get the same beer twice. But don’t worry I always find something to drink!)

HIDDEN RIVER BREWING

STICKMAN BREWS

Royersford

Beer Rotating taps Lots of choices DIPA, IPA, Tripel. Everything is good

Atmosphere At best it’s a warehouse with the vats right next to the wooden benches

Food Sometimes there’s someone serving food there…

(A hidden gem. I love this place)

STICKMAN BREWS 

STOUDT’S BREWING

Adamstown

Beer Excellent Tripel and DIPA.  Flagships and seasonals

Atmosphere A bit of a tired country feel, but clean. Ornate bar, great service a lot of dining areas

Food Full menu, raw bar. Cheese plates, black and blue burger

(A little far, but worth the trip. They have an Octoberfest celebration each fall that features lot of lederhosen and people dancing with a roasted pig on the shoulders to the music of an Oompah band.)

STOUDT'S

This is only a very small sample of the brew pubs in the area as well as across the nation My list is far from complete and I'm always discovering new places. If you're looking for an area or a state here are a couple of resources to plan your trip .

If you have a suggestion as to where I should wet my whistle... drop a suggestion here or at greg.dunaj@yahoo.com

Thanks for reading.

50 STATES ... 50 BEERS

FIND A BEER