BEER
TODAY GONE TOMORROW
Readers
of this blog know Team VFH likes beer. Wherever we go in our travels we seek out
and savor the local brews. From the Maui
Brewing Company in Lahaina to De Halve Maan Brouwerij in Bruges we’ve been
known to take a seat at the bar and enjoy. Fortunately, we don’t have to travel
that far to slake our thirst for quality beer. Here in the Commonwealth of Pennsylvania
alone there are over 300 craft breweries. Phoenixville, five miles from my middle-class garret in Collegeville, has become a mecca for craft brewing with no less than 6 craft breweries in the town and another 5 in the surrounding area. There's even a new one opening soon in Collegeville called Troubles End... we'll see if that place will be the cause of all my troubles as well.
Phoenixville
is a former rusting
steel town has been revitalized with a lively nightlife of restaurants, bars
and breweries.
HOPPY TRAILS
Sadly though,
today’s story is not about pub crawls in Phoenixville but about Stoudt’s
Brewery which will be shuttering their production after 33 years. One of the
original craft breweries in Pennsylvania, Stoudt’s in Adamstown, outside of
Reading, produces great quality, honest beer. Led by Carol Stoudt, the first
female brew master since Prohibition ended, says it was a difficult decision,
but “we’re not moving enough volume to justify the expense of keeping the
brewery open.”
I will miss
their Double IPA and their Believer Reserve Tripel aged in wine barrels.
The other
entities of the Stoudt’s complex on North Reading Road will remain open. They
include a restaurant, antiques mall, a cheese-making facility and on premises
bakery and a lively beer garden that hosts Oktoberfest celebrations in the
fall.
I’ve gone to Stoudt’s several times over the years for both lunch and the Oktoberfest and I am saddened by this turn of events, but cannot begrudge Carol Stoudt from wanting to enjoy retirement.
“We’re
not closing the doors to any business opportunities that could help the Stoudt’s
brand live on,” said Ms. Stoudt, but she was one of the first in the exploding
craft beer world, and “now it is up to a
new generation to continue the tradition of innovation that defines craft beer.”
Given the
landscape around this neck of the woods, she’s left us in good hands. The announcement for the closing came last week with an eventual shut down in early spring.
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