Philadelphia has many historical distinctions but now it’s being called the best beer-drinking city in America.
So says Don Russell, who is also beer columnist “Joe Sixpack.â€
Its neighborhood pubs and award-winning brews have been overlooked, he argues.
So bring on Philly Beer Week, a 10-day, 150-event extravaganza designed to highlight the city’s centuries-old tradition of brewing and tippling, reports the AP.
“Our Founding Fathers wrote the Declaration of Independence and Constitution in the taverns of Philadelphia,” Mr Russell said.
Later this week, there will be beer tastings and dinners, brewery tours, pub crawls, seminars, meet-the-brewer events and trivia contests, including the “Philly Beer Geek” competition.
Philadelphia’s beer history dates back at least to 1680, when city founder William Penn began work on his brewery. The first American lager is said to have been brewed here in 1840. And U.S. Marine lore holds that the corps was conceived at long-gone Tun Tavern in the Old City neighborhood in 1775.
By 1870, there were 69 breweries in Philadelphia, according to Russell, and eventually an entire neighborhood called Brewerytown. But Prohibition shuttered many facilities, and the last city brewery, Schmidt’s, closed in 1987.
It wasn’t long before the microbrew trend caught on and the region began returning to its roots. Today, there are at least 20 breweries in the Philadelphia area.
Report by David Wilkening
