Pittsburgh’s Craft Beer Week kicks off this Friday, showcasing the best of the craft brew community in the area. With over 340 events taking place over the course of the week it’s difficult to decide where to start! Many of the events are already sold out so get your tickets quick before they’re gone. For more information head to the Post-Gazette’s website and for a full calendar head to Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week’s website.
You may not know which of 340-plus events you’re going to attend yet during Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week, but you can know a few that you aren’t attending during the promotion that kicks off Friday.
One event — Commonwealth Press’ Beer Barge beer fest-on-a-Gateway Clipper boat this Saturday, April 18 — sold out immediately.
But there still are more beer happenings than humanly possible to attend between Friday and April 26, during which time the non-profit Pittsburgh Craft Beer Coalition is publicizing events at area breweries, distributors and restaurants and bars.
At a media day last week at Penn Brewery, Andy Kwiatkowski, who’s president of the nonprofit Pittsburgh Craft Beer Alliance and head brewer at Hitchhiker Brewing, gave a shout-out to a couple of special events. One is the first Brewer’s Olympics to be held April 26 in the parking lot at Millvale’s Grist House Brewing Co. Brewers from there and 15 other regional breweries will compete in various beer-themed “feats of agility, strength and stamina.” Spectators pay $15 and get a souvenir glass for tasting brews from all of them. Proceeds go to help Titusville’s Blue Canoe Brewery, which is closed but rebuilding after a March 17 fire. Get tickets at2015brewersolympics.simpletix.com.
Mr. Kwiatkowski also mentioned another “Blue” event — Homestead’s Blue Dust’s Bikes, Brews and Oyster Fest, held under the Homestead Grays Bridge on April 25.
But you’ll find events and brews of every hue across the region, from Erie to Slippery Rock to North Huntingdon. Many events will feature the eight-plus “collaboration brews” that teams of brewers made together. In addition to those that we wrote about in this space last week, Erie’s Lavery Brewing Co. did two others: a Berliner weisse with North Country Brewing Co. and a Bavarian black ale with North Huntingdon’s Full Pint Brewing.
Tonight is the release of the collaboration beer Caliente Pizza & Draft House in Bloomfield brewed with East End Brewing Co. On Friday, Caliente Pizza & Draft Houses in Bloomfield and Hampton will pour eight collabs.
You can meet the brewers at many events. Carnegie’s 99 Bottles on April 21 will present a brewer from Full Pint and Dave Cerminara of Carnegie’s Apis Meadery with several of their brews along with some from Zelienople’s Shu Brew, including those three brewery’s collab, Shu Full of Bees double India pale ale. (The three also did a bottled barleywine, Glutenous Maximus, that Shu Brew is releasing Friday.)
Other places will debut their own collab brews, including Homestead’s Rock Bottom Restaurant & Brewery, which, with help from the Strip District’s Milkman Brewing and West Newton’s Bloom Brew, made a light American ale brewed with flavored tortilla chips that Rock Bottom has dubbed Ghoul Branch Burritos. Head brewer Brandon McCarthy expects that it’s not a beer one would like to drink all night, but he believes a lot of people will want to drink one. “It’s weird, but it’s good.”
The same could be said about some Craft Beer Week events, which range from simple tappings, tap takeovers and tastings to beer-and-food pairings, beer brunches and full beer dinners and more, at a wide range of venues.
At 7:30 p.m. Friday, Lawrenceville’s Row House Cinema will present the Pittsburgh premiere of “Blood, Sweat, and Beer: The Movie,” a craft-beer-industry documentary that features Braddock’s The Brew Gentlemen Beer Co. as well as Maryland’s Backshore Brewing Co. The theater will present that and other beery movies all week, along with tastings in the new tap room of the adjacent Atlas Bottle Works (rowhousecinema.com).
0comments:
Post a Comment