I will say this up front: I’m a beer snob.
My friend Ryk and I are the kind of beer drinkers who seek out interesting and unusual brews, smaller ones that tend to be heavier and darker and with a bite that you can’t get from the watered-down stuff sold by the major mass-production breweries.
Stone IPA, for instance, is one of those brews — an IPA that forces you to take notice. I like Smuttynose, Dogfish Head, Flying Fish out of Cherry Hill and Riverhorse out of Lambertville (support local brewers!) — are among my favorites (by no means is this a short list).
This morning, Marty Moss-Coane on Radio Times on WHYY out of Philadelphia attempted to answer whether Philadelphia is the best beer-drinking city in the United States, focusing on the growing prevalence of craft brews at local pubs.
It was nice to hear an intelligent discussion on the radio of high-end beers that takes beer seriously as something other than what you drink to get drunk. Beer — as guests Craig LaBan, restaurant critic for the Philadelphia Inquirer, and Don Russell (aka Joe Sixpack), who writes a weekly beer column for the Philadelphia Daily News and is one of the organizers of Philadelphia Beer Week — is more than Budweiser and can be savored and enjoyed in the same way that the wine connoisseur enjoys wine.
(Craig and I, by the way, worked together as reporters for The Princeton Packet more than a decade ago.)
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