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Philly Beer Week 2009: Opening Tap

I wasn’t planning on writing a separate post about Opening Tap, but after writing up the Craft Beer Festival, I realized that even after sampling 29 beers, there wasn’t one I would single out for special mention. In contrast, the comparatively smaller group of brewers represented at Opening Tap yielded several I thought were memorable.

Whatever Earth Bread + Brewery was serving was quite interesting; the program identified it as Weak Mild IPA. The two smoked beers were fun—Railbender’s Railbender Ale and Yards’ Grodziski Smoked Wheat. The Grodziski was the smokier of the two, although not as smoky as the Rauch Porter we had at Victory last week. That was really Bacon-in-a-Bottle. Anne and I both really liked River Horse’s Double Wit. I was also very impressed by the Highlander Stout from Stewart’s Brewing, kindly brought to my attention by Dave Martorana of Two Guys on Beer. Suffice to say that the selection at Opening Tap was more unusual and interesting than the much-larger selection at the Craft Beer Festival. Plus, we all got Hammered, so to speak. That is all.