"Wobbly Bob" was not a description of me at the Pennsylvania Microbrewers Fest.
Rebecca Droke, Post-Gazette photosSally Ellis and Noah Soroka share a moment while David Boroi dances to Caribbean music during the 12th annual Pennsylvania Microbrewers Festival at Penn Brewery on the North Side.
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Upcoming beer festivalsNo, "Wobbly Bob" is the evocative name of the powerful doppelbock poured by the Union Barrel Works, one of 28 brewers from the region and beyond represented at Saturday's 12th festival at the Penn Brewery on the North Side.
With each brewer pouring samples of two to six beers and ales, one could try nearly 100 different brews -- some of them really different.
The East End Brewing Co. of Homewood was sampling its unique Russianesque "kvass," which is made in part with loaves of rye bread. The tap handle, in fact, was fashioned from a loaf of bread, which looked more shellacked than most of the attendees at the noon to 3 p.m. session -- the first of three tasting sessions.
The tap handle for East End's "Fat Gary Nut Brown Ale" bore the bearded and ball-capped likeness of one of the guys serving and talking about it, brewery fan and volunteer Gary Chodikov. He's a buddy of owner Scott Smith, who named the mild brew for him since he likes it so much.
"I like drinking beer, and I like talking to people about drinking beer," said Mr. Chodikov, a metals engineer who lives in Moon, explaining why he's a natural working such festivals.
On this hot day, particularly steamy under the plastic tents, he was drinking mostly from the gallon jug of water under his folding chair as he filled attendees' souvenir glasses.
David Lorenzo of the Easton-based Weyerbacher Brewery & Pub serves beer at the 12th annual Pennsylvania Microbrewers Festival.Click photo for larger image.
Man's best friends
Bocktown Beer and Grill in North Fayette has dubbed this month's Wednesdays from 6 to 8 p.m. beer tastings "the Dog Daze of Summer." Last night, they sampled the doggie styles of Denver's Flying Dog Brewery (www.flyingdogales.com), including In Heat Wheat and Horn Dog Barley Wine.
This coming Wednesday, The places pours Sun Dog from Michigan's New Holland Brewery along with nine other styles newly available in this market.
On June 20, they celebrate the highly regarded brews of Delaware's Dogfish Head.
And on June 27, it's Thirsty Dog Brewing Co., including its year-round favorite Old Leghumper. The Akron operation started out as one, then two brewpubs that closed in 2005, but it should be brewing in the century-old Burkhardt brewery there by July, says owner John Najeway; in the meantime, the beer is being brewed by Maryland's Frederick Brewing Co.
For more: www.bocktown.com or call 412-788-2333.
-- Bob Batz Jr.
But he made occasional forays to the surrounding booths, intent on trying some new brews. One he liked: Voodoovator doppelbock from Detroit's Atwater Block Brewery, one of the five new brewers to attend the fest. Such research has let Mr. Chodikov's tastebuds gravitate from mild, malty nut browns -- still his favorite style -- toward hoppier ales. "I just kinda evolved."
As he fielded questions ranging from "Can I have a Big Hop?" to "How many IBUs [international bitterness units] does that have?," he sized up festival attendees as running the gamut: "You have people here just for the drinking, and you have people who really are into craft beer."
The latter camps included Pittsburgh beer people such as Keith Kost, an award-winning homebrewer and Pennsylvania correspondent for the Great Lakes Brewing News. And Jeff Bearer, who, with his partner, Greg Weiss, was recording an episode of their Internet show, Craft Beer Radio (to air soon at www.craftbeerradio.com).
Many people are proud to say they've been to all 12 installments of the festival, which skipped a year last year as its host, Penn Brewery, was celebrating its own 20th anniversary.
"I did miss it," said Mark Benson of Coraopolis. This is the one time a year that he wears his T-shirt from the original 1995 fest, and it still looks good on him.
Another regular, who asked to be identified only as "Jeff from Irwin," ranked the event with his favorite holidays thusly:
"Christmas, then this, then Thanksgiving."
Penn president and founder Tom Pastorius said 2,600 people crowded in (at $34 a pop) and made the event a "big success." He's already scheduled the next one for Saturday, June 7, 2008.
While not nearly as raucous as the evening and especially the night sessions (each of which sold out), the early session had a festive air. People wore "Aargh!" eye patches (if not always over their eyes) from Baltimore's Clipper City Brewing and stuck on each other temporary tattoos from Downingtown's Victory Brewing urging, "Resist Prohibition!"
"C'mon, we're burning daylight here!" one guy exhorted his buddies after their break for a lunch of sandwiches and salads. "We've got 57 minutes. Fifty-seven minutes!" And off they went to try more brews.
Members of a conjoined bachelor and bachelorette party, wearing red artificial leis and Mardi Gras beads, danced to the music of Dixie Doc and the Dixieland All-Stars. "We started out the morning at JoJo's," the classic breakfast joint in the Strip District, said Oakmont's John Comello, who you could tell was the groom because of the black bow tie he wore with his T-shirt. After that, they went to a soccer game coached by his bride-to-be, the tiara- and veil-wearing Lisa Sapsara. After the beer festival, they were headed off to dinner, the Pirates game and then the South Side, presumably for more beer.
They were going to be tired the next day, as were some of the brewers and sales reps who had to man their booths for all three sessions. The first wasn't even halfway over and Boulder Beer Co. vice president of sales Scott Nelson already was sitting down. But then, he lives in Conifer, Colo., at about 9,000 feet elevation, where they'd had snow a week before.
"I'm melting," he said with a smile. Appropriately, in addition to his brewery's uncategorizable Hazed & Infused dry-hopped amber ale (hops are added to the fermenting beer), his booth was pouring Sweat Betty blonde ale.
Some attendees also were at least partially working (such as yours truly, to report and write this story, which is why I had to taste a Weyerbacher farmhouse ale named Muse). I even found some actual news:
Duncansville's Marzoni's Brick Oven & Brewing Co. is opening an outlet here on June 19, in the former Hoss' steakhouse (same parent company) on Route 8 in Hampton, about a mile south of the Pennsylvania Turnpike. Its beers -- six regulars and two rotating flavors -- will be brewed in Blair County for now, but Allison Park associate manager Randy Smith told me, "If things go really well ... there's a possibility we'll add on and build a brewery" here.
Also working was Tim Santoro, who runs the new Barley's & Hop's bottle shop in Bethel Park. He was making notes in his program about some of the standout beers he'd tried, which included the zingy and not-yet-available-here Double IPA from New York's Ithaca Beer Co., another festival newcomer. He also really liked the maibock from the Union Barrel Works and laughingly agreed that local unattainability can add to a brew's cachet.
Union Barrel Works is a 200-seat brewpub that opened just two months ago in a former hardware store in Reamstown, Lancaster County, said president Amy Rupp, who was pouring beer with her brewer-husband Tom Rupp. He previously brewed at nearby Stoudt's as well as Neversink before the couple decided to open their own place near the self-styled "antiques capital of the world" of Adamstown. So plenty of Pittsburghers may go there, but for ones such as Mr. Santoro who'd like the beer to come here, Mrs. Rupp said they expect to be bottling and shipping it at some point.
That could include the tasty "Wobbly Bob," which must have a great story behind it, right?
Mrs. Rupp grinned and kept pouring beer. "Let's just say there is a real Bob it's named for."
First Published: June 6, 2007, 9:15 p.m.
