Philadelphia. The City of Brotherly Love, home to Love Park. A city as passionate about its sports as it is about craft brewed beer. This city we love has its own heartbeat, and it beats to a different drum.
Hell, this city is the birthplace of a nation, and even back then we enjoyed home brewed craft beer, the proof being the Ales of the Revolution brewed by Yards Brewing Company. Th ese recipes are based on the recipes of our founding fathers. Revolutionary thinkers who broke away from Britain, but still found time to brew, and enjoy tasty craft beer. Much like our founding fathers, this city has broken away from mass produced macro beers, and over time we as a city have acquired a taste for big brews with bold flavors. The beer drinkers of the Philadelphia beer scene have demanded it— that’s why we have so many great beer bars, and so many following suit. So it is no coincidence that we have Philly Beer Week, and that so many cities have tried to copy this huge annual event. It is also no coincidence that two of the country’s most beloved writers on beer, Don Russell, (aka: Joe Sixpack) and Lew Bryson, call Philly their home. We also can’t forget that Philadelphia is fl anked with breweries within its city limits, as well as in the surrounding suburbs, with many more to come such as Th e Blockley, Brauhaus Schmitz, Mary Oaks, and a new Iron Hill, their 8th location, in Maple Shade, NJ. Labeled as a blue-collar, gritty urban area with rude fans, we sure have enough class to know a good beer when we taste one. All of these facts are why you are reading this premiere issue of Philly Beer Scene Magazine. It’s you, the craft beer drinker, and this amazing city that we love, that drove us to embrace this culture and present it to you in a bi-monthly publication. Our approach is going to be the lighter side of beer drinking. We really won’t focus or bore you with correct glassware, boiling temperatures, or plato scales. There are plenty of resources online and in books for that. We want to capture what makes Philadelphia the best beer drinking city in the world, and to us, that’s being out there with friends, family, and like-minded individuals who just want to have a good time with a good beer. We also want to hear from you, the reader, on what you would like to see in the magazine. This is our first issue, so we highly value your feedback to make this the best city-based beer publication it can be. We look forward to building the magazine, and growing with our readers to be the local beer publication you want it to be. We are America’s foremost craft beer drinking city, and I raise my glass to everyone from drinker, to bar owner, to writer, to brewer with extreme praise and gratitude for making Philly Beer Scene Magazine possible.
Cheers,
Scott Willey
President, Philly Beer Scene Magazine