Come celebrate the arrival of fall with an FREE Octoberfest-style event in Philadelphia’s historic Brewerytown neighborhood! At its’pre-Prohibition peak, there were over 700 individual breweries operating in the Brewerytown neighborhood, but at the moment there are none. For one evening on Thursday October 18th from 6-8 PM, we will change that situation by sponsoring Brewfest 2012!!
Last year’s inaugural Brewfest was held at Mugshots CoffeeHouse, 2831 W Girard Avenue, and 3 brewers participated: The kingpin of local beer, Yards Brewing Company, as well as the nanobrewers Saint Benjamin Brewing Company and Worst Brewing. This year will be bigger and better, so in addition to the return of those three brewers, we are adding the brewpub Iron Hill and the home brew store Home Sweet Homebrew (the owners of which are Brewerytown residents) to the mix. The brewers will be offering FREE samples, and Home Sweet Homebrew will offer a demonstration of how you can do your own brewing!
This year’s Brewfest will be in a pub crawl format, covering 4 locations over 2 blocks allowing visitors to wander The Avenue and stop into shops like Girard Supply Co. to taste Saint Benjamin, Color Wheel Bike Studio to sample Worst Brewing’s best, Mugshots CoffeeHouse to see what Yards does to top last year’s firkin, or Next American City’s Storefront for Urban Innovation to down some Iron Hill deliciousness while Home Sweet Homebrew teaches you how to brew.
If all this beer drinking gets you hungry, there will be a couple food trucks (TBA) in attendance. This is going to be one heckuva cheap date, see you there?
Even more details available on the Facebook event page.
Free beer samples. Yup.
Did I miss something or is there no date for this event???
I’ve heard that the date is THURSDAY, OCTOBER 18 6-8pm …is this correct?
YES! 6-8 PM Tuesday October 18th! 2700-2800 Blocks of West Girard, or, “The Avenue” as it’s known locally.
Poorly planned event by Brewerytown and most of brewers! We got excited for the Brewfest since we live in Fairmount. First stop was Mugshots, Yards was represented and passing out free tastes but no PR materials anywhere in the coffee shop for the event or the brewers? How about a map of businesses?
Second stop was Color Wood Bike Studio and Home Sweet Homebrew. The brewers didn’t have much to say other than they were running our of cups? Again, no advertising outside of shops or when walking other than balloons.
Third stop was Girard Supply Company. The kegs were kicked right when we walked in the door – 6:45 – really????!!!! Doesn’t seem like they were very prepared.
Last stop was Urban Innovation, line out the door of 20+ people but apparently Iron Hill couldn’t get the tap/keg to work, so we left. I think this was the second keg but still, again no beer for us and many others. Also, no PR signs for brewers or event at this location.
We did grab some tamales before we left and they were very good. However, somewhat surprised in the lack of planning by some of the breweries and little pr/awareness of the event at the actual locations. This was a perfect opportunity to give people a chance to spend some time on Girard Avenue, check out the new businesses as well as getting exposure to cool breweries, but badly executed so not sure this was accomplished.
Hoping next year it will be better…
Debra, we are sorry to hear the negative feedback. The brewers were all blown away by the demand and, yes, all ran out of beer very quickly. The food trucks sold out as well. Even Era Bar sold out of food by 10:30 pm! We do hope that nonetheless you had a nice time strolling The Avenue,and know that we will make sure next year that no one underestimates the turnout. This was our 2nd year doing Brewfest, and plan for each year being better than the next.