Brewing is Back on da' North Side

Tom Pastorius has offered a cordial invitation to the public to partake in the first batch of Penn Pilsner of "the new era" at Penn Brewery.

Details:

Wednesday, Dec. 30
4:00 - 9:00 p.m.
Penn Brewery
800 Vinial St.
Da' North Side

Pastorius has said he'd like to expand their offerings a bit, possibly offering some "American-style" beers. I'm not sure what that means, exactly. I hope it doesn't mean macro-brew King of Beers/Less-Filling Tastes Great type brews. Rather, I hope that he means, among other things, hop-infused pale ales that are favored by many U.S. microbreweries, even if their origins are not necessarily American.

Either way, this is a great thing to see for this city and for beer. Hopefully the risk Mr. Pastorius is taking will pay off. The challenge, in many respects, will be to win patrons from -- or back from -- Hofbrahaus, which, from my experience, is doing quite well. That will indeed be a significant hurdle.

Good luck, fellas. Welcome back.

Scrapin' Up the Bits... "Mad Men" style

The third season of Mad Men returns to AMC this Sunday. Admittedly, season 2 was not as good as season 1, and season 3 almost never happened, so hopefully there was no rush to crank out less- than-stellar material. This show has gotten raves for its quality of course, its influence on fashion, and, now, its devotion to getting its cocktails right...

Liquor is not only an integral part of many plotlines (last season, it played a pivotal role in a car crash, a divorce, a rape and two career implosions), but often a telling sign of character. When it comes to choosing a character’s poison, Ms. Perello said, many people have input, starting with the show’s creator, Matthew Weiner: “Matt will say, ‘I want them to have a brown liquor.’ And I’ll go, ‘Let’s do a nonblended Scotch, because this is a person who would appreciate that.’ ”

The cocktail historian David Wondrich, 48, thinks an old-fashioned is a conservative choice for the young Draper, but considers his preference for Canadian Club “exactly right. We’d had years of destruction of the American whiskey industry up until then. So the Canadian stuff was viewed as being pretty good.”

Another month, another recall of hundreds of thousands of pounds of beef. I'm a little late to writing about this, but it certainly did not get the coverage previous recalls have. Guess people are just so used to it by now...

I'm more than happy to put in my fair share of time for delicious food, but several hours of serious prep time and two days in total just is beyond my limits, even for something as delicious sounding (and looking) as Sicilian style square pizza.

Finally, and happily, there is a chance that beer might once again be brewed in the hallowed tanks of the Penn Brewery. Tom Pastorius apparently did not like what was being done to the business, and the beer, he worked so hard to make a success.

Tom Pastorius, who founded the brewery in 1986 and sold most of it to Birchmere Capital in 2003, is working with a group of investors who have negotiated to buy back Birchmere's stock. They've applied for a $300,000 Urban Redevelopment Authority loan for working capital as part of a plan to fix up and return brewing to the building.

Scrapin' Up the Bits... Update style

Newsworthy items for your perusal, beginning with a few updates, courtesy of the PG:

Update #1 - Following in my footsteps, China Millman weighs in on Dinette.

If Dinette makes me this happy in the winter, I can only dream of the magic Finn will work in July. Right now, with many months of winter still ahead of us, I look forward to settling in for the long haul.

Think she liked it?

Update #2 - Some people are upset about the whole Penn Brewery thing. This letter-writer in particular makes a very good point...

Penn Brewery/The North Side is to Pittsburgh as Guinness/St. James Gate is to Dublin, Ireland. Think about it. Certainly, current ownership must appreciate the fact that far upstream in the Penn value-chain sits the historical and romantic appeal of Penn Brewery as an emotional "destination." Look at Guinness. Millions of people flock to St. James Gate to witness/experience Guinness, not just to buy a beer, and tens of millions more feel an attachment to the brand and choose it whenever they have the opportunity. Guinness has built a brand and distribution channel second to none, and Penn should focus on the same.

On to politics... So President-Elect Change picks as his nomination for Secretary of Agriculture Tom Vilsack from Iowa. Well, there was an outpouring from the sustainable ag community to pick a true progressive here, somebody who gets every angle of the importance of agriculture - protecting the environment, promoting organic and sustainable farming, stomping out the overbearing influence of agribusiness on agriculture policy.

And who gets named? A former Biotechnology Industry Organization's "Governor of the Year" awardee! The Ethicurean has a tidy little post that raises some of the concerns about Vilsack, but also highlights some of his more progressive leanings on ag policy.

I know President-Elect Change has said he sets the policy, that he's read Michael Pollan (who made his thoughts clear on the Vilsack pick on NPR today), yadda yadda, but this was an opportunity to put a real forward thinker in an extremely influential position and, well, he blew it. You know, pragmatism isn't always the best course of action, even if it's part of what won a presidential election.

Speaking of politics, particularly things like bailouts, how insane is this?

According to the [Wall Street Journal], the Italian government is planning a bailout for, of all things, the Parmigiano-Reggiano industry. The bottom line is that at current prices the cheese costs more to produce than it does to purchase; a cheesemaker cited in the article spends €8 to produce a kilogram of cheese that he then sells for €7.40.

As the post's author notes, this is definitely an industry for whom a bailout is essential. I mean, we're talking about the undisputed king of cheeses here...

And now, TWO recommendations:

First, for the gin martini drinkers out there, I highly recommend seeking out Bluecoat gin. Made in Philadelphia, it's produced from organic juniper berries. I almost hate to say it, I am starting to prefer it to Bombay Saphire.

I recently picked up a bottle on sale at a PA Wine & Spirits store. Think I'm gonna have to have me a Bluecoat Derby tonight.

Second, if you're looking for a place to go out to dinner, want to share your thoughts -- good or bad -- on a local dinery, etc., visit Urbanspoon Pittsburgh. Heck, you can even find little ol' me there.

Finally, as you're doing your holiday cookie baking -- which I strenuously try to avoid, leaving those duties to my wife, who is a far more skilled baker -- the New York Times offers some guidance on what most pastry chefs say is the single most important ingredient: butter.

Penn Brewery - Is This Really Happening? Yes

I am surprised that this hasn't received more attention. The Post-Gazette has been on it. Based on my limited viewing, the local TV news folks are ignoring it, both on camera and on their Web sites. A search of that other Pittsburgh newspaper turns up one story.

In case you missed it, though, here's the terrible news:

The fate of the historic home of the Penn Brewery, Pittsburgh's first and largest craft beer maker, appears sealed this week as the owners prepare to leave the 19th-century structure with its custom brewhouse and restaurant for new quarters somewhere in Pittsburgh.

The last batch of Penn beer was being brewed there this week, while beer production starts at a contract brewery in Wilkes-Barre. Most of the brewery staff has been told it will be laid off by year's end. The restaurant is to close at the end of February when its lease expires.

The move is being forced, according to the new CEO of Penn Brewing, Len Caric -- who took over when Tom Pastorius, who founded the company more than 20 years ago -- by the property landlord's decision to raise the rent by 360%. In the current economic climate, I don't know who in the forseeable future is going to cough up serious dough for that location on the Northside, particularly because it seems impossible that it could be retrofitted to anything other than a restaurant. In that light, this move makes no sense.

After the last batches are finished on site, beer will be brewed under contract at Lion Brewing in Wilkes-Barre. Meanwhile, Penn will hunt for a new location in Pittsburgh.

Maintaining both the quality and unique taste of Penn's beers will be difficult, say brewmasters Bill Covaleski of Victory Brewing in Downingtown and Chris Trogner of Troegs Brewing Co. in Harrisburg.

"Penn Brewery has a real identity in its beers, and it's just not in their best interests to contract it out," said Mr. Covaleski. "I've always admired Tom Pastorius and his beer, and I'm sad to see this happen."

I have seen hints on the intertubes of conspiracy theorists saying that this is all Mr. Caric's doing. But I find that hard to believe, based on the plans he announced for Penn Brewery earlier this year.

After Penn’s Kaiser Pils won a gold medal and its Octoberfest won a bronze at the Great American Beer Festival last week, Caric is poised to help led the brewery through some major changes.

“My goal is to make it (Penn’s brands) Pittsburgh’s beer,” Caric said. “We need to get western Pennsylvania as excited about it as we are."

(snip)

Caric vowed to maintain Penn’s commitment to quality that led to its recent awards and many others.

But he also sees important changes that need to be made.

After convening with many of the brewery’s distributors, Caric’s first big decision is to redesign the packaging for Penn’s brands, updating its look and logo, as well as redesigning its 24-bottle cases into a two twelve-pack configuration to cater better to sales in grocery stores and convenience marts in other states. He has hired North Side-based Smith Brothers to undergo a full packaging redesign for Penn’s brands, including its main flagships, Penn Pilsner and Penn Dark, with the expectation of relaunching the brands in the next few months.

In snippets I could pick up here and there on the intertubes, there is speculation that this will be the end of an actual Penn Brewery in Pittsburgh, and that Penn beers will simply be contract brewed with the Penn Brewery only being a memory of some physical entity that once was but really no longer is.

The idea of no more Oktoberfest celebrations at that great facility, my kids' heads sopping wet under plastic green hats as they dance to German music and cover their ears as we hold up our 1/2 gallons chanting "oi, oi, oi" every half hour is truly sickening to contemplate.

Nothing lasts forever, of course, but some things should last for a mighty long time. And Penn Brewery is one of those things.