Beer above the mason-dixon line...

[Tombstone0]

Yeah, PA still has these weird distribution laws that makes some of the distribution laws in the bible belt look sane. You have to go to special drive up beer stores that only sells cases of beer: so their selections are nothing special. Bars are the only places that can sell singles....though I've never found a beer lover's bar when visiting PA. My dad's side of the family is from Pittsburgh, so I've tried Iron City beer. They're fairly good, but nothing I'd go out of my way to try.

I've found a few good beer lover's bars in PA. Specifically Bocktown Beer and Grill in Pittsburgh, it's in the same shopping center as the Target near Robinson Center. The other's in Lititz, it's styled after an English pub, it recently opened but I can't remember the name. They both have quite a few taps that rotate different Microbrews, the one in Lititz has hand pumped cask ales.

 

[SumnerH]

I agree whole-heartedly with your list, but I also have a correction on your information about Geary's. Geary's was indeed the first microbrewery in the Northeast, but it was Alan Pugsley of Shipyard Brewing that was responsible for establishing the English-style of brewing to both the US, most nobably the Portland,ME area.

That's basically right. I guess the question is how much did the Geary's learn in England vs. how much Pugsley brought to the table, and ultimately the answer is that it doesn't much matter--together they built a heck of a brewery, and both deserve credit for pioneering craft beer.

Beers such as Casco bay and Tremont are separate brands, but brewed by Shipyard.

Casco Bay is really a separate brewery, though they were recently bought by Shipyard. They were founded by a homebrewer back in 1994 under the Katahdin name, but he was bought out by Bryan Smith 1998 and Bryan's the one who renamed them to Casco Bay and really got them going as a major business. He put a big emphasis on not doing the English-influenced brews that Geary's/Shipyard/etc do, and uses American yeasts and west-coast hops (except for the lagers, where he imported a German lager yeast to get those going). That's still apparent in most of their lineup.

In the early 2000s, they started doing a lot of contract brewing under other names (for Sugarloaf and others).

Shipyard bought them in 2008, but their brewing still happens at their own 57 Industrial Way brewery in Portland. Shipyard helps with marketing and distribution, and I'm sure they're coordinating product lines and such going forward.

 

[SteveM]

They haven't broken any laws. They just found a loop hole, so to speak, around the law.

Yeah, I know - I said they broke the CODE, not the law.