Sly Fox Beer celebrated more than beer at The Deli and Z-Bar, 113 Heister St., last night at "Meet The Brewer."
With the Philadelphia Flyers and Pittsburgh Penguins fighting for a shot at the Stanley Cup, sports and drinking never went better together.
Keith Guinan and Shane Curran both attended "Meet The Brewer" to watch the hockey game, and became drawn into the beauty that is craft brewing.
"I was impressed with how much the [representatives] knew about the beer," Curran (senior-information sciences and technology) said. "It interested me enough into thinking about coming next week."
Beer Ambassador Corey Reid and Director of Sales Patrick Mullin from Sly Fox came out with a special selection of five beers from the brewery.
First on the menu was the Royal Weisse. It's a Bavarian style wheat beer that is brewed with German pils and wheat malts and then hopped with German Northern Brewer hops. It's a fruity, unfiltered, medium bodied beer that is dirty blond in color.
The second beer was Grisette. This Belgian farmhouse ale is named after the French women who would dress in gray and hand out pints of beer to coal miners as the exited the mines. Mullin said these women were also known for handing out a little more than beer. But in terms of beer, Grisette is similar to Saison, except lighter and easy on the pallet.
Guinan said he had never tasted anything like Grisette and it was his favorite out of the five beers served through the night.
The third brew was Ichor. Coming in at over 10 percent ABV, the beer is an Abbot style quadruple brew with German pils, roast malts and Belgian candi sugar. The beer is very sweet, but that is how most quadruple brews come. Reid and Mullin said this beer is meant to be aged, and when done right it will bring out a complexity of flavors.
The fourth beer was O'Reilly's Stout and was fashioned with Guinness in mind. It's an Irish style draft stout brewed with imported British pale and roasted barley, then hopped with cascade and target hops. When this beer was first produced, Mullin said he tested it out on customers who would order Guinness to see what they preferred. In the end, O'Reilly's Stout beat Guinness 2-1 in customer satisfaction and is one of the brewery's favorite beers on tap.
The best beer was saved for last, gravity poured cask-conditioned Odyssey Imperial IPA. Marketing and Nightlife Director of The Deli and Z-Bar, JP Mills, said this brew was an especially special beer. It is bold in flavor with a hoppy finish, and Reid said it was naturally filtered with oil from a sturgeon's blatter.
Reid said he has seen the craft brewing company growing rapidly in the past 10-15 years and he loves to see a place like Z-Bar with an appreciation, especially for craft beer in cans.
Reid said Sly Fox is the second brewery in the country to start canning craft brews instead of bottling them because of its advantages. Aluminum cools faster, doesn't skunk the beer and environmentally friendlier than bottles, just to name a few.
