Bound for Beer

This post is part of a 13 part series, if you want to start from the beginning, click here . Wednesday in Munich Zoigl Trip - Part 5 of 13  After a rainy Tuesday, Wednesday was sunny and temperate. I didn’t get to see the BMW Museum on previous visits to Munich, so that was on the agenda. We took the subway there, where Billy, always wanting to practice his German, struck up a conversation with a group of young people doing their public service. The parts I understood were interesting, especially what they knew about Philadelphia. The BMW Museum, which opened in 1972, is a cool bit of architecture. I found the contents very interesting and well laid out. BMW stands for Bayerische Motoren Werke (Bavaria Motor Works), and if you want to see motors and their evolution (and I did), this is the place to go.  Besides the Museum and BMW office tower, there is another huge BMW building, The Welt, that we couldn’t figure out . Our confusion was due to The Welt being mostly closed to p...

  Tracy Mulligan Back in the late 1990s/early 2000s, the craft beer scene in the Philly metro area was a very tight community. Those were heady times. Craft beer was still a niche. Big money would come barreling in every so often, blunder around and after severe losses, would stagger away, leaving the local craft beer community pretty much still a small friendly world.  One of the fixtures of this community was Tracy Mulligan. With her perpetually perfect hair and make-up, she always looked like she just walked out of a 1980s rock video. While she may have stood out visually from the fairly homogenous crowd back then, she fit right in. Totally free of pretense, she was around for the love of good beer and the comradery that accompanies it.  When she went from being a beer craft civilian to an industry professional, she was a natural. Speaking as a craft beer bar owner from that time, Tracy was a truly great brewery rep. She knew her beer, she always followed through, and ...

This post is part of a 13 part series, if you want to start from the beginning, click here . Tuesday in Munich Zoigl Trip - Part 4 of 13  Billy wanted to get acclimated to the local time before the big Zoigl hike, and I wanted to revisit and/or check out some sights I missed on previous trips, so we arrived in Munich a few days early. The train from the Munich Airport was closed for a few months. After much confusion, we found the bus to Hauptbahnhof. Having had 6 great experiences with the airport train in the past, I wasn’t prepared for this chaos, and it was utter chaos. Eventually we ended up on the right bus. Though having bought transit passes online the week before made getting on the bus easy peasy.  Billy had been to Munich before and wanted to stay close to the Viktualienmarkt, which was a great call. We ended up staying at the Hotel Blauer Bock, which is about a block away.  Blauer Bock Blauer Bock (Blue Goat) is a fine hotel, about a 20 minute walk (no hills) ...

This post is part of a 13 part series, if you want to start from the beginning, click here . Newark and Lisbon Airports, and the First Beer of the Trip Zoigl Trip - Part 3 of 13  Back in 2020, I told my buddy Billy Ross about the weird Germany brewery hike I had planned and he enthusiastically agreed to join the excursion. And he was still in when it could finally happen in 2023.  Newark and Lisbon Airports (Not about beer, flyover if you wish) Billy wanted to fly through Portugal, we so ended up flying out of Newark. Getting there from Abington PA was a four seat journey. Relatively easy and drama free, but a trek nonetheless.  Having flown out of Newark before, I knew the food options were limited. Not only limited, but expensive, and surprisingly difficult to give them your money. Despite it being 10 hours since I last ate, I opted out. I didn’t have the energy to deal with it. They should be feeding us something on TAP Air Portugal anyway. And they did. We had a...

This post is part of a 13 part series, if you want to start from the beginning, click here . The (Zoigl) Stars Align 24 Years Later with Rich Carbonara the Beer Wanderer Zoigl Trip - Part 2 of 13 Back Story I’ve known Rich Carbonara since the early days of craft beer in Philadelphia. Back when the Philadelphia craft beer world was a small, tight community that was bound together by a great local beer press. Rich and his buddy Ed would make the drive from North Wildwood for the early Friday the Firkinteenths. Often they would crash at my place.  At that time, Rich worked summers at his family’s motel in Wildwood, and globe-trotted the rest of the year. In his travels, Rich met a lovely German lass, Doreen, and they would eventually settle in Munich.  During the 24 year run of the Grey Lodge Pub, without fail, I would send out a monthly email. Rich responded to one encouraging me to come to Munich for Oktoberfest. Rich and Doreen would be moving to Florida to be with his elderly...

  Zoigl… Whatgl?  Zoigl Trip - Part 1 of 13  I was at a gathering with a bunch of Philly craft beer legends recently. Bopping from one-on-one conversation to another, I mentioned that I just got back from a Zoigl brewery tour. Several of the craft beer gods had no idea what I was talking about. So if you’ve never heard of Zoigl, you’re in good company. If you follow this series of posts, we'll learn about this amazing beer subculture together. Decades Ago, Zoigl First Appears on My Radar The first I heard of Zoigl is when I bought  a half of Appalachian Zoigl Star Lager for the Grey Lodge Pub way, way back in the late 1990s or early 2000s. Researching what kind of beer Zoigl was led me down a Web rabbit hole, which started a travel itch that took about two and half decades to scratch. 

Here we are smack dab in the middle of Philly Beer Week 2023.  I will have posts later this week about the Hammer of Glory Relay last Friday, and Logjammin' last Saturday.  There's still loads of Philly Beer Week fun left. The full calendar of events is here: http://www.phillylovesbeer.com/copy-of-submit Here are three that caught my eye: Tue, 06 Jun Monk’s Cafe - freak folk bier Visitation - 5:00 PM Monk's Cafe is proud to introduce Ryan and Lillian of freak folk bier in Waterbury, Vermont to beer savvy Philadelphians at at 5pm on Tuesday, June 6. After reading an article about their just-opened brewery, I sent an email asking if I could swing by to chat. Ryan said he had a malt delivery coming at 9 AM the next day, so I offered to help him unload the truck. The delivery was running late and I left before it arrived. Whew! Ryan showed me his setup and we tasted a few of his beers, which were all well made.  He climbed up to his storage loft to grab a couple of bottles fo...