Monday, April 07, 2008

75 Years Ago Today...


Unless you've been under a rock, you've heard about how the ball got rolling 75 years ago today toward the Repeal of Prohibition. With a revision to the Volstead Act, beer (albeit max of 3.2% alcohol) again was flowing to Americans.


Today, establishments across the country found different ways to celebrate. Rock Bottom in King of Prussia, PA celebrated with day long $2 drafts. Found myself a pint of Fire Chief ESB and watched as award-winning brewer Brian McConnell led the toast at 6:43pm, then again at 6:00pm.


Arriving at 6:29pm, I figured I'd timed things just right. Turns out that the Fox29 camera guy and I got the wrong press release. As you can see from the pictures, Rock Bottom planned to do things at 6pm (or 6:30, or....now wait just a minute) without us. Fortunately, my presence (or was it the news camera's?!) prompted them to do a re-toast just for us. If you're reading this in time and are in the Philly television market, you'll want to check out the 10 o'clock Fox29 news for a quick look at Brian's toast.

Or, perhaps a better bet is to get over to Rock Bottom for a $2 draft!

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

>...watched as award-winning brewer Brian McConnell led the toast at 6:43pm, then again at 6:00pm.<

That I would like to have seen.

Jack Curtin said...

That smart ass above is me, by the way. I got so excited about this first recorded example of time travel that I didn't take the time to deal correctly with the Blogger sign-inb maze. My bad.

Kevin said...

I don't think of going there enough but I've never had a terrible experience there. And even though the cask is usually served pretty cold (it only ever really bothered me with the Wee Heavy but not that much), Brian seems to put almost all of his beer on it from the Schwarz to a doppel bock to his hefe. I would like to try the bitter, as well.

Bryan Kolesar said...

Smart-ass comments are welcome too...and appreciated. I'm glad to see that my clever play on order got notice. Seeing as how I was there for the "advertised" toast and he did this warm-up toast at 6...zing

Bryan Kolesar said...

Oh, by the way Jack, good job on revealing yourself. You know how we look upon those anonymous commenters ;-)

Bryan Kolesar said...

I know what you mean, Kevin. I just mentioned to someone today how Rock Bottom never disappoints. But, I'm always disappointed in not finding more reasons to go. But with its location in the mess that is the KOP Mall, it forces me to find reasons to go....like I was already there shopping...or an event like this evening's. Tough competition in the area of course contributes as well, but they definitely earn their brewing props at this Rock Bottom location.

And, I too have noticed every beer in the past being served ice cold. The ESB tonight took a few minutes to warm and as it did the character of the beer came out nicely as I might hope it would.