Philadelphia's beer week celebrates a sudsy heritage

PHILADELPHIA (Reuters Life!) - Beer, said U.S. founding father Benjamin Franklin, is living proof that God loves us and wants us to be happy. If so, Philadelphia ought to be America's most contented city because it is about to launch the first week-long festival to celebrate its most famous son's favorite tipple.

According to the organizers of Philly Beer Week, which runs from March 7-16, their town is the best beer-drinking city in America.

It has around 350 bars serving an array of local microbrews and exotic imports, a growing number of independent breweries, and an appetite for good beer that draws foreign brews which can't be found in other U.S. cities.

"Beer is reflective of Philadelphia. It's a blue-collar town. Beer is cheaper than wine, and wine is intimidating. It's much easier for your mainstream beer drinker to try more beer, said Philadelphia-based beer writer Don Russell.

The festival consists of around 175 events including tastings with visiting brewers, self-guided tours of local breweries, a session on pairing beer with cheese and a trivia evening in which you can test your "beer IQ."

Drinkers are invited to the "World's Most Expensive Beers", a session at a central Philadelphia's cafe where a visiting beer writer will guide patrons through some rare foreign and domestic brews.

At a Belgian-themed restaurant, a brewer from Brussels will discuss how to make spontaneously fermented beers called lambics, while the South Philadelphia Tap Room will host an evening of West Coast beers including Old Rasputin Imperial Stout and Pranqster Golden Ale.

The festival is intended to highlight a vibrant local beer scene that goes all the way back to 1680 when Pennsylvania founder William Penn began to build a brewery on his estate in nearby Bucks County.

By 1756, the city had some 100 taverns serving its 20,000 inhabitants. That began a tradition of neighborhood beer bars whose numbers have doubled in the last six or seven years, according to Russell.

He champions the cause of independent brewers -- which now account for about six percent of the national beer market -- and neighborhood bars where drinkers can enjoy good conversation without battling loud music, multiple TV screens, or, thanks to a recent city ordinance, cigarette smoke.

One such is the Nodding Head, a dimly lit city-center brew pub whose beers on a recent visit included "Ich Bin Ein Berliner Weisse", a German-style low-alcohol wheat beer, Saison, a Belgian-style farmhouse ale, and BPA, or Bill Payer Ale, so named because it is a reliable earner for the bar.

Brendan Hartranft, 29, a barman who is about to open his own bar in the Fishtown section of Philadelphia, said he is looking forward to catering to the city's growing market for high-quality beer, particularly locally made beers.

"I'm going to be stuck behind this bar for the next 30 years," he said. "So I'd better have a lot of stuff that I really like to drink."