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Three Stops in Philadelphia - June 2007Ah, springtime in Philadelphia! What is it, anyway, that draws me to this delightful city every April or May? Oh ya, that's right, that would be Monk's Café, where I always seem to end up hosting a beer dinner around this time. Still, there is a lot to be said for the joys of being in the eminently walkable City of Brotherly Love when the sun climbs higher in the sky and the buds begin to appear on the cherry trees. Especially when there are new and interesting bars, restaurants and brewpubs to visit, as is surprisingly often the case. My first stop on arrival this time out was the Tria Fermentation School, an admirable effort opened last fall by Jon Myerow, owner of the nearby Tria Café. Operating on the theory that an educated customer is a happy, and loyal, customer, Jon started the school as an agent to promote the knowledge and understanding of what he calls "the fermentables" - beer, wine and cheese - which just happen to also be the specialties of the house at Tria Café. Although no class was in session - turns out I had just barely missed a staff training class - Jon did show me around the small but highly functional classroom and introduced me to his sommelier, Michael McCaulley, with whom I had a good-natured sparring match over the relative merits of beer and wine with cheese. I left impressed with not only the months-old facility these men had created, but also the dedication showed by each towards the furthering of beer, wine and cheese culture - in a city that's already pretty much at the leading edge for North America, no less! Education notwithstanding, though, all that talk about "fermentables" can build a powerful thirst in a man, so it was off the Old City district for me, and a visit to the brand new Triumph Brewing Company brewpub. Now, truthfully, I can't really say that I headed to the Old City specifically to visit Triumph, primarily because I didn't know it had opened. But as it turned out, the place had been up and running for about two weeks by then and a full slate of beers was available on tap. Given the thirst factor involved, my immediate inclination was to grab a pint of the Kellerbier. Kellerbier, as any fan of Teutonic brew will know, is unfiltered lager, as ideally illustrated by the superlative St. Georgen Bräu of Buttenheim, Germany. At its best, a good keller will refresh as only a moderately bitter lager can, sealing the thirst quenching deal with a light tang of yeast, and for the mood I was in, it was an ideal choice…providing, of course, that the new Triumph was up to the task. Which, I'm very please to say, it was. In fact, I'm hard pressed to come up with a better beer I can remember tasting at a brewpub that new, so clean was its character, quenching its palate and satisfying its oh-so-slightly-yeasty body. Whereas I'm used to brewpubs taking a few tries to get a new beer right, Triumph's Jay Mission nailed this one from the get-go, and spying him grabbing a bite at the end of the bar, I wandered over to tell him so. Obviously pleased to find someone agreeing with him and his staff, Mission admitted that the Keller had quickly emerged as a house favorite when construction of the premises was still underway. "We'd finish work for the day," he said, "And immediately it would be, 'Okay, let's have a Kellerbier!'" As tempting as it was to return to the Kellerbier following that first pint, I instead opted to try some of the brewery's other offerings and found more successes, although none so exemplary as the Keller. The Chico Ale, an obvious homage to that iconic California pale ale with the green label, struck me as a beer headed in the right direction, if not necessarily there quite yet, while the Porter was, I thought, just as a porter should be: easy on the roast, not too full bodied, possessing a pleasing touch of fruitiness. All considered, beers that bode very well for the future of the brewpub. Taking my leave of Triumph, I walked back across town to Monk's to check on preparations for the next night's beer dinner - a real treat, by the way, highlighting a quartet of excellent beers from Michigan and pairing them quite delectably with, believe it or not, Michigan cuisine - before heading onward to the three-year-old Tria Café. Tria's mandate is as apparent as it is simple: Take the best in cheese and offer it alongside the best in wine and beer. There is a separate food menu, which in the cold light of the Internet today, I will admit, actually looks quite good. But even though it was by then well past dinnertime, I had been jonesing for beer and cheese pairings since my Fermentation School visit hours earlier, and finding myself a spot at the bar directly in front of the cheese carver, I was determined to feed my craving. While Tria won't normally rate at the top of most lists of Philly beer destinations - tough as it is to draw attention in a city where there also stands Monk's, The Standard Tap, Eulogy, The Grey Lodge and probably a dozen other laudable beer destinations - it definitely deserves more recognition than it currently receives. At a modest eight taps and twenty or so bottles, the beer list may be small, but Myerow's passion for the stuff is evident in the care with which he manages his constantly changing selection and the eccentricity of many of his choices. And besides, any place where you can partner draft Allagash Curieux with a perfectly matured Tête de Moine, as I did, or a bottle of Saison Dupont with a brilliantly pungent cow's milk cheese from Québec, Chaput Grand Foin, has to be worth a prominent place on any city's beer map. Even if the big print on that map says "Philadelphia." Feature Articles
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