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Keeping local economies alive: drinking local
The Web site for the award-winning alternative weekly, the Philadelphia City Paper.
Keeping local economies alive: drinking local
Drinking local is good for both your pockets and your hometown economy.� Rick Nichols noted the recession-defying numbers at area craft breweries in his Inquirer feature yesterday:
Dogfish Head was doing a bulletproof business.
Beer sales are up a phenomenal 40 percent over last year, 45 percent if you include its first foray into the Nevada market.
What is more remarkable is that those aren't unremarkable numbers for local craft brewers. At Downingtown's award-winning Victory Brewing, sales were up close to 30 percent; at smallish Sly Fox near Phoenixville, hovering close to last year's 38 percent gain.
Nichols also quotes Monk's Caf� owner Tom Peters, who says that his sales of Yards Philadelphia Pale Ale tripled in the last six months.
Philadelphia's robust local craft breweries employ hundreds of good folks, from the engineers that keep the bottling lines running to the bartenders who dispense the foamy $4 pints.� Nichols reveals the engine behind the trend: locavorism, taste, sustainability and a rejection of the "yellow, fizzy" BudMillerCoors products.
Craft fits neatly in, says Herz, offering quirky, "full-flavored, bigger, get-to-know-me beers," not just the Big Three's "refreshing, lighter-on-the-tongue" profile.
Some converts are rejecting Big Beer's crassness - its wet-T-shirt contests and beer-slob image. Craft brewers, in contrast, sponsor cycling (and recyling) rambles and brewer-farmer dinners.
Finally, Calagione argues, there's the mad-as-hell factor: People are fed up with the hubris and greed of corporate fat cats - "the Enrons, Madoffs, and Detroits" that helped dig the financial hole.
Instead of handing over their beer money to a "foreign-owned, faceless conglomerate," he says, they'd rather support local independents.
Read Nichols' full story on local breweries on Philly.com.
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