{"id":267,"date":"2016-04-28T20:15:56","date_gmt":"2016-04-29T00:15:56","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/beerme\/?p=267"},"modified":"2017-02-20T13:16:27","modified_gmt":"2017-02-20T18:16:27","slug":"five-years-dozens-of-beers-thats-beer-week","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/beerme\/region\/five-years-dozens-of-beers-thats-beer-week\/","title":{"rendered":"Five years, dozens of beers &#8212; that&#8217;s Beer Week"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/beerme\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/04\/pcbw-pipers-chalk-board.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-268\" src=\"http:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/beerme\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/04\/pcbw-pipers-chalk-board.jpg\" alt=\"pcbw pipers chalk board\" width=\"931\" height=\"524\" srcset=\"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/beerme\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/04\/pcbw-pipers-chalk-board.jpg 931w, https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/beerme\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/04\/pcbw-pipers-chalk-board-300x169.jpg 300w, https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/beerme\/wp-content\/uploads\/sites\/2\/2016\/04\/pcbw-pipers-chalk-board-768x432.jpg 768w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 931px) 100vw, 931px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>When you reach a five-year milestone, it feels right to take a moment and reflect on the path that got you there. And if you think back to the first Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week &#8212; especially if you do so right after completing the fifth &#8212; you&#8217;ll understand just how far the industry has come in that time.<\/p>\n<p>Were there a dozen Pittsburgh-area craft breweries back then? And will there be three or four times that many by the end of 2016?<\/p>\n<div style=\"display: block; position: relative; max-width: 100%;margin-bottom:20px;\">\r\n<div style=\"padding-top: 56.25%;\">\r\n<video data-video-id=\"4868513493001\"\r\ndata-account=\"1105443290001\" \r\ndata-player=\"N1VVkFril\" \r\ndata-embed=\"default\" \r\ndata-application-id \r\nclass=\"video-js\" \r\ncontrols \r\nstyle=\"width: 100%; height: 100%; position: absolute; top: 0px; bottom: 0px; right: 0px; left: 0px;\"><\/video>\r\n<script src=\"\/\/players.brightcove.net\/1105443290001\/N1VVkFril_default\/index.min.js\"><\/script><\/div><\/div>\n<p>As we learned last week, it&#8217;s not just the number that should leave an impression. It&#8217;s the quality of the beer as well. Just look at this year&#8217;s collaboration beers: breweries that haven&#8217;t yet opened or got started in the last six months contributed to five of the seven official collaborations, and <em>all<\/em> were excellent.<\/p>\n<p>Summarizing my beer week is always a tough task. But let&#8217;s give it a try.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Favorite events:<\/strong> I made a point to try to get to some new stuff (to me, anyway), and I liked everything I got to. A standout was Oysterfest, the annual party under the Homestead Grays Bridge put on by Blue Dust &#8212; and I&#8217;m not even a fan of oysters, although the festival&#8217;s namesakes drew huge lines all afternoon. The beer choices were unique &#8212; don&#8217;t pass up a chance to try\u00a0stuff from Shawnee Craft Brewing as it shows up around here, boys and girls &#8212; and there were plenty of food trucks for those who didn&#8217;t want oysters. I was also pleasantly surprised by the Summer Craft Brewhaha, a summer seasonal preview held at Altar Bar; the selection was far from predictable and the space worked out better than I expected. I hit some\u00a0staples as well: the annual Wednesday beer breakfast at Piper&#8217;s Pub featured an extra delicious menu this year, perhaps in celebration of its spot on the calendar (April 20, ahem); the Helltown Brewing cask takeover at Piper&#8217;s, this year with beef braised in the brewery&#8217;s Mischievous Brown Ale as the dinner\u00a0special; and if I can help it, I will never miss an edition of the Brewers&#8217; Olympics, the event at Grist House that puts a perfect cap on the week.<\/p>\n<p><strong>Favorite beers:<\/strong> Here&#8217;s a great\u00a0sign &#8212; the collaboration beers are more consistently good every year. With one slightly embarrassing caveat &#8212; that this North Side resident never got a taste of the Mash Paddle vs. Hipster India Red Lager collab from Penn, Spring Hill, War Streets and Allegheny City &#8212; I&#8217;ll say that the standout among the collaborations was Greenfield Bridge is Falling Down, the deliciously juicy Vermont-style IPA from Spoonwood, Helltown and two newcomers: Helicon and Dancing Gnome. I loved all of the other collaborations, but I have to give specific mention to one more, mostly because I made such a big deal about it in my beer week previews: white stouts &#8212; like Prospero, from Rock Bottom, Hitchhiker, Bloom Brew and and Eleventh Hour &#8212; work wonderfully, even if one&#8217;s brain can&#8217;t figure out in advance how a white stout might work. A few others: I really liked 5 Point Black IPA, the collaboration between Carson Street Deli and Rock Bottom; Big Boots Gose, a margarita-esque effort from the women of Pittsburgh&#8217;s Pink Boots Society; and as it starts to get warmer, be on the lookout for Grapefruit Chinookee IPA from Full Pint &#8212; it was a standout at the summer festival.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>When you reach a five-year milestone, it feels right to take a moment and reflect on the path that got you there. And if you think back to the first Pittsburgh Craft Beer Week &#8212; especially if you do so right after completing the fifth &#8212; you&#8217;ll understand just how far the industry has come [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":4,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[18,17],"tags":[5,6,26,19,34,20,42,32,15],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/beerme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/beerme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/beerme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/beerme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/4"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/beerme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=267"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/beerme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":387,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/beerme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/267\/revisions\/387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/beerme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/beerme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/newsinteractive.post-gazette.com\/beerme\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}