beer and baseball in the 'burgh (with the Wad)

Look what my camera can do! It would've been nice to discover that a little earlier, but oh well. That's the gorgeous PNC Park in Pittsburgh, taken at the Pirates-Yankees game on Thursday...slightly before the huge, game-postponing thunderstorm. Again, oh well. We did mostly all of the fun things one does at a baseball game, got to see two exciting innings, and didn't even buy any $8 beers.

We did buy some reasonably-priced beers though! Meg and I have been visiting breweries around the state for awhile now and since she gave me Lew Bryson's Pennsylvania Breweries for a going-away present last summer, we finally have a guide. On this trip we ate lunch at The Church Brew Works (yep, it's in a former church), and stopped by Iron City/Pittsburgh Brewing Company (home of Iron City beer) and Pennsylvania Brewing Company (Penn Pilsner etc). I won't complain about anything I drank, but my favorite is Penn Gold, a Munich-style Helles that has a bunch of gold medals (I only drink beer with gold medals, naturally). I learned from Bryson's section on Penn Brewery that lagers are more expensive to make and often harder to get right than ales--you can't hide behind the hops. I won't pretend to know a lot about the subject, but I always welcome justification to like what I like :)

We were pretty sad to find that Pittsburgh Brewing Co. doesn't give tours anymore and has closed down its gift shop. I hope that isn't indicative of Iron City's future. It sounds like they're having trouble finding a spot between the national cheap brands and the popular local craft brews, although there's at least some push to keep Iron City alive. I like Bad Luck City's approach--get the hipsters interested: "It happened to Pabst; it’s starting to happen (in Philly at least) with Lions Head; it happened to Yuengling; so it can happen to Iron City as well." So order one and tell everyone all the cool kids are doing it.

Some cool kids:

P.S. if you didn't know, Wad is Meg's nickname. Wad, Megwad, the Wad...she answers to 'em all ;)