I have noticed over the last year or so the influx of
Yuengling Beer products into our region of the country. Now while I consider it a common, mass-produced beer of fairly low quality with regional beginnings in Pennsylvania - similar to
Old Style Beer in the
Midwest especially Chicago,
Lone Star Beer in the southwest, and
Rainer Beer in the northwest - seeing that label and its boasting of being the oldest brewery in the U.S. does bring back a good memory of a trip my good friend, Craig, and I took several years ago to The Delaware Water Gap region of Pennsylvania. It was so many years ago, in fact, that I am having a hard time putting an exact date on it (thank goodness for blogs now to keep up with such things). Middle to late 90s I am thinking? Anyway, despite not remembering the exact year, the trip itself does stand out because we had such a good time including a good story about our first encounter with
Yuengling Beer.
Craig and I were both heavily into landscape photography at the time, especially waterfalls, and I had done some research on The Delaware Water Gap area which has an abundance of them. We found a good cheap flight out of Nashville on what was then the fledgling Southwest Airlines to Hartford, Connecticut. We drove west through Connecticut and southern New York state to the northeastern edge of Pennsylvania. The
Delaware Water Gap is a long north-to-south valley that shares state boundaries with New York and on farther south with New Jersey. After a long first day of driving, hiking and shooting, we ambled over to a little bar we spied within walking distance to our hotel. It was a great little place abuzz early in the evening with what looked to be a fairly local crowd. Craig and I were just getting into trying heavier, darker beer and were fairly new fans of
Guinness. We took our seats at the bar and tried to decide what we would have. The bar had a nice selection of draughts on tap and we opted for "black and tans" - i.e. half
Guinness - half Bass Pale Ale. The barkeep obliged without any questions or comments. The bill accompanied the pints despite neither of us asking for it nor the barkeep asking if we wanted to run a tab.
Hmmph, real friendly, here.
"Six bucks each!!" we mouthed silently to one another in shocked surprise.
Remember, this was many years ago and it was the "just out of college and scraping by" days for both of us and the thought of a night of $6 pints and a couple more to follow just was not in our budget. We figured we would have to resort back to some light-colored domestic swill to stretch our meager dollars a little more. While sipping our expensive pints - being careful not to spill a drop of the liquid black gold - more than one patron ambled up to the bar within earshot and ordered what sounded like a "black-tan." The barkeeper dutifully took their orders and returned with a dark beer in a plastic pint cup (not glass like ours).
"2 bucks." he announced.
The patrons would hand the barkeep a couple of crumpled dollar bills and shuffle off into the crowd. Well, after the third or fourth time of this, I started to get pretty steamed. I was just sure we were being "profiled" as dumb Southern hicks in this Yankee bar and they were having a good old time overcharging us for the same drinks locals were receiving for a third of the price. My heavy Southern accent has gotten me into a couple of situations while traveling north before that I can remember - once in British Columbia a waitress snickered and said she was sure I had asked for "ass-water" with my meal, and then again on the way back into the U.S. from the Canadian side of Niagara Falls a rude New York state border guard looked at us like we were from the moon when we asked her a question as she stood holding our Tennessee drivers
licenses.
We finished our pints and got the old boy's attention behind the bar. He ambled over and with Southern charm we decided to show some restraint on our part and just asked him politely what those folks were buying for $2 a pint.
"Black-tans," he replied flatly. Then perhaps seeing our growing confusion/rage, he quickly added. "
Yuengling Black and Tans, it's brewed here in Pennsylvania."
"Well serve us up a couple!" we said we with growing enthusiasm and easing rage. To say that we enjoyed the
Yuengling Black and Tans at $2 a pint would be an understatement and to stay that we stopped at just those first two would be a
vast understatement. We had a great trip thanks to perfect weather, incredible scenery (and photos) and cold
Yuenglings served up in plastic cups at $2 a pop.
I want to thank my friend, Craig, for reminding me of this story and that great trip when he recently emailed me and asked if I had tried "those
Yuengling Black and Tans." He had bought a six-pack the previous weekend and was pretty pleased with the results for the price. It was then that I had to remind him that he actually had already tried
Yuengling Black and Tan draughts on our trip so long ago. I was still mistaken at the name and told him they were the "Black-Tans" we had consumed in Pennsylvania so long ago, and he said that according to the labels of the ones he had just consumed that they were "Black
and Tans." Sure enough, I stand corrected. But the great story and that trip all came back to him then, and we had a good laugh at that night at the bar and that great visit to "the Gap."
To The Gap. Salute!
The title(s) for this new blog entry were so easy and so obvious that I had to go with two even though they don't seem to have anything to do with each other. Kind of an ode to those song titles where it seems the artist just can't decide which is the best title...my favorite example: Vertical Horizon's incredible song "Grey Sky Morning (Best I Ever Had)."
om French Broad Brewing - the Rye Hopper - Hopper? why, of course!! Both selections turned out to be terrific with my leanings toward the Rye Hopper by a slim margin. I really did think Terrapin's production of a rather darkish India pale ale (kind of an oxymoron, huh?) was superb and very creative. Those two growlers didn't last the weekend thanks to me, Ashlee and my brother-in-law, Andy, who I am slowly converting to the "dark side." Ashlee and I will be savoring our Yazoo jugs over the coming week and may just have to venture to downtown Nashville again this weekend and hang out in "The Projects."
