The Annual Philipsburg Wine Walk on May 27 welcomed a much-anticipated new vendor that intends to be a fixture on Front Street for many, many years to come.
The Dead Canary Brewing Company set up its canopy on the front doorstep of what will become its permanent home, just three doors north of the intersection of Front and Presqueisle streets in the center of town.
According to Head Brewmaster Brent Baskin, The Dead Canary will open sometime around the end of August or early September. It will brew on-site and serve an eclectic assortment of beers, ales, IPAs and stouts that Baskin hopes will please the many beer fans in the area.
On tap this day at the Wine Fest, for example, was Dark Confidant (6.4 percent alcohol) — a dark stout with hints of chocolate, coffee and toasted marshmallow.
“We kind of have a synergistic relationship with the PRC (Philipsburg Redevelopment Corporation) in that we are going to be helping Philipsburg come up, we hope,” Baskin said, referring to how the pub could help bring more people back to the center of Philipsburg.
“I fell in love with home brewing,” Baskin said. “You could mess around and do whatever you wanted because it wasn’t a business so there was no risk. We are going to try to carry that on.
“Our system here is small, so it allows us to experiment and do weird stuff because we can burn through small batches real quick,” Baskin continued.
“We also have a ton of respect for old beer styles, so we are going to have some historical beer styles. One of the ones we have here today is a modified old Norwegian farm style called Ash and Orchard. This was brewed with smoked malt, so it has sort of a really rustic, smokey flavor and it also has the essence of juniper branches, so it has a piney note to it as well. It’s an old style, and they actually used the branches to filter the grain, and it became the style. We kind of nerd out — or actually I kind of nerd out — about the styles.”
Other options on the preliminary beer menu include Hoffer, the house IPA (6.8 percent), Fecundity: Eclipse, single-hop, double IPA series (8 percent); and That Should Be Enough For A While, a bombpop sour ale (9 percent).
Baskin, understandably, said he is excited and optimistic about the opening of The Dead Canary.
“We won’t have much competition in Philipsburg,” he said, “so we’re excited to get going.”
This story appears in the June 2-8 edition of The Centre County Gazette.
