Beer Radar

I had a nice phone conversation this weekend with Victor Novak, who some of you will remember as an assistant at the former Dock Street brewpub on Logan Square (not to be confused with its current incarnation in West Philly).

I had totally lost track of Victor after he left town about 10 years ago, but his name came up in Google while I was researching a column about cream ale. Seems he’s won a bunch of GABF medals for the style as head brewer at TAPS Fish House outside of Anheim, Calif.

Amazingly, he’s turning out more than 30 different styles every year at the brewpub. But his No. 1 seller is that cream ale, which is the same recipe he was using when he worked at Dock Street. That recipe was designed by Bill Moeller, a former Schmidt’s brewmaster who helped several microbreweries (notably Brooklyn Brewing) get up and running.

“I always knew that when I got to my own brewpub, that cream ale recipe would be the basic beer,” he said. “I’m a  California boy, but I respect Philly tradition.”

This entry was posted on Monday, June 8th, 2009 at 1:23 pm and is filed under Beer etc.. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.