The Ultimate Beer Run!!!!!!!!!!

August 21, 2010 We set out for the Ultimate Beer Run. WE were on a mission from God, well the BEER GODS that is. We set forth from Trenton, NJ to venture forth to the towns of Media and Wayne, PA. Many beer nerds may go slightly our of their way to pick up a 6-pack or two of some good beer. We traveled about an hour and a half to reach our destinations. We were on a quest to stop at 2 beer establishments. One being Pinocchio’s Pizzeria/Beer Garden in Media, PA (yes a pizza place that also has a phenomenal selection of individual beers), and our second destination was The Beer Yard in Wayne, PA. But first we made a little detour on our voyage.

Pinocchio’s was meant to be our first stop, but upon looking at the location of our destination would could not help noticing that a Iron Hill Brewpub was located just around the corner. So the Media, PA Iron Hill Brewpub wound up being our first stop our this epic beer journey. The four of us split two samplers to get a feel for the brewpubs beers, while we enjoyed our lunch. The samplers were good but seemed to be a little lacking, but not a total disappointment. Sorry to say but in my opinion i thought the Iron Hill in Maple Shade, NJ was a lot better.

So after filling our bellies with some food and brewpub beer we had a short walk to our first planned destination, Pinocchio’s (http://www.pinbeer.com/).  Pinocchio’s Beer Garden was tucked in the back of the pizza place/bar.  Back there was about a 20 foot long 8 foot high cooler filled with individual bottles of beer over 700 different beers for the taking.  It was essentially build your own 6-pack.  The selection was almost overwhelming.  It was tough to make a choice on what we wanted to fill our 6-packs with.  So we used the default of looking for new beer caps, cause A.) we knew it would be a beer we never had before and B.) we wanted to add to our collection.  This place has beers from all over the country many of which would be tough to find in many other beer stores or bars.  So, we all grabbed a 6-pack holder and starting filling. In the end we walked out with 28 different 12 oz bottles and 7 different larger bottles. Its a quality selection of beers, that we can’t wait to taste. We’ll post a list of the selections later.

After clearing out from there with our stash our next stop was The Beer Yard (http://www.beeryard.com/) in Wayne, PA.

The Beer Yard was a different style of beer establishment from Pinocchio’s.  The Beer Yard is a beer distributor with a large selection of 1,842 beers of 129 different beer types from 563 different breweries. And since it was in PA that meant we had to buy it by the case….. Well this place did not disappoint, the selection was amazing.  Plus the thing that stood out about this place, they custom made variety cases for your to buy.  We walked out with a variety case from Dark Horse Brewery containing 6 of its beers.  We also walked out of there with a case of Duck-Rabbit Barleywine, to split with our friend and homebrew consultant Bob, and were lucky enough to grab a case of large bottles of Killer Penguin 2008 Barleywine.

In the end it was a bit of an expensive journey but the rewards in the quality of beer that we picked up will be well worth it. So if you are ever our in the Wayne, PA or Media, PA you got to stop at Pinocchio’s and The Beer Yard and catch their selection of beers.  These are definitely two places that we will be making multiple trips to every year to stock up on some phenomenal beer we can’t get around here.

Here is a picture of what we brought home, a total of 43 different beers and 97 bottles in total: