{"id":231714,"date":"2025-09-16T15:52:10","date_gmt":"2025-09-16T15:52:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/231714\/"},"modified":"2025-09-16T15:52:10","modified_gmt":"2025-09-16T15:52:10","slug":"philly-brewery-history-walking-tour-explores-colonial-taverns","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/231714\/","title":{"rendered":"Philly brewery history: Walking tour explores colonial taverns"},"content":{"rendered":"

From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to cover? Let us know!<\/a>\n<\/p>\n

Philadelphia is considered one of the earliest brewing centers in the United States<\/a>, where colonial-era taverns played a key role in commerce, culture and politics.\n<\/p>\n

WHYY \u201cMorning Edition\u201d host Jennifer Lynn spoke with beer historian Rich Wagner, who will lead a walking tour this month for WHYY listeners through the city\u2019s historic brewing and tavern sites.\n<\/p>\n

The tour is one of several events scheduled to take place in advance of the nation\u2019s 250th anniversary<\/a>.\n <\/p>\n

___\n<\/p>\n

Jennifer Lynn: <\/strong>How important was beer in daily life for the early Philadelphians?\n<\/p>\n

Rich Wagner:<\/strong> It was a staple. Sometimes they call beer \u201cbread in a bottle.\u201d It was nutritious, it had vitamins and it had a little bit of alcohol. Again, depending on your purse, the stronger beer cost more. The table beer that was only maybe 2 or 3% alcohol was just like drinking seltzer water today.\n<\/p>\n

JL:<\/strong> Yeah, and speaking about water \u2014 why do I think that people drank beer instead of water?\n<\/p>\n

RW:<\/strong> People didn\u2019t trust the water<\/a>. Though you did have wells, if you lived in an area, you knew where good water was.\n<\/p>\n

JL:<\/strong> Who was drinking the beer? Was it more common among men, women, the regal? The masses?\n<\/p>\n

RW:<\/strong> I think everybody. I mean, there were probably people that did not drink alcohol, but beer, wine, spirits \u2014 just like today. You have a certain demographic: people that don\u2019t like beer, they like to drink gin, or they like to drink rum. There are also people that only like to drink beer.
\n\"RichRich Wagner, beer historian and assistant brewer at Manayunk Brewing Co. (Courtesy of Rich Wagner)\n<\/p>\n

JL:<\/strong> And I\u2019m having trouble with referring to where people drank \u2014 pubs, taverns. What\u2019s the terminology here?\n<\/p>\n

RW:<\/strong> Tavern\u2019s a good descriptor. Some taverns served food, some taverns didn\u2019t. Some taverns were more like a hotel. You could have food and drink and a place to stay, a place to board your horse for the night \u2014 all that. So there were different scales of things. Whereas a tavern \u2014 or a tippling house, what they called a tippling house \u2014 might be someone\u2019s house that had been converted. As for a pub, what is the ordinary? It was, as the name suggests, nothing special. It served alcoholic beverages, and later, coffee, maybe hot chocolate, or something like that. Frequently, they would have food as well.\n<\/p>\n

JL:<\/strong> OK, like the early mini mart?\n<\/p>\n

RW:<\/strong> Something like that, with beer.\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"From Philly and the Pa. suburbs to South Jersey and Delaware, what would you like WHYY News to…\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":231715,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[5132],"tags":[5229,7738,10188,1448,2830,1311,124902,67,586,132,5230,68,2969],"class_list":{"0":"post-231714","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-philadelphia","8":"tag-america","9":"tag-beer","10":"tag-old-city","11":"tag-pa","12":"tag-pennsylvania","13":"tag-philadelphia","14":"tag-philadelphia-brewery","15":"tag-united-states","16":"tag-united-states-of-america","17":"tag-unitedstates","18":"tag-unitedstatesofamerica","19":"tag-us","20":"tag-usa"},"share_on_mastodon":{"url":"https:\/\/pubeurope.com\/@us\/115214781786559114","error":""},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231714","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=231714"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/231714\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/231715"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=231714"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=231714"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.europesays.com\/us\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=231714"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}