Sunday I received an email from the lovely Amy Strauss. It went a little something like this:

Hey Mel!
Hope you are having a great weekend, even for today’s rain.

So, I work for this local Philly ‘burb-based food company, The Town Dish, who tackles Chester County and beyond.

With the assistance of Southwest Airlines, we’ll travel to another city and back in one day, meeting a few food bloggers who are kind enough to to guide our way of eating through their town.

We are hoping for our first trip to connect the bloggers of our area with the bloggers of the newly trekked city (Tuesday we are going to Boston) — thus why I am connecting you. Being that between Philly, the burbs both my way and your way, there’s a ton of people that can be represented, but since Bathtub Brewery is unique and worth the national mention, I would love for your blog to be included in our traveling-out-of-state roundup.

Of course I said yes! What an awesome opportunity for one of our homebrews to wind up in the hands of someone else who most likely ALSO appreciates fantastic beer?

Ray was onboard from the get-go, so I selected a 12 oz bottle of our Barleywine (it’s been aging over a year now), made an impromptu label and, at the last minute, attached one of our business cards with a rubber band and staple, making it a not-quite-so ghetto tag.

Monday I passed the bottle (donning a classy brown bag) along to Amy, who then got it over to her boss Mary, who packed it along with all the other goodies. Early Tuesday morning she boarded a Southwest flight for Boston with her suitcase full of Philly-appropriate goods for a “Dish on the Fly,” where she spent the entire day running around Boston with the city’s local food bloggers who have the 411 on the food and drink scene.

Talk about friggin’ awesome.

Riding along with our Barleywine was a bottle of Summer Love and HopDevil from Victory Brewing Co. Talk about an honor to share a suitcase with their brews! The Victory beers were gifted to Harpoon Brewery, another excellent contributor to craft beer.

Courtesy of Mary of @wcdish

Our Barleywine went to Charlie Cummings, brewer of Harpoon Brewery, who is also a homebrewer (of course). Doesn’t he look so happy to have our bottle in his hand?

So, not only was this a great opportunity for Bathtub to represent Philly, but I think the heart of this project is facilitating a connection between like-minded folks across the country. Folks who care about what they eat and drink, as well as the people behind the food and drink (or in other cases, the services and products they purchase).

This is a trend that several business books have looked at, showing how people are opening their wallets, but with their values in mind. We don’t just want stuff, we want goods that have a story behind them. We want eggs from the farmer who packs each dozen in a beautiful assortment of colors to make his customer smile; we want to buy vintage cookbooks from a bookshop owner who spends her off-hours searching for treasures high and low; we want to buy jewelry from someone who created a tiny studio out of her home and makes each ring from scratch. We want a story.

The Town Dish’s “Dish on the Fly” does that. It connects bloggers and connects our stories. It also shows the country what the Philadelphia-metro area is capable of, and it’s capable of A LOT.

Homebrewing, Miscellany 3 Comments »