On the East Coast, bibliophiles have Strand; art-lovers The Met; baseball aficionados Fenway. Beer nerds? Beer nerds have Monk's Cafe. For decades, owners Tom Peters and Fergus Carey have operated what is widely considered one of the single finest beer-drinking destinations in the country.
Monk's impeccably curated and extraordinarily deep Belgian-centric bottle list complements two bars' worth of rotating taps that feature a fantastic cross section of American, Dutch, British, and even more Belgian brews. Of particular note is that Monk's routinely features Russian River's beer on tap, something that no other bar outside of parts of California and Denver can boast of. When I queried the staff on how this was possible, one of them informed me that Tom had first met Russian River's founder and master brewer, Vinnie Cilurzo, "back when he owned the Blind Pig in Temecula [ie early 90s]." They had bonded over a shared affection for the storied brewing culture of Belgium, something both drew upon as inspiration for their work. Apparently, the friendship has not only survived, but thrived - ergo, the regularly occurring Pliny the Elder, Blind Pig, and Damnation on tap.
But I'm getting ahead of myself! The homey environs of Monk's deserve to be lavished with more hagiographical detail. After my friend Tobi and I crossed under the Belgian-flag colored entry awnings, we were greeted with the "front bar", as below. Diligent bartenders moved assuredly between the racks of astoundingly varied glassware and the taps, handing off brew after brew to the patrons at the bar. The smells of steamed mussels, juicy burgers, and steamed sausages hung in the air in a contented sort of way.
Mouth still slightly ajar, I chanced to look up at the shelf above the front bar. Here was a trophy rack of nigh-unto-legendary proportions - I spotted bottles of rare Cantillon sours dating to the 30s, an amphora of Russian River's cherry-sour Supplication that must have been at least 5 liters large, obscure vintages of hand-labeled once-brewed beers. Obtaining any one of these beers would have given the pursuer a story worth telling for years; seeing all of them at once together inspired a sort of dumbfounded awe. Some of these brews would never again cross human lips, yet here they stood proudly, monuments to delicious times past enjoyed in the company of friends.
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| Several rare and ancient bottles of sour ales from Cantillon in Brussels |
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| The enormous Russian River Supplication is the blue-labeled bottle in the middle |
As the front bar was filled with patrons, Tobi and I decided to venture down the hall into the rear of the restaurant. Fittingly, there was another counter here to sidle up to and settle down - the "back bar". An amiable bartender handed us both the current back bar tap menu and a neon green colored booklet entitled "Monk's Beer Bible".
The opening page firmly established the values of this establishment, and is worth quoting at length:
Since we carry a rather extensive and esoteric selection of world class beers, we are occasionally unable to get a few of these beers from any of our many suppliers. We carry what we think is the best selection of beer in Philadelphia and are continually adding to our selection. Our Bible generally lists over 300 bottled beers at a time. With seasonal changes, we offer at least 400 different beers throughout the year. We've debuted more Belgian beers than any establishment in the United States. We really do love our beer!
Many of these beers will have strong flavor characteristics, some of which may be too intense for you. Some are tart, sour, earthy, musty, sweet, bitter, etc. Some have little or no carbonation. We do NOT give refunds on a beer just because you don't like it (except, of course, in the very rare occasion that a beer has actually gone bad). Just because you don't like it, doesn't mean you don't pay for it. Consider it the cost of your beer education...or whatever.
CHEERS!
Tom Peters
Serving Belgian Ale in Philadelphia since 1985, Knight of Belgian Brewers Guild since 2004, Ambassadeur Orval 2008-2013, James Beard Foundation Nominee 2013
I could write a volume about how much I love this page, especially the second paragraph. This uncompromising, tough-love approach to facilitating "beer education" is refreshing in an era of extreme customization and personalization. Tom believes his beer is great, and that classics are classics for a reason. Given his track record of endorsements from and collaboration with the cognoscenti of the beer world, we have reason to believe right along with him. Everyone that comes into Monk's, then, does well to set forth with an adventurous spirit and a game palate, with the intent to immerse them self in the glorious history of beer.
And set forth we did. Tobi and I pulled up the intensely curated back bar tap list, thirsty with high hopes. Knowing that Monk's was the only place in the East that regularly tapped the aforementioned wonders from Russian River Brewing, I skimmed down the list until my eyes zeroed in on four magical words: Russian River Blind Pig (6.1% ABV). This beer takes is name from both the aforementioned Vinnie Cilurzo's first craft beer establishment in Temecula and the Prohibition-era codeword for scoring a beer. I had tried, and absolutely loved, this IPA's more intensely hopped, malted, and alcohol-laced Imperial IPA cousin in my time - Pliny the Elder had been, and still was, one of my all time favorites. However, I had not yet chanced upon Blind Pig until this moment. With so much history steeped in, my expectations were high. I signaled to the bartender, and he set me up with both a beautiful pint of the stuff and a phrase that piqued my anticipation even more: "Personally, I like Blind Pig more than Pliny - it's a better beer."
At this point, I was set, with the best set-up a beer nerd could ever ask for - here I was, at one of the world's most storied beer bars, about to enjoy a freshly tapped pint of Blind Pig, my tasting notebook open before me, the Beer Bible at my fingertips, the warm light from the eaves bathing the golden letters of "Monk's Cafe" on the mirror in front of me to the point of gleaming. I toasted with Tobi, and we drank.
This beer was a clear golden yellow orange, lighter in coloration that most of the style, with slight lacing on the surface. Grapefruit aroma positively exploded off the surface. Great carbonation led into an initial volley of bitter-speckled, slightly caramelly malt paired with lemony hops. A monster assertion of white grapefruit followed into a bleed of hoppy resin, then resolving to a crisp, refreshing bitterness. This was a wicked balanced and eerily quaffable beer - one of the best that I'd ever had, earning one of the highest ratings I've ever given to a beer, 4.75/5.
After quickly moving through that pint of heaven, I dove into the dark, sour, Belgian waters of the rest of the tap menu.
My first go was Drie Fonteinen's Zwet.be (7.0% ABV), a soured Porter from one of the most well regarded gurus of souring in all Belgium: Armand Debelder. Armand's brewery Drie Fonteinen (also 3 Fonteinen) had worked for decades on innovative ways of blending Lambics (wildly fermented Belgian ales) to make even more complex styles of sour beers, such as Gueuzes (blended young and old Lambics) and Krieks (Lambics re-fermented with cherry juice). Our bartender informed me that Armand had also worked with Tom Peters on several occasions to develop beers exclusively for Monk's Cafe, a true testament to the mutual respect between these two storied beer institutions. The interesting part going into this pint was that I had a predisposition against Porters - despite trying some very highly esteemed ones, such as Hill Farmstead's Everett, I had never really found one that truly struck my fancy in any memorable way. Despite this, the idea of adding a sour cast to a style of beer normally known for roastiness, chocolate, and coffee flavors was intriguing. This one poured dark brown with coffee edges and a strange purplish red cast foam on top. A slight sour aroma mingled with a bit of faint coffee. Light, roasty coffee came to the fore upon tasting, followed by a sour bleed into more acetic coffee, with lightly toasted, ashy malt with lactic sour edges. Further sips revealed a bit of expressive dark chocolate with some fruity elements in the middle. While admittedly a strange mixing of styles, the overall effect was tasty, earning the same respectable 3.75/5 that the best-in-style Everett did.
I followed with Monk's Cafe Flemish Sour Red Ale (5.5% ABV), a white-labeled special that Tom had sourced from Brouwerij Van Steenberge. Cola colored with a slight white top, this brew exuded a strong Balsamic vinegar / acetic aroma. Tasting it revealed the funky sourness of vinegar around a caramel-like sour backbone, followed by a lactic acid cut to a sweet malt close. There was a bit of a metallic tinge that cropped up at the end, and the whole affair was relatively heavy in the mouth. Despite the undeniable cool factor of having your own house-label of beer, these last two demerits somewhat offset the positives, resulting in a 3.25/5 overall.
Moving in the same stylistic vein, I continued with Liefmans' Goudenband (8% ABV) on the barkeep's recommendation. Most of my experiences before this with sour beers had been with those built on lighter base beers - Lambics, Berliner Weisses, Krieks, Framboises, Gueuzes - so he figured that it would be a good "beer education" to move into the realm of darker soured beers based on red or brown base beers (for a better explanation on the category of sour beers, you can read my style guide here). This one poured a cloudy cola brown with hanging, lazy carbonation. Deeply rich molasses, sugary jam, and vinuous port aromas all wafted off the top. It sipped surprisingly lightly in the mouth with good carbonation, exhibiting strong acetic maltiness over an oat-inflected sourness. Even if it wasn't in my stylistic wheelhouse, I had to admit that it was quite tasty, earning a 3.75/5.
In parallel to all of this, Tobi had been working his way through his own slew of brews, and obligingly permitted me a few sips of each to garner tasting notes. These included the Belgian Strong Ale Russian River Damnation (7.75% ABV) ("Hazy yellow with a white ring. Belgian yeast, pear and banana, esters on the nose. Great mouth carbonation, waves of fruit esters, pears and bananas again, with a sugary malty, yeasty close. 3.75/5 overall."); the Belgian Abt/Quadrupel St. Bernardus Abt 12 (10.5% ABV) ("Scarlet mahogany, clear. Woodiness, dried fruits, and caramelly malts on the nose. Pear, banana, and some cocoa flavors to pear-soaked creamy caramel, fading to sweet malts. Some pleasant booze-iness to close. Very unexpected, but interesting, disparity between the aroma and the taste. I need to try more of this style to be able to better render judgement on this clearly well-made beer, but it wasn't personally that enjoyable. Overall, a 3.75/5."); the hop-kissed English-style bitter ale Brouwerij De Molen Op and Top (4.5% ABV) ("Opaque orange brown with a white ring. Caramelly malts, green grapes, punch, and mangosteen on the nose. Round, yet bitter edges kick into a highly malted biscuit taste with some indistinct fruit jam and dried fruit. Mild fig newton like edges. Much better aromatically than on the palate. 3.25/5 overall."); and the dark Saison, Oxbow Noel (7% ABV) ("Cola brown with slight white ring. Belgian yeast aromas with dark, sugary malts and slight coffee scent there too. Belgian yeast forward taste with esters into foul bubblegum sweetness. Not good, 3/5 overall.").
The interesting part of trying Tobi's selected beers is how different our appraisals and levels of enjoyment of these brews were: he listed 3 of them on his "Best 5 Beers of the Night" list, while I struggled to find one that I wholeheartedly enjoyed. Part of this disparity may be due to my somewhat hobbling inability to wrap my palate around the characteristic taste that Belgian brewer's yeast imparts (fruity esters, banana, baking spaces). Time after time, I try in vain to like some of the most storied Belgian beers in history, but there's just something about that range of flavors that I have trouble with when it's strongly exhibited. On a craftmanship level, Belgian-yeast-flavor-forward beers such as Abt 12, Saison Dupont, and hundreds more are most definitely well conceived and well executed. I'm clearly able to recognize the painstaking focus of intent and precision at work. And yet - I still don't love drinking them. As my overall scores are meant to reflect a combination of both craftmanship on the brewer's part and enjoyment on mine, I often clock these beers in at a level lower than their outright "objective" quality would suggest. But this is the joy of learning about and exploring beer - developing both an objective ability to identify quality, while also honing a subjective ability to identify what you love drinking. There's as little point in drinking "great beers" that you don't enjoy as there is in never exploring the greater universe of beer because you "already know what you like". The truth of it all, as I'm discovering, lays somewhere in the middle.
Throughout these first few hours of drinking, a fine cast of characters had circulated through the bar. One of Tobi's friends from in town stopped by, got a gluten-free beer recommendation from the barkeep, and, to her surprise, actually enjoyed it. We all talked in the loudly affectionate way that people do after two or three beers, engaged and excited without being boisterous or overbearing. We befriended a middle-aged couple next to us, and upon finding out that the wife was Colombian, we all launched into Spanish to discuss the merits of this place or that. It all had the heady feel of being in some expat watering hole that an impressionable 20-something writer might have made his place back in the day. The bartender regaled us with tales of the Pennsylvania's Kafkaesque liquor distribution laws, and pilgrim after pilgrim came and went, their arrivals and departures book-ending pints and bottles of things that had held enough luster to carry them here.
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| Cuvee De Ranke, a present waiting to be unwrapped and enjoyed |
At this point in the evening, we had worked our way through just over half of the beers on tap at the back-bar, and we decided that it was high time to crack open the Beer Bible and investigate the vast bottle list.
Based on my self-professed love of Lambics, our bartender guided me towards Cuvee De Ranke (7% ABV). After showily dispatching the white paper wrapping that ensconced the bottle, he poured a glass each for Tobi and I. It was orangey gold with white edge lacing and some sediment on the bottom of the glass. A very sour aroma typical of Lambics sprang off the surface, displaying notes of lemon, acetic acid, and funk. Great mouth carbonation and a light body helped communicate a wonderful and wickedly-bracing multifaceted sourness: malic acid (green apple), acetic acid (vinegar), citric acid (white grapefruit), and brett (the funk) were all well-represented. An amazing tartness held throughout the entire body, with some white grape must exerting itself as well. Extremely refreshing, and not only one of the tastiest sour, but one of the tastiest beers, period, that I've yet had. 4.75/5 overall.
Switching it up stylistically, we followed with Firestone Walker's Double DBA (12% ABV), a Barleywine that the brewers at FW create by doubling the strength of their base beer then aging it in oak barrels. Past a super fancy box, the result was an amber brown pour with great carbonation contributing to a a robust head. This one had a scotch aroma note forward, with some mild buttery / butyric characteristic evident, flanked by a bourbon barrel aged oak smell around the edges. This is one of the only beers I've yet encountered that manages to evoke "butteriness" in the aroma without invoking a pejorative tone - the rich, woody tenor of barrel aging holds it in balance. Tasting reveals intense buttery caramel with chewy malt and tons of brown sugar, pralines, and toffee all over. A wonderful and potent sipping beer that would be perfect with a good book and a roaring fire on a cold night. Overall, a strong 4.25/5.
Tobi picked the next one, opting for the improbably available Jester King Petite Prince (2.9% ABV). Improbable because with extremely rare exceptions, this small cult Texas "farmhouse" brewery doesn't distribute outside of their state. Our bartender noted our enthusiasm at its presence on the bottle list, to which he noted, "All sorts of breweries *want* to get their bottles on our list, if nowhere else." At this point in the evening's samplings, this was clearly evident. This particular "table-beer" bore a visage inspired by its namesake character. In the glass, it was a translucent yellow-straw color. Smelling revealed Belgian yeast aroma with some vague fruit floating around. The taste also led with Belgian yeast, open carbonation buoying the taste of roasted root vegetables, followed by a spiced dry close into more Belgian yeast. Earthy and round, with some pepper and minor acidity at the end. A very complex entry for a beer clocking in way down at 2.9% ABV, a point lower than even Bud Light. While the Belgian yeast forward character stymied my enjoyment a bit, it was a clearly solid beer that would work quite well at washing down the rich and hearty foods of its home state. Overall, a 3.5/5.
With the bar in full swing, I finally sprang for the beer on the bottle list that had caught my eye as surely as the ruby in the cave had caught Abu the monkey's in Aladdin. I plunked down $25 for a 750mL large-format bottle of the 2009 Project of Cascade's Kriek (7.3% ABV). Based out of Portland, Cascade has made a name for itself with its extraordinarily well-executed American redux of classic Belgian sour-fruit beers. With nearly four years of aging under its belt, I was eager to see how the typically forceful sourness of the Kriek had matured. This one poured a mildly hazy ruby scarlet color. A sour dry funk wafted upwards off the surface. I took a sip, and found that characteristically quenching acetic acid flavor that transitioned to a strong malic acid and sour cherry cider taste. Warm, vinegary, malty sourness entered into red wine tannins. There was rich sour cherry all over this one, just bracing waves of vinegar-inflected deliciousness. A sour and fruit beer lover's dream, I absolutely adored this one, which earned a 4.5/5 overall. I can't wait to try more current vintages to evaluate how this one had changed over time.
By now, we were quite drunk - predictably. It had been seven hours at the bar of conversation, laughter, and beer exploration. Just before we left, the couple with whom we had been talking decided to go in for a bottle of Russian River Supplication (7% ABV). This beer was the result of an incredibly pain-staking process of administering two kinds of specific yeast to brown ale, then allowing it to sour with cherries in barrels that once held Pinot Noir. Given this labor-intensive production, it had a price-tag to match, which had discouraged us so far. But just an hour after meeting these people, here they were, convivially sharing this delicious sour. My tasting notes resemble chicken scratch in my notebook for this entry, but I did manage to get the gist. Supplication was a cloudy ruby tinged brown. The lemony acidic sour tinge in the aroma duplicated in the flavor. Caramelly malt lead into an almost brown sugar toffee flavor ensconced in more cherry-infused sour. This one was rich and oaky around a sour core. Very tasty, earning a 4.25/5 overall. Given that I drank it (1) after another very different kind of cherry sour beer, and (2) after intoxication had settled in, it's entirely possible that this great beer is even better. I've got a bottle of it sitting in my fridge at home currently, waiting for the chance to inform a second opinion.
We thanked our new friends, waved to the great bartenders that had taken care of us all evening, and headed out into the night. My pilgrimage to Monk's was one of the single most satisfying beer adventures that I'd ever had in every respect, and I thoroughly commend it to any and all beer-lovers that have not yet had the chance to visit. I know that I'll be back.
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