Friday the 13th is a special day at The Grey Lodge. We don't worry about black cats crossing our paths or broken mirrors because we have 13 or more firkins of cask conditioned ale sitting on bar. So walk under a ladder or whatever you have to do to get to The Grey Lodge on Friday the 13th.

"This whole thing makes no sense whatsoever. It's totally random because the timing is entirely at the mercy of the calendar. It's held in this tiny neighborhood bar in Northeast Philadelphia, an area which is not exactly your mecca for great beer. Yet virtually every brewer within shouting distance would kill to be a part of it and people come from all over to stand shoulder-to-shoulder and hope they can get a beer from bartenders who are incredibly overworked. Scoats is either a genius or an idiot savant, I can't decide which. But God bless him." - Jack Curtin, beer writer

In July 2007, the nice folks at Jimmy Craic Head TV made this great video of Friday the Firkinteenth 16. 

The next Friday the 13th is February 2009. It will be first of three for 2009, Feb, Mar, and Nov. This page will continue to be updated as we get closer to 13 Feb 2009.

June 2008 Firkinteenth Details
updated as of 11 June 2008

• tapping begins at noon.
• Number of firkins is still TBA.
  
• 7 firkins will be pouring at any time (except when we get down to less than 7), tapping a new one as one kicks. The order of the casks will be random, but hey there should be no stinkers in the line-up. 
• Due to the huge amount of cask ale we will have, we will be doing limited growler fills, most likely after 9pm and during that lag period (usually between 3pm and 4pm) where the first seven are hanging on a little too long and people start to get antsy.
  

  Current Cask List (likely to change, it always does): 

• Appalachian Hoppy Trails IPA
• Arcadia Hopmouth Double IPA
  
• Bells Two Hearted Ale
• Clipper City TBA
  
• Dock Street Satellite Stout
• Dock Street Rye IPA
  
• Flying Dog Snake Dog IPA
  
• Flying Fish Hopfish, dry hopped with Simcoe,Amirillo and Chinook.
• General Lafayette Wayside Summer Ale, 
• Iron Hill (North Wales) Ironbound APA.  "We'll dry hop it with something cool....."
• Iron Hill (West Chester) Scottish Ale. 3.6% abv
• Ithaca Flower Power IPA (pin) and Oaked Nut Brown (pin)
  
• Lancaster Amish Four Grain
• Legacy Dear Abbey Dubbel
• Nodding Head IPA
  
• Philadelphia Special Blend 
• Porterhouse Weizen Bock or Hoppy Lager
• River Horse Special Ale, easy drinking British style amber ale, 4.5% abv
• Sly Fox Standard Ale
• Stoudts Black Eye PA
• Troegs Sh#tless Hopback. Nick says he is going to dry-hop the sh#t out of it.
• Victory Hop Wallop
• Weyerbacher Hops Infusion
• Weyerbacher Old Heathen
  

If we get too full, there will be a line outside, so please dress lightly and be patient. We will do our best to let as many people in as safely and quickly as we can. 

I currently suggest arriving late, say after 9:30pm, with so many firkins we should still have cask ale til late at night.

As usual, We will be stocking up on 8oz glasses so you can safely try several of these great beers. Also, as usual, there will be pitchers of water all over.

An interesting bit of trivia, this is probably the only beer event in the world whose frequency and timing are completely at the mercy of the calendar. Friday the Firkinteenth is a now registered trademark of The Grey Lodge Pub. It is amazing what you can do with a Web browser and a credit card.

What's the deal with ringing the bell?
Teacher says every time a bell rings, an angel gets it's wings. We ring the bell every time we kick a cask. Ergo kick a cask, an angel gets it's wings. Last firkinteenth, 24 angels got their wings. Sounds a bit random to us, but we are not ones to question God's plans. So come out drink some cask ale and help an angel get it's wings.

What's cask conditioned ale and why should I care?
Additional hops and sugars or wort are added to cask conditioned ales when they are barreled resulting in a secondary fermentation in the barrel. These ales tend to have very pleasing natural carbonation and are served at a higher temperature than regular draft beer. Due to the oxygen that enters the cask once it is opened, the shelf life is only a few days. This is beer at its freshest.

Cask conditioned ales are dispensed using gravity or a hand pump. Regular draft beer is pushed using either CO2, nitrogen or a combination of the two. Since the barrels will be sitting on the bar, we will be using gravity. We've stocked up on extra gravity for Friday the Firkenteenth; we'd hate to run out of it.

What's a pin? What's a firkin?
Firkins and pins are two sizes of casks. A firkin is 40.8 liters (10.8 US gallons). A pin is 20.4 liters (5.4 gallons). A typical US 1/2 barrel is 15.5 gallons.

How many Friday the Firkinteenth's are there per year?
Every 11 years there are three; 1998 was one of those years, when they fell in February, March and November. 2005 had one in May. 2006 has two, January and October. 2007 had two, April and July. 2008 had one. 2009 will have three.

Was the first Friday the Firkinteenth another First Time in the Northeast for The Grey Lodge Pub?
Sort of. Cask conditioned ales probably first found their way to Northeast Philadelphia about 350 years ago. We are, however, the first to bring them back after an absence of many decades.

How or even better why did Friday the Firkinteenth start?
Scoats wanted start serving cask-conditioned ales at The Grey Lodge, but thought it needed some sort of push to get it going. He saw somewhere, and with enough time to plan ahead, that 1998 was going to have three Friday the 13ths (this happens about every 11 years). The phrase "Friday the Firkinteenth" came to him in a vision while riding the Market Frankford El and the rest is history.

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