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 March 2009. It will be the second of three for 2009 (Feb, Mar, and Nov). Below are details for the March Firkinteenth. This page will be continually updated as we get more details.

For February's Firkinteenth, we had 20 firkins. They kicked in 7 hours. For March, we hope to have close to 30, which will be our most ever.

March 2009 Firkinteenth Details
updated as of 11 March 2009

• tapping begins at 9am! Due to  popular demand for Philly Beer Week, it's a special breakfast Firkinteenth. 
• Our kitchen will open at 9am serving a very limited breakfast menu.
• Number of firkins is still TBA. We have 30 listed so far.
• With 30 firkins, we should have cask ale going until at least 9pm. Time permitting Scoats will be updating the news page and tweeting throughout the day with cask status.
  
• 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. 

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

• Appalachian Celtic Knot 
• Arcadia Hopmouth Double IPA
• Arcadia Sky High Rye
  
• Ballast Point Big Eye IPA
• Boulder Mojo Risin IPA
• Cricket Hill Col. Blide's Bitter
• Dark Horse Double Crooked Tree IPA
  
• Dock Street Hop Garden
• Erie Railbender
• Flying Fish Applejack Barrel aged Grand Cru
  
• Gritty's Black Fly Stout
  
• Iron Hill (North Wales) Biere Noir
• Iron Hill (West Chester) Irish Red
• Ithaca  Flower Power (pin - counts 1/2 a firkin)
• Ithaca Bourbon TEN (pin - counts 1/2 a firkin)
• Lancaster Milk Stout
• Manayunk California Dreaming IPA
• Manayunk Oatmeal Stout
  
• Nodding Head TBA
• Philadelphia TBA
• River Horse Special Ale
  
• Sierra Nevada Stoudt
• Sly Fox Standard Ale
• Sprecher Special Amber
  
• St. Somewhere Oak Barrel Aged, Dry Hopped Saison Athene
  
• Stoudts ESB
• Troegs Scratch Beer
• Victory Yakima Twilight
  
• Weyerbacher Echo
• Voodoo Wynonas Big Brown Ale
  
• Yards General Washington Tavern Porter dry hopped with Fuggles

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

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, 20 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. We haven't looked at the 2010 calendar yet. 

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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