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

The next Friday the 13th is June 2008. It will be the ONLY F13 of 2008. 2009 has three though - Feb, Mar, and Nov.

This page will continue to be updated until the 13th.

June 2008 Firkinteenth Details
updated as of 07 May 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 amont 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 TBA
• Dock Street TBA
  
• Flying Dog TBA
  
• Flying Fish TBA
• General Lafayette TBA
• Gritty McDuff, maybe
  
• Iron Hill (North Wales) Ironbound APA.  "We'll dry hop it with something cool....."
• Iron Hill (West Chester) Scottish Ale. 3.6% abv
• Lancaster TBA
• Legacy TBA
• Nodding Head TBA
• One Guy, a strong maybe.
  
• Philadelphia TBA
• Porterhouse TBA 
• River Horse Special Ale, easy drinking British style amber ale, 4.5% abv
• Sly Fox TBA
• Stoudts TBA
• Troegs Sh#t-Free Hopback. Nick says he is going to dry-hop the sh#t out of it.
• Voodoo maybe
  
• Weyerbacher TBA
• Victory TBA
• Yards, if possible.

I suggest arriving early. If we get too full, there will be a line outside, so please dress cool 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 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 has two, April and July.

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 and the rest is history.

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