"The Sly Fox Helles Golden Lager has recently come to our fair city from the honorable state of Pennsylvania. It should be on tap in every bar in this great nation of ours.

"My friends, this Sly Fox promises something better with its aromas of soft malt and delicate hops. Then it delivers on that solemn pledge with solid flavor - not too much to scare away the common folk, but enough to even satisfy the nattering nabobs among us.

"It is, I dare say, an Abraham Lincoln of beers. And it happens to be produced in Royersford, Pa., scarcely more than 100 miles from a little town called Gettysburg."

"For Sly Fox, [Brian] O'Reilly has created a melting pot of beers that pay tribute to styles from around the world. Several of the brewery's year-round offerings will be sent to New York City on a regular basis: Phoenix Pale Ale (All-American), Pikeland Pils (Czech), Rt. 113 IPA (Anglo-American), O'Reilly's Stout (Irish), Saison Vos (Belgium) and Royal Weisse (German). Other seasonal offerings will also come our way."

"Any of those six have the strength of character to make them a fine running mate for the Helles Golden Lager."

I'D SAY SO. SO SLY FOX IN CANS IS DEFINITELY AN IDEA WHOSE TIME HAS COME?
We'll see, but the first indications are pretty solid. We knew that, since craft beers in cans are still relatively rare, there would be an immediate rush in sales because of the novelty, but this was much faster than we expected. The beers are just so good and similar to the draft versions that I'd assume the word will spread fast and the demand will keep growing. As an experiment, we took only canned beer to the Main Line Brewfest this past weekend. We poured everything we served from cans and the response was great.

CANNING WASN'T IN THE ORIGINAL PLANS, THOUGH?
Yes and no. We weren't considering it when we started the brewery but Brian said something to me back then that intrigued me. Then, when we went to the Craft Brewers Conference in Philadelphia last spring and talked to the people at Cask Brewing Systems about their canning lines and what they could do for us at a reasonable price, I really got excited. Cans and our 22oz and 750ml bottling program give us a unique niche in the industry.

NOW THAT THE FUTURE'S TAKING SHAPE, CAN YOU LOOK BACK AND TELL US WHAT WAS THE MOST UNEXPECTED THING YOU LEARNED IN THE FIRST YEAR?
That we would spend months and months just continuing to lay out cash (laughs). You spend a lot of money up front to get going and then you just keep on spending before you start getting it back. We knew that going in, but it's still quite a shock as it happens. Cooperage is a good example. For the first half year, it seemed like we just couldn't get on top of it. We had to buy kegs and more kegs almost weekly. That's a good thing in the long run, of course, because it meant the beer was selling, but it was a strain.

YOU SEEM TO BE PICKING UP THE PACE NOW. THE BREWERY WENT ONLINE IN LATE 2004, YOUR FIRST BOTTLES CAME OUT LAST NOVEMBER AND NOW CANS THIS SPRING.
Hey, we need the money (laughs). Seriously, things are on the right track and I think we're just about to really launch, to find our market. The brewery started being profitable at the end of last year and I think we'll stay profitable from here on out. And our restaurant is settling in and doing more volume now that we're over the growing pains, although they lasted longer than we'd expected. We're not over the hump yet-maybe we're just starting to see the light from the other side of the hump-but we're seeing a lot of progress and the pieces starting to fall into place.

Basically, our mission now is to produce all the beer we can sell and that means we have to start thinking like a manufacturing company.

THINKING LIKE A MANUFACTURING COMPANY? WHAT DOES THAT MEAN?
Our big issue for 2006 is managing production, being able to support what we have going on. We have to do some serious planning, create schedules and systems that will facilitate having the beer we need when we need it. And we have to be smart enough to know what we can do and can't do.

For example, if Phoenix Pale and Pikeland Pils sell in cans at the pace we expect (especially after we start shipping them to New Jersey in April and New York this summer), we will have to be brewing those beers regularly. Plus we've signed to have the Pils in Citizen's Bank Park for all Phillies homes games this year. That means even more demand for Pils and it's a double hit for us since lagers need time in the tank and, since we don't have a brite tank yet, every batch ties up a fermenter for an extended period.

Poor Brian [head brewer Brian O'Reilly] is coming back from his honeymoon to face those kinds of issues. Plus there are a lot of other things going on. We already have Ichor Quad in 750ml bottles, almost ready for release. We want to get our Instigator Doppelbock into 22oz bottles and out to the market by mid-April at the latest. We want to get our Incubus Tripel into bottles by summer. O'Reilly's Stout seems to be taking off and if Beamish really is going to be pulled out of the U.S. market, a lot more taverns and restaurants are likely to put it on, given all the incredible world of mouth support it gets. And we want to add three cask lines to the bar at Phoenixville-Brian laid the groundwork for that when we put in our new tap system over there in 2003 and it would be one more step toward becoming the best and most complete brewery in the region, which is our ultimate goal, but there's just been no time to get it done.

That's not all. We expect much wider draft distribution in the suburban counties once Kunda Beverage completes its acquisition of Friedland. And we're already near an agreement to distribute Sly Fox in New York by late spring or early summer. Plus there are several special projects which are important to us going on right now. Next week a well-known and award-winning brewer will be here for two days as we contract and bottle a very important beer for him. We're making a special one-off beer using corn that Michael Jackson requested for his beer tasting at the University of Pennsylvania Museum on March 18. And there have been a couple of inquiries about our making a house beer for one or two good accounts.

We have to do all that and continue to make the beers for our two pubs, which are both selling more beer faster than ever before.

We've been very good at being creative and innovative and coming up with products and events that people love-Brian's almost a genius in that regard-and we want to keep doing that, but we also have to make sure we have a firm grip on the production and business side of things.

IT SOUNDS LIKE A PLATEFUL, AND THEN SOME.
I'm not complaining. None of us are complaining. Look, we're doing something we all love and we're fortunate enough to be in the right business at exactly the right time. Craft brewing is the only part of the beer market which is growing and we have a record of producing beers that customers want and enjoy. We're at a stage where a lot more people are going to have an opportunity to try our beers and all our experience tells us that they will be pleased and want more. We'll do what we have to do, but it might mean some short term sacrifices.

For example, there may be times when we'll be unable to make all the beers we want to make. I'm talking mostly about the small batch draft beers which we serve at the pubs. We've pretty much kept at least 10-12 beers on tap at both pubs all the time, sometimes more, and there will probably be weeks in coming months when we just can't maintain that pace. Most of our smaller batches are done on the original 10-barrel system in Phoenixville whenever Brian or, mostly, Tim, finds the time. We could do more over there-we did 1500-plus barrels there in 2004--if we had another brewer but that's not something we can afford right now. Maybe a bit further down the road, we can hire an experienced part-time guy, possibly someone who's gotten out of the business and misses it. We'll see.

As it is, Brian and Tim are already often working six-day weeks and ten hour days. We hired Steve Jacoby as a part-time brewery worker a couple of weeks back and immediately made him fulltime because there's so much to do. Karl Shoemaker is our Mr. Fix-It, the guy who figures out how to keep things running. I mean, that's the brewery staff and they've got a heckuva year in front of them.

SOUNDS LIKE EVERYBODY DOES.
Yeah, we all do, especially consumers who are clamoring for Sly Fox beers. We're working as hard as we can to make it happen for them. Like the guy said in The Godfather, this is the business we have chosen.

Secondly, canning is a bit more cost-effective for us. For a fraction of what it would have cost-maybe as low as one-fifth-we can achieve the same results in the can as we would have by spending much more for a standard bottling line. Plus the equipment is kind of ingenious. These guys [Cask Brewing Systems, Inc. of Alberta, Canada] designed a machine that produces very, very low dissolved oxygen in the finished product, which is important for shelf life. And it's a pretty efficient machine, turning out 30 cans a minute when everything is going smoothly.

DON'T IMPRINTED CANS HAVE TO BE PURCHASED IN VERY LARGE QUANTITIES?
Cask Systems was very smart. They negotiated with Ball Corporation, who prints the cans, to be a broker for smaller can purchases, which makes it more affordable. But you're right, you still have to buy a lot of imprinted cans to make it feasible for them to take on the job. Ball wouldn't even talk to us about quantities we could afford, much less have room to store. Even buying through Cask, we had to buy more than 186,000 of them.

WHY HAVE CRAFT BREWERS, UNTIL RECENTLY, STEERED AWAY FROM CANS?
In large part, it goes back to cost again, as most things always do. There wasn't an inexpensive canning line available until Cask come up with theirs and, having invested in a bottling line, most smaller breweries didn't have the money to afford a second packaging investment.

ISN'T THERE ALSO A FEELING THAT CANS CHANGE THE TASTE OF THE BEER?
There used to be, back when cans were made of tin and that held over to some degree even when they changed to aluminum. Now the cans are lined as well, and blind taste test after blind taste test has shown that people can't pick out canned beers from bottled ones. I think a lot of people were astonished when a panel put together by New York Times drinks writer Eric Asimov picked a can of Dale's from Oskar Blues Brewery in Colorado as the top pale ale in a tasting last summer. We are looking forward to conducting some of our own taste tests in the months to come and allowing people to see for themselves.

WILL HAVING BEER IN CANS BE A GOOD MARKETING TOOL FOR SLY FOX?
Cans, together with our large bottles, give us a distinctive profile among craft brewers. The are a lot of breweries doing a lot of different things, but nobody's doing exactly what we're doing. If you want to sit down with a really high class beer, something a bit more complex and ornate brewed in one of the classic styles, we have some of the best-tasting beers on the planet in our 750ml and 22oz bottles. And if you just want a great, drinkable beer in a package which is easy to carry and easy to store, we've got that covered too.

More broadly, from a marketing standpoint we recognized 750 bottles as a way to take advantage of the national attention Sly Fox began to attract while we were building the brewery. Once we get rolling and have the production we need, we can look at sending those beers to markets outside our immediate area. The bottles are very attractive and appealing which makes them great for states where single bottle sales are the normal. People are commenting all the time on how good the bottles look, by the way, so I definitely should give a shout out here to Virtual Farm Creative, who developed our logo and packaging. Another advantage is that the big bottles have a long shelf life because of their high alcohol content, so we don't have to be concerned about customers getting outdated beer. Our cans fit right into that approach. It's a packaging which protects the beer from light, lends itself to a wider range of shipping and which is a good entry into new markets. We're already in New Jersey with our bottles and will be shipping cans of Pikeland Pils and Phoenix Pale Ale there later this month. We also expect to be in New York by this summer.

DID YOU HAVE THIS ALL PLANNED OUT FROM THE START?
Honestly, we didn't have canning in our original thinking. We always liked the larger bottles because bigger, high alcohol beer are, quite simply, better in bottles than on draft. Specifically, cork finished, bottle conditioned beers are ideal for our Saison Vos, Ichor [quadruple] and Incubus [tripel]. To make sure we could bottle those beers up to the standards of the great Belgians, we did small, hand-bottled batches for ourselves and were delighted with how they matured in those bottles. We originally thought about doing small batches by hand and just selling those, as we'd done early on with Ichor in Phoenixville. But when we were able to acquire a bottling line which could handle larger bottles from Dogfish Head even before we had a brewery site, we committed to a full-scale effort, also seeing the possibilities for wider marketing, as I said before. Big corked bottles will also be the ideal way to produce limited packaged releases of our major seasonals for sale primarily, or maybe even exclusively, at our two pubs.

Canning ultimately came about for much the same reason that building our Royersford brewery did, the great demand for our beer. Draft sales were, and are, growing steadily and people keep asking for some of our standard styles in bottles. For all the reasons I said here, cans just seemed a better answer to that demand than did the bottles everyone else is doing, better because they allow us to meet customer demand in an affordable fashion, better because they are a packaging which is still relatively unique in the craft industry and therefore attracts considerable attention and better because they work so well in combination with the big bottles to create a distinctive niche for Sly Fox.

WILL WE BE SEEING MORE SLY FOX BEERS IN CANS?
We'd certainly like to can some additional beers but, again, it's a major commitment in terms of cost. For one thing, we'd have to buy a lot of packaging and store it somewhere and own it until we can sell it. Realistically, any further releases could take a while, at least a year, unless these first beers really fly off the shelves. I guess the answer is, the more beer we sell, the more beer we will have in cans sooner.

WILL YOU ALWAYS INTRODUCE CANNED PRODUCTS TWO AT A TIME?
Probably, at least for now. Our deal with Cask is that they give us one change of plates with each purchase of cans, so it makes sense to do it that way. I guess there could be a possibility that if we sold a lot more of Phoenix Pale than we did the Pils or anything else, we would order a run of Phoenix cans and one other brand every time, but that sort of thing can get really tricky when you're only ordering five times a year, especially in the early going when you don't have a real handle on sales. You don't want to run the risk of having one of your major brands unavailable for an extended period. If you're always running two brands, that's less likely to happen. We'll see.

IF AND WHEN NEW BEERS ARE ADDED, WHICH ONES WOULD THEY BE?
I'm really excited about the possibility of Royal Weisse in cans. I could imagine it becoming our best seller in the line. When John [Managing Partner John Giannopoulos] and I were discussing putting beer into cans, we knew we wanted the pale ale, because that's a popular style and one of our signature beers. We talked about the Helles, which we really like and are proud of and which we sell a lot of in draft, but we thought that style might not be quite exciting enough for the craft market. So we decided to go with the Pils, which also sells extremely well and has a real following. The Weisse was third on our list and would be one of the next two for sure. The other? Maybe the Rt. 113. A lot of people are asking for it and I don't think it would conflict with our bottle sales, since the 22oz size seems just right to sit down with in the evening to enjoy a good, hoppy IPA by yourself and a sixpack or two would be great to share at the beach or lake or after a tennis match.

FINALLY, WILL WE EVER SEE SLY FOX BEERS IN 12oz BOTTLES?
Never say "never," as they say. If that happened, it would probably be because we were really, really growing and were brewing at another, larger plant and it just made good business sense because of automatic sales. It would be simple to do at that point and, if we had achieved that level of success, then our distinctive "big bottle/cans" niche would be something we'd clearly outgrown. I suppose we could learn to live with that.

FOX HUNT
For more than a year, Royersford residents have watched as an old Drug Emporium slowly, very slowly, morphed into the pubby Sly Fox Brewing Company, the second offering from the team that developed Phoenixville's Sly Fox, that award-winning mainstay of suburban microbreweries. Beer gets the emphasis here, and master brewer Brian O'Reilly's Grand Opening Alt, his first brew in the new digs, greets drinkers with a medium-bodied flavor in the tradition of a Dusseldorf favorite. (The rest of the brews currently doll in from the Phoenixville operations barrels, but O'Reilly expects to begin work on new offerings from the Royersford microbrewery this month.) The rotating selection usually includes O'Reilly's Stout, an Irish-influenced light-bodied brew, and the Route 113, a very hoppy IPA with an intoxicating alcohol level of just over seven percent. Not sure what to drink? Just ask for a sample flight to go with your dinner--a somewhat haphazard menu of Mediterranean and Mexican options and more typical pub fare, including what just might be the largest crabcake north of Maryland. If you aren't up to the hour-and-a-half wait in the miniature entranceway that often greets those who show up at a respectable dinner hour, hit the popular game room, filled with pool tables, shuffleboard and dart boards, or get brew to go. Growlers--64-ounce refillable jugs--of all the beers on tap are available for not much more than a commercial six-pack.--Laurie Stewart

Best PA brewpub: Tie: Selin's Grove and Sly Fox Phoenixville.I can't think of any brewpubs like Selin's Grove, and that's a shame. Excellent beer, real ale, great food...though you can find that a lot of places. What Selin's Grove has to ace that is the early American setting, the architecture, the groove and the mood, and owner-hosts Steve Leason and Heather McNabb. A wonderful place.
Sly Fox has made itself a completely different place in the past two years, largely thanks to the obvious efforts of brewer Brian O'Reilly, who has pushed new taps, new beers, new events, and a new spirit at Sly Fox. But equal credit should be given to the Giannopoulos family, owners of the Sly Fox, for hiring and empowering O'Reilly. It takes a special owner to recognize talent like this (unfortunately) and to let a guy run with what he has. Thank both of them for the new Sly Fox in Royersford and step back to watch what happens now.

Best local brewer: Brian O'Reilly. Last year's winner, Marc Worona, has done amazing things at Stoudt's this year. Chris Firey is shaking things up something fierce at Manayunk. Bob Barrar rocked the GABF with his beloved big beers. The crew at Yards turned Philly Pale into a wonder and brought us a new sack full of Trubbel. The Dude continues to ably follow in the big footsteps of mentor Phil Markowski. Brandon Greenwood left us with a lot of great memories. Jeff Fegley has made some amazing stuff up at Bethlehem Brew Works. And poor Ric Hoffman always gets ignored at Stewart's.
What I'm trying to say is that lots of brewers deserved this award. But only one gets it: Brian O'Reilly of Sly Fox. Is Brian a good friend? Yeah, he is. Do I spend a fair amount of time at Sly Fox? Yeah, I do. But you gotta give it to him. Look at what the guy has done: a brewer who has ram-rodded major events at his brewery, brought about a plan to build a production brewery masquerading as a second brewpub, mastered the full range of beers from stouts to lagers to Belgians, and outdone the West Coast by throwing a 10-tap all-house-brewed IPA festival. O'Reilly did all that, and still managed to be a cheerful, useful front man for Sly Fox, brew great house beers, and keep collegial contact with some of the best brewers on the east coast. What's going to happen in 2005? It remains to be seen. Watch the big brewery in Royersford.