Summer beer to-do list: Tired Hands Brewing Company
Please note: This article is published as an archive copy from Philadelphia City Paper. My City Paper is not affiliated with Philadelphia City Paper. Philadelphia City Paper was an alternative weekly newspaper in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. The last edition was published on October 8, 2015.
"Father's Day was fucking out of this world here."
Tired Hands on Instagram
It’s 6 a. m. on Sunday in the Philly suburbs: Shopping malls are closed, commuters are sleeping in, and a horde of thirsty beer drinkers crowds the front steps of Tired Hands Brewing Company. The crowd is munching on candied bacon, a Tired Hands speciality, and listening to a roving DJ mix techno beats from his iPad — side pursuits to while away the hours until the main event, a limited release bottling of a rare brew called Parageusia.
Hold on—this is Ardmore, right? Where the Main Line moms stick to their wine coolers and the college kids to their cans of Natty Light? Not since Tired Hands owner Jean Brouillet IV turned this 3,000 square-foot former physician’s office into an award-winning brewpub with his wife Julie two years ago. 
Tired Hands’ hoppy IPAs and Belgian-style saisons have been in demand since the place’s start. The beers have names like “Fool in the Full Moon” and “I Like to Cook at Home, So Now I’m a Chef,” and the audience has grown from young beer drinkers seeking out a new niche to a comfortable, all-ages crowd.
“There’s five colleges around us, Philadelphia’s a hop, skip, and a jump from here, so we were attracting a decidedly younger crowd,” Brouillet says of the early days. Once they expanded their hours and got creative on the restaurant side of things, Tired Hands started bringing in a wide mix from the surrounding towns as well as a loyal following trekking out from the city. “Father’s Day was fucking out of this world here. It was like an entire floor of happy dads drinking beer and their kids,” Brouillet continues.
“Quality is at the heart of our mission,” he adds. “People recognize the fact that we really try. I think the product speaks for itself.” The product might speak for itself, but the setting can’t be discounted as a factor. Tired Hands’ brewery-to-tap setup and relaxed atmosphere not only guarantee a high level of quality control, but also emulate the neighborhood brewpub model Brouillet’s encountered on his many travels abroad. “You have to engage with what’s put in front of you,” he says. “That should be the topic of conversation. We have a lot of people with good brains who want to engage with weird beer.”
The weird beer in question is always changing, with ingredients like coffee, blueberries and honey making frequent appearances on the beer list. Brouillet and his two full-time brewers like to keep the patrons on their feet (when I came in on a Saturday, they’d already gone through five original brews that week), which means rare brews tend to pick up followings that border on cult-like. HandFarm, a chardonnay barrel-fermented saison and Brouillet’s self-proclaimed favorite, has its own reputation on the beer blogosphere and a whole slew of conspiracy theories exist about whether Christian Zellersfield, designer of Parageusia, is actually just Brouillet. Once a month or so they dig out the small bottling facility in the basement and release a limited brew, attracting the “cultural gathering” (as he calls it) that spills out the front door. 
And it isn’t just the beer they come for. The menu is brief – until recently just a chalkboard over the stairs – but delivers on quality and, according to Brouillet, “hellishly local” ingredients. The stews, paninis and pickle plates are prepared in an open kitchen area behind the downstairs bar. The bread and butter plates (a Tired Hands staple) are made according to his mother-in-law’s recipe, and the candied bacon sells out every night. The lunch hour, once an afterthought to fit the brewpub setup, has its own standard rush.
“It should be a community meeting point regardless of the time of day,” Brouillet says of his ideal brewpub.
And the name? A reference to the work ethic that made it all possible, from a man who is no rookie in the local brewery scene. “This puritanical view of one’s craft, it’s like, well, you should be tired,” he says. “If you’ve really invested yourself into whatever it is you’re making, you should feel fatigued afterwards.”
Tired Hands Brewing Company, 16 Ardmore Ave., Ardmore, (610) 896-7621, tiredhands.com.
