ONE of William Penn’s first tasks was to build a brewhouse. Following a trend of the time, the founder of Philadelphia opened a private brewery in the 1680s at his nearby Pennsbury Manor. By the 1880s, there were almost 100 commercial breweries, but Prohibition shut most of them down, and the city’s beer scene never fully recovered.

But Philadelphia is starting to brew anew. From historically minded breweries that pay homage to our founding fathers, to bohemian pubs that craft unusual ales, the city is undergoing a kind of beer renaissance.

Much of the upswing can be attributed to Philadelphia’s bubbling night life. The new breweries, said Don Russell, who as Joe Sixpack writes a weekly column about beer for The Philadelphia Daily News, “are filling a need that’s out there being created by the local bar scene. Every single bar that has been opening up has a multitap system and is featuring microbrews.”