NORTH WALES, PENNSYLVANIA
Inside a grey stucco mechanics workshop near North Wales’ railroad station, veteran family-owned TEN7 BREWING CO. opened October 26, 2018. Head brewer Matt Nitchke crafts a tidily rounded cornucopia of oft-times slightly offbeat beers, learning his art alongside homebrewers Bob Heger and Gerry Viglietti, who’d experimented with back porch extract stovetop brewing (by incorporating five-gallon pots for steeped specialty grains and boiled malt extract).
Teamed up in a glorified cement-floored, overhead-doored garage, Ten 7’s principals set up thier Industrial-styled pub with olden corrugated aluminum walls, lacquered bark bar top, mantled white tile draught handles and two side TV’s. Six canary yellow plastic stools, a few ’60s-era couched and chairs, several wooden community tables and an imposing brewtank staging area fill out the high-ceilinged interior. There’s a Ten7 Brewing insignia hanging from the center of the bar. A back deck provides further seating.
My wife and I traveled to the northern Philly suburbs early May ’26, stopping first at this humble ‘barndominium’ around 3 PM on a Thursday, taking home a half-dozen more beers (reviewed in Beer Index).
Easygoing dry pale ale, Blonde, Jane Blonde, strapped cucumber-watered watermelon rind earthiness to soft white breading in unconventional fashion.
Dry lemony herbal spicing crackled for lightly peppered kolsch, Did We Just Become Best Friends, a briskly crisp moderation.
Treacly hazy India Pale Ale, It’s Always Honey In Philadelphia, combined lemony orange rind bittering, briny mango-guava tartness, peachy clementine sweetness and mild grapefruit swipe with light herbal spicing above golden honey malts.
Lovely milkshake India Pale Ale variant, Milky Milky Shakey Shakey: Strawberry, draped milk-sugared vanilla creaming upon tart strawberry puree insistence and salted mango-guava subsidy, leaving its sharp citric hop bittering to contrast the sweet fruited medley given oated wheat flake spine.
2025 barrel-aged Imperial Stout Cuvee, Living In Darkness, brought dry oaken vanilla tannins and whiskeyed cocoa nibs to cuvee-inspired French wining, picking up pinot noir and dry port notes as well as wispy rye spicing and wayward strawberry tartness.
