Taproom by Springhouse Brewing Co

Perhaps few people understand this concept as well as those in Lancaster, PA, a small city that's bursting with a strong sense of community and a burgeoning beer scene, where breweries like Spring House Brewing Company can flourish among its peers GOOD NEIGHBORS In 2006, when Matt Keasey opened the doors to the Spring House brewery-which is located in the barn on his property outside the city limits-he learned a valuable lesson about just how magnetic a beer can be. "Down at the brewery, I actually had a tasting room going, and my house was just getting swamped with cars and people," Keasey says. "I couldn't really control it. My property was getting to be too overwhelmed. The brewery has a typical driveway with an oversized parking area. It was getting so packed with people coming down for tastings, that's what made me decide to open up the brewpub a few miles away. The location wasn't set up for that many people coming in and out." Congested traffic at your brewery-whether it's on your own property or not-would be classified by most people as one of those good problems. Still, it was a problem. So, Keasey decided to divert the traffic away from his property by opening a brewpub within Lancaster in February of 2011. Although the 1-barrel system located on the premises is more for experimentation than anything else, it allows Keasey to sell Spring House beer on site and join a vibrant community of brewers and beer drinkers who were eager to welcome a new face in the crowd. "It is a really good beer scene. Our brewpub is packed nonstop," says Keasey, talking to BA on his cell phone over the din of customers that could be heard in the background despite the fact that he was outside the building and it was the middle of the afternoon on a Thursday. "There's probably about ten good beer bars and two other breweries within walking distance from here. I think Lancaster County has maybe eight to ten breweries located in it. For the part of Pennsylvania where we're at, that's a lot of breweries."