A little exposure

The blog makes Paul Mulshine's column over at nj.com, the Web site of The Star-Ledger of Newark.

Thanks for the mention, Paul.

Cheers.

Beer and bones

This item is sure to get quite a bit of play.

But an interesting side point to note is, the article is not just a quick hit, lumping all beers together. Rather, it's current and speaks to different beer styles.

And that's refreshing.

Uno's dinner, addendum

It seems there are some fits and starts tugging at this month's Pizzeria Uno beer dinner. It's still on the menu, and Kurt Epps has a couple of follow-up notes about it.

The one and only Uno

Pizzeria Uno in Metuch-ison-bridge (our portmanteau for the brewpub, given its location in a sort of nexus of Metuchen, Edison and Woodbridge) has a Monday night beer dinner coming up.

The ever-gregarious PubScout Kurt Epps is emcee of the event and has details here.

As most folks know, this Uno is the only one that features beer brewed on site. Mike Sella's beer, Moshe's menu and Kurt at the microphone ... you'll be in good hands if you go.

If you missed Beer Wars ...

Independent filmmaker Anat Baron has some news regarding the availability of her beer industry documentary in the movie aftermarket.

Anat was kind enough to do an interview with the blog last year, so it's fitting her efforts enjoy some support here.

Here's Anat's email:

I'm thrilled to announce that my feature documentary BEER WARS will finally be available to the mainstream audience for whom it was intended. Anyone in the US and with a TV or a computer (or even a gaming console), will be able to rent or buy the movie beginning Monday, February 1. This was made possible through digital distribution deals with Warner Bros. and Netflix. Please help support this launch by renting or buying the film (if you haven't already done so) or by spreading the word to everyone you know. Feel free to forward this email, post the film's availability on or tweet about it to your followers.

THE SPECIFICS: In the U.S. Beer Wars is available to rent On Demand through Digital Cable and Satellite providers Comcast, Time Warner Cable, Cox, Charter, Insight, Bresnan, Verizon FiOS, AT&T U-Verse, Dish Network and DirecTV. It is also available for Download on iTunes, Amazon Video On Demand and Playstation.

The film is also available on Netflix either on DVD or “Watch Instantly” beginning February 2. And the DVD is now available for purchase from Amazon. As well as the movie's website.

The growler gang

The New York Times has a piece about growlers, looking more at how the ranks of the growler crowd and the places that fill them have evolved lately.

The story doesn't seem to reveal much by way of news or a dramatic trend (and the story is all about New York). But some of the history of growlers is interesting, especially the bit about temperance groups and their disdain for folks drinking at home.

But in the spirit of recapping, here's our observations on growlers ...

For New Jersey brewpubs, growlers are, of course, a big business segment. But production breweries, namely Cricket Hill and High Point, also fill them during tours (they count as that two-sixpack maximum that breweries are allowed to sell under state law).

The best growlers are the 2-liter jugs with the gasket-fitted ceramic lids. They are the only kind Basil T's in Red Bank sells. A proper fill in one of these will store longer, thanks to how the lid latches tight and seals. (This type is also mainstay at High Point in Butler; on tour Saturdays, practically every hand is lugging one.)

Most brewpubs in New Jersey will fill either the 2-liter or the half-gallon jug.

Speaking of the 64-ouncers, most folks know the cap seal of those bottles may not be as snug as their 2-liter brethren. Hence, some pubs take the trouble to tape or shrink wrap the capped bottle (i.e. Iron Hill and Triumph). But let's face it, CO2 is happiest as a gas not dissolved in liquid, and the tiniest of leaks is the path to flat beer inside a week.

However, if you can get a fill to the lip of the jug, then you stand a better chance of beer bought on a Monday storing just fine to the weekend. Absent headspace, there's nowhere for the CO2 to collect, so it stays dissolved in the beer. The trouble is, a lot of times the folks behind the bar at the brewpubs are very busy (or simply have no idea about storing growlers; yes good help is still hard to find). So making sure your growler has minimal ullage (that headspace) isn't on the minds of bar staff.

Standouts
In Jersey, there are a couple of growler distinctions. Climax Brewing in Roselle Park bottles exclusively in the half-gallon jugs. Over in Milford, the Ship Inn sells the 64-ouncers, and 5-liter boxes of beer (it's a plastic bladder inside a box, and comes with a reusable gravity-flow tap).

Meanwhile, Iron Hill in Maple Shade, the newest addition to the Jersey beer scene, has an automated growler filler that uses a tube inserted into the half-gallon jug so it fills from the bottom up. The result is less air in your take-home beer to make it go stale, and thus, a better shelf life.

Cheers.

Exit 4 in 12 ounce bottles

We first learned about this during a visit to the Cherry Hill brewery in early December, when head brewer Casey Hughes pointed to the list of beers under production at Flying Fish.

A new batch of Exit 4, the award-winning FF beer that launched the Exit Series almost a year ago, was on the board and in the fermenter.

After being sworn to secrecy until an announcement could be made, we were offered a sample of the still-young beer, and Casey said plans were under way to put the American-slanted Belgian trippel in 12-ounce bottles as a year-round offering.

It marks the first time FF has backed up to revisit any of the so-far three brews released in the multiyear special series. (It also marks the first time FF has a release a beer in 12-ounce bottles that doesn't feature clouds on the label.) Sometimes, you just can't move on to the next thing.

Exit 4 in 12-ounce bottles hits the shelves in February. The release party for the Great American Beer Fest gold medal winner is 6 p.m. next Thursday (Jan. 28) at Swift Half Pub in Philadelphia.

A thawing of the ice?

Looks like some regulatory ice is melting for New Jersey brewers.

Earlier this month, a measure that would allow beer samplings (liquor, too) at packaged goods stores (and bars) easily cleared the state Assembly. The state Senate approved it last summer. With bipartisan support, it's hard to imagine the legislation not being signed into law by the governor. (It may well have been signed already. With the transition from Jon Corzine to Chris Christie this week, action by the governor's office hasn't been in sync with updates on the state Web site.)

Groups tracking the legislation have said the change could take effect as early as May. However, it's important to note that legislation in New Jersey usually takes effect four months after signing. Such is the minutiae details of the Statehouse.

How it works
It goes like this: Tastings could be conducted twice a month at packaged good stores and bars (the plenary retail consumption and retail distribution licensees), with patrons being allowed four 3-ounce samples. Beer to be sampled must be from the stores' stock (which probably translates to those stores wanting brewers to donate the beer).

Obvious restrictions also apply, meaning no minors and no samples after hours. There are some well-duh restrictions, too: Tastings must be done on the licensees' premises (it's not like they're going to come to your house to give you samples).

If we're reading the bill correctly, breweries would be allowed to assist in the samplings, but distributors would not. Looks like breweries (designated "manufacturers" in the bill) wouldn't be relegated to standing there and just smiling. The language of the legislation doesn't specify they can't pour, as are the rules at all of the beer festivals except the annual Garden State Craft Brewers Guild festival, which enjoys special dispensation for that event.

Two schools of thought
So how big of a deal is this? Depends on whom you ask.

Some brewery owners are doing a happy dance at the thought of a rule change, seeing it as a chance to fan out to points of purchase, engage customers and give them the Pepsi challenge – putting their beers up against the plethora of brews from around the country and world that wind up on the shelves. (OK, we embellish there. It would not be side-by-side tasting.)

Garden State brewers are very confident about their beers, and point out Jersey-made brands lack not quality but the exposure that mainstream marketing can bring. Reaching out to the retail customers, they say, can go a long way toward turning around that exposure problem. And if nothing else, the added marketing dimension is better than the current system in which store patrons cannot try before buying.

On the flip side, though, waits a numbers dilemma. And the likes of Budweiser.

Some brewers wonder if there is sufficient bang for the buck and the labor involved. If they have to give away two cases of beer to hundreds of packaged goods stores for sampling two times a month, things could get pricey, not to mention cut into inventory. And practically every production craft brewer in the state right now is running at capacity and could stand to expand. On top of that, not all folks showing up at liquor stores are there to buy beer.

Meanwhile, there's Bud. And Miller. And Coors. Any one of the monster-sized beer producers can outspend the little guys and go after customers with samples from their portfolios of imports and craft brews produced under labels not widely known to be under their banners. (That Spaten Optimator or Bass ale you just drank is in the AB-InBev stable.)

Nonetheless, most Jersey brewers are up for the opportunity to greet the beer-drinking public where they buy. Sometimes underdogs win. So stay tuned.

Illustrating a point

Not to belabor our grouse over that ugly Beeradvocate cover, but there is this addendum to make ...

It's easy to take a swat at someone else's work; it's another thing to show you can do better. A few minutes spent looking through the photos we've shot in the past three years turned up this image from 2008.

These hops ended up in Weyerbacher Brewing's special harvest ale of that year, tossed into the hopback on the heels of being picked on a late-August Saturday, from the acre of Cascades and Nuggets Dan Weirback put in the ground at his farm in Lehigh County, Pa. (Dan grew the hops the summer after that late-2007 price spike; now that there's a glut in the hops market, some brewers are pretty much irked and questioning what happened back then.)

So is this a cover-worthy photo, or at least an example of an eye-catching photo? Honestly not to brag, but we say yes.

NJ beer has a friend in DC

His name is Rep. Leonard Lance.

The 7th District Republican congressman left the following comment today to an August post:

Hello,
I wanted to let you know that I recently toured Climax in Roselle Park to announce my membership to the House Small Brewers Caucus.

I am proud to be the only member of the New Jersey congressional delegation on the Small Brewers Caucus.

In an effort to reducing the tax burden on New Jersey’s brewers, I am a cosponsor of HR 836, the “Brewers Excise and Economic Relief (BEER) Act of 2009,” which effectively returns the federal beer excise tax back to its pre-1991 level of $9 per barrel.

This legislation would reduce the tax burden for all brewers and specifically reduces the small brewer rate by 50% to $3.50 a barrel.

Rest assured I will continue to support and promote New Jersey's small domestic producers in order to keep this American industry thriving. These are good jobs in our local communities that protect a fine American craftsmanship.

Best personal wishes,
Leonard Lance
Member of Congress

Climax Brewing owner Dave Hoffmann says Lance came by on Monday. And while he's grateful for Lance's outreach, Dave says he explained to the congressman that the heaviest hand of government yoking Jersey brewers comes from Trenton, not Washington.

Still, what Lance is doing is significant – lend New Jersey craft brewers a voice in Washington. And consider this: The caucus will turn 3 years old this year. Since its founding, no member of Jersey's House delegation bothered to take an interest in the state's craft beer industry until Rep. Lance, who has a distinguished track record of putting New Jersey first, stepped up.

For that he deserves points. Let's hope the seven other Jersey representatives on the Hill who have breweries in their districts follow Lance's lead.

No, no, no

The new issue of Beeradvocate came today ...

Maybe this is hypercritical, but Jason, Todd, guys, that cover photo is garbage. Sorry, but that is a throw-away image from the Canon's flashcard, a quick frame shot to find an f/stop and gauge room lighting (if you left your light meter at home), and then the photographer chimps at the back of his camera, deletes the pic and lines up a real shot. Not a closeup of crap.

OK, so it's a closeup of a mash tun being cleaned out. It's not even a good photo of that (it's cluttered-looking as far as composition goes, and your eye falls immediately to the door latch area).

But really it's not about anything. Nothing.

What's so compelling about cleaning out a mash tun? You can't tell the rake is a rake (sorry, two feet of handle identifies nothing, whereas the end of the rake would have); that muddy color on the right is probably steam, but you have to hang out at a brewery to know that. The image is flashed-out overexposed on the left; meanwhile, the action (the falling grain) is underexposed. It's not color balanced, so the raked-out grain looks green, and if you had to fix it in post, then you're just playing garbage in garbage out.

But most of all, the shot perspective is indicative of nothing. It's slightly to the left of head-on, over a shoulder. It's just junk and shouldn't be on the cover, nor anywhere, for that matter.

Sorry, but it's a bad job. And it if were a beer, you guys would be going "D-".

In search of ...

Stainless steel ... some extra tank space, to be extact.

Last year was a pretty good year for New Jersey brewers, with some nice spikes in growth. For instance, High Point was up nearly 30 percent as of last month. Growth is up about 45 percent for River Horse, which is where the blog's compass of discussion is pointing today.

They're slammin' busy along the Delaware Canal in Lambertville. They have been for some time, to the point where an extra brace or foursome of 40-barrel fermenters and an extra pair of bright beer tanks would comfortably ease the production pace for brewer Chris Rakow, his assistant, and the packaging staff. (There have been some personnel changes at RH, and Chris, formerly of Harpoon Brewing, has been handling the brewing for a while now.)

The pace has been tight enough to force RH to pull back on some of its product-lineup plans, a tough thing for a brewery that has been really amping up its flight of brews over the past 27 months (i.e. a double wit, a double ipa, a dunkel, a honey wheat, a stout and an unfiltered lager).

Demand for last year's summer ale trumped some jazzing up of RH's Belgian triple and a planned bottling a fall dunkel. However, RH did unveil a second season, or redux version (as the brewery calls it), of the hybrid oatmeal milk stout it debuted in 2008 in the Brewer's Reserve roster. (Note to RH followers: Consider this busy pace when wondering why the RH Web site runs a little behind on updates.)

So some more steel is rather import.

RH has been scouting around for used tanks for a while (pre-owned is, of course, more economical that commissioning a metal fabricator). But getting that optimal match between brewery needs and what's available on the market, says RH co-owner Glenn Bernabeo, can prove challenging. But, he adds, the brewery hopes something can be in place around March.

Meanwhile, look for an RH rye pale ale to come out soon (most likely draft) and the reviving of back-burnered plans to pumpkin-spice the Belgian triple.

Maneuvering room may be tight, but the folks at RH are still have some tricks up their sleeves.