Animal magic

Here’s something to put on your radar: A spring craft beer festival at the Turtleback Zoo in West Orange.

This is very much still in planning stages, but a Friday evening in late May is being targeted, says pointman Bryan Flynn, a member of the Turtleback’s board of trustees and a former sales rep for Blue Point Brewing (Long Island).

A few things continue to be worked on and a brewery lineup still needs to be set. Bryan says organizers want to capitalize on the trend of paring beers/breweries with food/restaurants (think Savor, that food-and-craft brew event kicked off last year in Washington, D.C., by the Brewers Association, or closer to home, the annual Brewers Plate event in Philadelphia).

This is exactly the direction beer events in New Jersey need to go, especially when you consider the push to get the beer-drinking public to view craft beer and fine food as a natural combination. (Plus, there’s a reason Eric Asimov of the New York Times wrote a piece headlined “Overcoming a Frat Party Reputation.” That was two years ago, and it’s still on the Times Web site, not the paid, database archives.)

New Jersey sorely needs an event that can both showcase the finer points of craft beer and raise the bar for Jersey beer festivals in general. The dominant festival right now is not the Garden State Craft Brewers Guild event, but the Atlantic City beer fest, which has sadly, over the course of three years, turned into something akin to a drunkfest. (A harsh criticism, yes, but it's true.)

So a Brew at the Zoo event holds a lot of promise for the state's beer image. Organizers hope to draw brewers from six or seven states and potentially some brewing industry luminaries. Like the beer and food trend, an event at Turtleback Zoo would also capitalize on a wave that unites zoos and beer festivals as fundraisers or ways to boost attendance. (Zoos that have partnered with beer include Baltimore; Denver; Columbus, Ohio; and Louisville, Ky., to name a few.)

Cool Jerseyana item:
The Turtleback Zoo’s black bear exhibit simulates a living room with a view of the outdoors, which is pretty much the natural bear viewing experience for residents of northwest New Jersey who quite often glimpse bears ambling through their yards.

NOTE: The artwork above is something we created; it's not from the folks trying to put together this festival.

Mulling maibock

Too soon to talk about spring beers?

Not if it’s a business decision, a brewery meeting topic.

We caught up to the folks at Cricket Hill Brewery on Monday, checking in to see what will follow their Paymaster Porter as the next seasonal. (FYI, Cricket Hill now bottles all their seasonals, putting them in 12-packs.)

Maybe maibock, says Rick Reed, but there are some points from the brewery’s distributors to consider before striking that mash.

Go west to Pennsylvania, and CH’s distributors there will make a funny face at the suggestion of pushing maibock; at the shore here in Jersey, the distributors are lukewarm to the idea, more concerned about summer beers than having spring brew on the shelf.

The best chance for Cricket Hill's reprising its maibock would come from a commitment from their northern distributor for 150 cases, which is possible. (FYI: Cricket Hill last brewed a maibock in 2007, and the beer, a helles, was among their offerings at the Guild festival on the battleship.)

Rick says the brewery will have a game plan nailed down by Friday. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, Cricket Hill’s hitting the festival trail this month, Blue Point Brewery’s 5th Annual Cask Ale Festival on Jan. 24th. (Get details here.) Joining the Blue Point festival lineup comes as Cricket Hill cracks the Long Island market (Nassau and Suffolk counties).

Praise be cold

Here’s a reason to champion a tumble in temperature: eisbock.

And there’s only one reason to bring that up: High Point Brewing’s highly anticipated (draft only) eisbock is in the pipeline.

We spoke to Greg Zaccardi just before Christmas about morphing some Ramstein Winter Wheat Doppelbock into eis. Greg said that a batch of the doppelbock (9% ABV) was finishing out so it could be kegged off, then sent to the big chill to turn the available H2O into an ice core, off which the brewers will draw the malty, now alcohol-richer eisbock. (The most recent incarnation clocked in at 12% ABV; that beer was a surprise treat back in August and quickly pounced on at a brewery open house).

How soon a 2009 Ramstein eisbock happens depends on Mother Nature providing a reliable arctic blast, the kind that turns a lake or pond into a hockey rink. Seems like the weather’s trending toward the sustained below-30 degrees air temperature that’s needed for the conversion. So for now, it’s a waiting game.

But if you want a date to bank on, the folks at High Point expect the eisbock to be available by the second Saturday in March (the 14th). That’s when brewery open houses resume following the winter hiatus. In fact, you can pretty much expect High Point to bock your socks off that day, since their maibock is scheduled to debut then, too.

Here’s another heads-up: Since a portion (about 25 percent) of each keg’s 15 gallons must be sacrificed (as in turned to a discarded slush) to create the eisbock, the supply is obviously tighter than other High Point brews. And the beer has developed a quite an interest among High Point’s draft accounts. What all this means, as fans of this beer well know, is that if you’re not fortunate enough to have Ramstein eisbock on tap at your local bar, then you and your growler should make plans to line up at that first open house of 2009.

Meanwhile, High Point’s Blazing Amber, a draft only Vienna lager, could be under glass this year. Greg’s giving serious consideration to broadening High Point’s bottled lineup with the amber. Stay tuned.

The beer’s name is a nod to the spectacular 1957 inferno at Pequanoc Rubber Mill, a blaze that was visible 100 miles away and drew an offer of help from the NYFD.

2009

Happy New Year.

Drink Jersey beer.

No kidding, have a beer brewed in the Garden State. It's good for ya.