Tuckahoe becomes NJ's newest brewery

Tuckahoe Brewing became New Jersey's newest craft brewery today, getting the green light to legally make beer from state regulators who inspected the company's facility in northern Cape May County.

Matt McDevitt says he and his three partners, Tim Hanna, Jim McAfee and Chris Konicki, celebrated the moment by having some beers and making plans for Tuckahoe's inaugural brew on the company's 3-barrel Psycho Brew setup. That magic moment of striking the first mash is tentatively set for the latter part of next week.

Matt, the brewer of the foursome, says a run-through on the brewing equipment was conducted using water and that some technical details were being addressed ahead of firing up the system for the first brew.

Tuckahoe Brewing plans to enter the Garden State craft beer market with a triad of flagship brews: DC Pale Ale, Steelman Porter, and a Belgian brew, Marshallville Wit.

Located in Dennis Township, Tuckahoe becomes the fifth production brewery to be licensed by the state this year, coming in behind Carton Brewing in Atlantic Highlands in Monmouth County. The state signed off on Carton and its 15-barrel brewhouse during the mid-summer.

Two other breweries in development, Flounder Brewing in Hillsborough and Turtle Stone Brewing in Vineland, are on pace to follow Tuckahoe.

Craft beer tally & geography
By any measure, 2011 has been one of the busiest years for craft brewery start-ups in New Jersey, which now has 24 licensed craft breweries – 13 brewpubs and 11 production breweries of varying size scattered throughout the state.

If you're into the trivia and geography of it all, Tuckahoe now puts Cape May County into the class of five counties that host more than one craft brewer. (A few miles south, in Lower Township, you'll find 1.5-barrel brewer Cape May Brewing, which was also licensed this year.)

Elsewhere, there is Hunterdon County with a pair of craft breweries (Ship Inn brewpub in Milford and River Horse Brewing in Lambertville) and Essex County (Cricket Hill in Fairfield and Gaslight brewpub in South Orange; you can exclude Budweiser in Newark, since it's not a craft brewery).

The distinction of hosting three craft breweries each goes to Middlesex County (brewpubs J.J. Bitting in Woodbridge; Uno Chicago Grill and Brewery in Metuchen; and Harvest Moon in New Brunswick) and Monmouth County (Kane, with a 20-barrel brewhouse in Ocean Township and also licensed this year; Carton; and Basil T's brewpub in Red Bank). There is talk of Triumph opening a new location in Red Bank, a move that would bump Monmouth County into the lead in the brewery count.

The state's oldest craft brewers are Ship Inn and Triumph brewpub in Princeton, both in their 16th year of operation. The oldest craft production brewery is Climax in Roselle Park, which opened in 1996, a year that also saw the opening of five other breweries, notably among them Flying Fish, the state's largest craft brewery.