Meadowlands fest back for 2nd round

If math isn't your best subject, well don't worry, this is beer-drinker math, so it will be some simple division and multiplication.

Event promoter Starfish Junction stages nine beer festivals in a year and serves 37,546 gallons of beer in that time. So, how many pints would that stand on the bar?

Answer: 300,368.

Poured into shaker glasses placed side by side, it's enough pints to circle the Earth at the equator about 1,600 times.

By any count, it's a lot of beer. (See the chart for some more stats. Kegs are most likely a mix of halves, quarters and sixtels.)

And come Saturday, Starfish Junction gets a jump on tallying some figures in Secaucus, with its second edition of the International Great Beer Expo at the Meadowlands Exposition Center.

Veterans of beer festivals know the drill well: Start with lighter styles and work your way up to the hoppier brews, and remember to drink plenty of water to stay hydrated.

For fresh faces in the crowd, Joe Chierchie, sales and marketing manager for Starfish Junction, has some advice: pace yourself; there's a lot of beer, and some of it is strong.

"The alcohol content is higher, the beers are heavier, and for first-timers it can sometimes be a surprise," Joe says.

Also, don't go with the just usual suspects or familiar-sounding brands.

"Keep your options open, this is a tasting event," he says. "If you're not a stout guy keep an open mind, give it a try."

On the horizon

Like green shoots breaking through the soil of spring, beer events are popping up all over.

So here's a quick hit of calendar items to consider:

High Point Brewing holds its first open house of the year on Saturday (2-4 p.m.) at the brewery in Butler, and the makers of the Ramstein brand say on their Web site it's the debut of the 2010 edition of their maibock. Bring your growlers. We haven't heard back on our inquiry with owner Greg Zaccardi yet, so we can't say if there will be any Icestorm eisbock available. Also, the maibock was one of the Ramstein beers that Greg has been making plans to put in bomber bottles. When we catch up with Greg, we'll repost.

One other thing to consider, unlike Ramstein open houses of the past, the brewery plans to cycle attendees through in two shifts. The events have become so popular that a little crowd management has become necessary to ensure everyone gets a taste, a tour and the chance to have a growler filled.

The Brewer's Plate is Sunday at the Penn Museum in Philadelphia. Now in it's sixth year, this is very much a worth-your-time event, with beers from select breweries within a 150-mile radius of Philly paired with food from the city's great restaurants. Tickets are still available as of this writing. The premium ticket is a little pricey, $115, but the event benefits Fair Food, a nonprofit that promotes community sustainable/fair trade farming.

Climax Brewing, Cricket Hill, Flying Fish and River Horse are New Jersey mainstays at this affair, while Brian Boak is making his second appearance with his Boaks Beer brand of Belgian brews and imperial stouts, which a lot of folks remember are brewed under contract at High Point.

But the Jersey connection runs a little deeper: Tri-state brewpub Iron Hill will be there, and those who have followed Iron Hill know it was started by three Jersey guys who struck a mash first in Delaware, then Pennsylvania, and last year enjoyed a homecoming to the Garden State. Then there's Tom Baker's Earth Bread + Brewery, the phoenix that rose in Philly's Mount Airy section from the ashes of Tom closing Heavyweight Brewing in Monmouth County four years ago. Tom's reputation as an artisan brewer is still intact.

You'll find the full list of Brewer's Plate restaurants and breweries here.

The Atlantic City beer fest is March 20-21 at the Convention Center. In the past, we've been a little down on this festival. In fairness, we'll back away from some of things we don't like about Celebration of the Suds and be positive: Atlantic City is probably one of the best locations for a beer festival in New Jersey. AC is destination, and if you want to book a room, there's plenty of hotel space, not to mention enough glitz to occupy your time before or after your festival session.

The downside (we're not going to skip that completely) is, this is a monstrously big festival, and with that there's been long lines to get in and to hit the restroom; there's also been a little bit of rowdiness (sorry to rain on parade, but it's true). There's plenty of beer, a lot of which can be found at packaged stores with good beer managers. That said, this festival is a good fit for those who are just coming to craft beer, folks who are a few steps beyond that juncture, or people who love the buzz of a big crowds in a gambling mecca.

Look for Boaks, Cricket Hill, Flying Fish and River Horse to be poured, as well as Hometown Beverage, whose light lagers are contract brewed by the Lion Brewery in Wilkes-Barr, Pa. The Tun Tavern brewpub, located across the street from the festival site, is also on the bill. The Tun will be pouring the dunkelweizen made as a tie-in At The Shore and The Press of Atlantic City.

If you're looking to hit the Tun for dinner after the festival on Saturday, make reservations. It's still a recessionary climate these days, and you might get a table without calling beforehand. But over the years, the Tun generally hasn't accommodated walk-ins for looking for dinner. Not to be a buzzkill, but if you go there for just drinks or whatever, please do everyone – yourself included – a big favor by not showing up drunk. If the Tun is too crowded (and it gets crowded post-festival), try Firewaters at the Tropicana casino. You'll find a wide variety of craft beer on draft and in the bottle there.

On March 27, Pizzeria Uno in Metuchen holds its fourth cask ale festival at the brewpub on Route 1. Brewer Mike Sella has done a great job assembling a rack of casks from breweries around the region for this pay-as-you-go event in Uno's comfy pub atmosphere. Cask ale is a real delight, and this festival, which begins at noon, has generally lasted as long as the beer flows, meaning it could run a second day.

Lastly, even though it's a long way off, the Garden State Craft Brewers Guild holds its 14th annual festival on June 26. Once again, it's aboard the USS New Jersey battleship museum, moored at the Delaware River waterfront in Camden. More on that festival later.

Fall through

This is a little disappointing, especially if you live in the northern part of the state. But there is some hope on the distant horizon.

The Garden State Craft Brewers Guild won’t be staging a second festival this year, like the one last fall at the Newark Bears minor league baseball stadium. Guild folks say a deal for a venue can’t be nailed down in time to sufficiently advertise a date for this fall to draw a good-size crowd.

That said, guild folks are scouting around for a place to hold an early- or mid-spring 2010 festival in addition to the annual summer festival that has moored itself to the decks of the USS New Jersey. Stadiums at Montclair State University and Somerville (the Somerset Patriots field) are being eyed for a spring festival.

The disappointment here is, obviously, that if you didn’t make it to the battleship this year, you missed the boat as far guild brew fests for 2009 go. It’s perhaps harder on the folks in North Jersey, who have had to travel to Camden for the past five years to sample the brews of guild members in one sitting.

Camden’s not exactly the idea of a dream destination for those folks, and if you talk to some longtime fans of Jersey-made beers who live above I-195, they will invariably bring up the halcyon days of the late 1990s, when the guild festival was held at Waterloo Village. But those days are long gone, and the festival eventually dropped anchor in Camden, to the satisfaction of South Jersey.

Cross your fingers that 2010 will indeed yield two festivals and be the dawn of an era in which the guild keeps a light on in both halves of the state.

Meanwhile, the version 3 of the Central Jersey Beer Festival is set for Sept. 19 in Woodbridge. And, Pizzeria Uno down the road in Metuchen is likely to repeat their cask ale festival yet again during the fall. Stay tuned.

Video
Speaking of festivals, the video we shot last month aboard the battleship in Camden will be up toward the end of this week. Some people have asked about when they could see it, and we expected it to be up by today. But the computer and a linked pair of external hard drives aren't playing nice with one another. The technical trouble should be resolved very soon.

Cheers.

BeerAdvocate revisited

New issue, cleaner look following the retooling. Gone is that crappy newsprint that soaks up ink and ruins the sharpness and contrast of any image printed on it.

To their credit, the Alstrom brothers took readers' complaints seriously and let only a single issue exit their confines with that grimy, cheap-looking makeover. Good job. Thanks, bros. Enough said there.

One more item from BeerAdvocate (for the record, we do subscribe): A call to boycott some beer festivals. The Alstroms stage beer festivals, so they legitimately have room in which to press a point, or points in this case.

Their chief gripes: festivals that don’t buy the beer from the breweries; festivals that hide behind the premise of charity event (unless all proceeds go to charity); fests that charge booth rentals; and festivals that extort free beer by conditionally waiving said booth rentals.

We’ll add a couple of points to the litany: big festivals that are drunkfests and big festivals that shamelessly have crappy food concessions.

Drunkfests ... No matter how bad some groups want to paint an image of drunk driving fatalities in our state, New Jersey, according to the research arm of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, ranks 47th – near the bottom of the stack – for DUI fatalities per 100,000 people. And for the record, DUI is, as Mr. Mackey would say, is bad. Mmm’kay? But that stat is good (comparatively speaking, which is what a state-by-state ranking reaches for).

So bacchanal beer festivals … they’re bad: They sully the image of beer, which, thanks to the craft beer movement, has been successfully distancing itself from the sophomoric, frat boy image. It’s probably impossible to make that break completely, but there is a growing separation. Beer has won respect. And if orange juice isn’t just for breakfast anymore, then good beer isn’t for jerkoffs.

So why gather the products of 55 breweries under one banner and roof and tell the crowd to go nuts in an afternoon session and an evening session? Drunkfests suck. They’re bad for image, bad for business.

Crappy food … There’s a lot of attention given to beer and food these days. Food’s a natural fit, and we’re not talking hot dogs, either. Real dishes by passionate chefs, some exotic, some with fancy names and diacritical marks over letters in their spellings. If people want cheap-shit food sold at concession, then let them go to any professional sports event or concert. Please don't burden good beer with bad food.

Boycott? BeerAdvocate urges its followers to boycott festivals that fall under list of shortcomings they highlight. That's an individual's call, and admission price and recession may take care of that this year. But over the long haul, the more likely scenario is promoters who have no incentives to offer are probably going to watch their business model blow up and encounter difficulty in attracting breweries to participate.

This far into the craft beer movement, brewerania souvenirs don’t do the same business for brewers – everybody has a T-shirt and hat – so having a festival booth isn't too exciting; plus, brewers' brands have long been out there, so the exposure is not what some organizers would like to boast.

The Alstroms are right. Buy the beer, back the brewer, give them something back. Hell, the bands don't play for free, so why should the real stars on the marquee get nothing for their trouble?

Bottom line, brewers are businesses. Treat them like they are. And festival patrons, they are consumers. Respect their dollars earned and promise something value-added, something besides quantity.