NJ craft beer goes bullish with Bolero Snort

Two brews down, and many more to go. 

But if Bob Olson and Andrew Maiorana had their way, Ragin' Bull and Blackhorn would have been flowing from New Jersey bar taps a year ago, if not earlier. 

As things stand, though, the two lagers are now in fermenters at High Point Brewing Company, the contract-brewer for Bob and Andrew's Bolero Snort Brewery, based in Bergen County. 

After six months of planning and a year of dealing with regulatory paperwork, the developing craft beer enterprise that has been widely followed and anticipated by a lot of beer enthusiasts across North Jersey is beginning to take its place in New Jersey's growing craft beer scene. 

Last week brought the brewing of Ragin' Bull, a sessionable (5% ABV) amber lager that Bob says would beckon the likes of a Bud or Coors Light drinker to something fuller in flavor; the more-assertive Blackhorn (6.5% ABV), an American black lager, was brewed on Tuesday. 

"For the craft beer enthusiast, Blackhorn would be right up their alley from day one," Bob says.

Like a lot commercial beer-makers, Bob and Andrew come to the industry as accomplished homebrewers, with the laurels of finishing in the winner's circle at homebrew contests to boot. Bob, 29, has a day gig as a construction industry consultant. Andrew, 27, is a CPA at JP Morgan Chase.

Bolero Snort (the name is Robert Olson anagrammatized) got off the ground not unlike the Boaks Beer route. Brian Boak founded his beer business through a contract-brewing arrangement with Greg Zaccardi's High Point Brewing in Butler, the makers of the Ramstein lineup of German wheat brews and lager beers, like the top-rated Ramstein Munich Amber Lager (Oktoberfest), a wheat doppelbock that yields the brewery's Icestorm eisbock. 

Like Brian, Bob and Andrew bought a fermenter and had it installed at High Point in December to ensure the brewery had capacity to accommodate their contract brews. (Brian had a tank installed at High Point in April 2009.)

But unlike Brian, Bob and Andrew intend to takeover production in their own brewery. Siting and construction for that are calendared for next year, barring any planning hiccups.

In the meantime, the agreement with High Point guarantees monthly brews of Ragin' Bull and Blackhorn. The early going will see draft-only brews, but March and April are being targeted for bottling.

Bob and Andrew will self-distribute in North Jersey but plan to tease their beers in South Jersey in April at the Atlantic City beer festival, the state's biggest craft beer festival stage.

Boaks Beer on a touch screen

Will the app look like this?

Coming to the iTunes Store – the Boaks Beer iPhone and iPad app.

Boaks founder Brian Boak says the free app being developed by a New York City ad agency will be debuted at the Saturday afternoon session of the Atlantic City beer festival (March 31).

"For people who have iPhones who are there for the early session, there's going to be some very special VIP privileges they will be able to get, using their iPhones," Brian says.

"The balance of the app is going to (let you) be able to learn about Boaks and find out where Boaks Beer is available and to get us your email so we can keep you updated, have you friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter."

The app actually is expected to be available a few days ahead of the beer festival. However, Brian says, some features will be locked until the formal debut.

The idea for the confluence of personal gadgets and beer marketing is obvious: steering beer drinkers to the brand.

Brian Boak (right) at Brewers Plate in Philly

"The more people who interact with us, the more people are likely to try Boaks Beer. The more they learn about Boaks Beer, the more likely they will try it," Brian says.

Boaks entered the New Jersey craft beer market in 2008 as contracted-brewed label. The Pompton Lakes company's lineup of Belgian-style beers and an imperial stout are brewed under contract by High Point Brewing in Butler.

New Jersey Beer Company, based in North Bergen, was recently added as a contract brewer and last week brewed a Belgian brown (Abbey Brown, 7% ABV) for the Boaks label.

NJ Beer Co. to brew Abbey Brown for Boaks

Boaks Beer has cut a deal for New Jersey Beer Company to be its second contract brewing location, and founder Brian Boak says making beer at the Hudson County brewery is on pace to start toward the end of February.

"They have a deposit for the first batch of beer. The grain's been ordered, so I would expect in the next two weeks we're going to brew a batch of Abbey Brown," Brian said as he staffed his booth at the International Beer Expo in Secaucus on Saturday. (Brian is pictured fourth on the right.)

Matt Steinberg, founder of New Jersey Beer Company, says his North Bergen brewery will try out the arrangement and stay with it so long as it's mutually beneficial.

Headquartered in Pompton Lakes, the Boaks brand launched four years ago with High Point as its contract brewer, producing a Russian imperial stout, Monster Mash (10% ABV), and a lineup of Belgian-style ales, including Abbey Brown (7% ABV), and lately a specialized version of that beer, Wooden Beanie, which has been aged on vanilla beans in whiskey barrels. This year is forecast to add a new label to the lineup, Jan's Porter, a beer that was supposed to come to market last year.

New beers aside, the immediate goal is to deal with keeping the pipeline full and flowing. An order for 50 new sixtels is expected to to help free up some tank space and keep inventory moving.

Craft beer's surging popularity has left capacity at a premium for a lot of breweries, including High Point. Keeping up with demand under such circumstances has been a challenge. So imagine an at-capacity brewery with contract clients, and those contract clients likewise seeing a spike in demand for beer.

That's why Boaks, with the help of High Point, began shopping around many months ago for an additional brewer with capacity for hire. Even with New Jersey Beer Company taking on a Boaks brew, Brian says he's looking to line up a third contractor.

"There's two large breweries being built at the moment, both 50 barrel brewhouses, state-of-the-art facilities. I'm trying to get into one of them," he says. "One is Susquehanna Brewing Company. I have no arrangement with them or anything ... They said they've been inundated with contract brewing requests. If I can get in there, that would be wonderful because that would allow me to have enough production where I could actually make this a full-time venture."

All of this isn't being viewed as a sign that Boaks should be siting a brewery location and shifting its business model to a full production brewery. Brian prefers to keep Boaks a contract beer company and points to some big names in craft beer that have taken advantage of that route for much of their existence.

"I'm going to be the gypsy brewer," he says. "Look at Brooklyn Brewery. Look at Sam Adams. I don't think it's a bad model."

Around the world in 100 beers & Jersey, too

Jersey-made brews pouring in Secaucus on Saturday.

Festival promoter Starfish Junction is bringing the international beer show it staged last fall at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island and last June in Philadelphia to the Meadowlands Exposition Center, marking Starfish's first foray into Garden State beer festivals.

The International Great Beer Expo boasts 100 beers from 50 breweries hailing from 25 countries.

"This is a festival for those who enjoy imports and not so much the craft brands," says Joe Chierchie, sales and marketing manager for Starfish Junction.

Still, if you're going, you can get an array of 2-ounce pours of American craft beers in your logoed sampler glass, including Jersey-made beers from Cricket Hill, Flying Fish, High Point, and River Horse, and contract brews from Jersey-based Boaks Beverage, East Coast Beer Company and Hometown Beverages.

You'll find the Garden State brands interspersed throughout the international labels. "We like to mix in the local guys with the big guys, so you can get a real taste between certain styles," Joe says.

Starfish Junction is widely known for its beer shows in Philly and New York. The timing was right, Joe says, for Starfish to set its sights on New Jersey.

"We're based in Long Island and the business partnerships made with those festivals there led to the (2007) Philly festival," he says. "There was an outcry for a Jersey festival. Through distributors and the connections made in New Jersey we found venue that would work."

Tickets, priced at 40 bucks ($10 for designated drivers), are still available for both the afternoon (12:30-4 p.m.) and evening (5:30-10 p.m.) sessions.

Jersey-wide distribution for Boaks

The Garden State is proving sunny for Boaks Beer, the Pompton Lakes-based beer company that Brian Boak started with a white van, a storage facility in Wayne and a contract with a brewery.

Two-plus years ago, if you called Brian on his cell phone, he'd probably answer from the driver's seat of that van, en route to or from Pennsylvania, where he would truck to a distributor kegs and cases of his Belgian brown and imperial stout brewed at Butler-based High Point Brewing, better known as the makers of the Ramstein beer brands.

Pennsylvania represented a real foot in the door of the beer industry for Brian, who at the time had a handful of New Jersey accounts and was doing bigger business west of the Delaware River.

That was then, this is now. Growth for Boaks has swung to Brian's home state.

New Jersey now represents the lion's share of business for Boaks Beer and its top-seller Belgian-style Two Blind Monks, Monster Mash imperial stout and Abbey Brown, another Belgian style, that will soon see a limited-release, barrel-aged version.

"Jersey represents about 65 percent of business right now," Brian says. "That is a swing. But that’s mainly because, first I was just distributing myself in New Jersey and I was having a distributor in Pennsylvania. Now I have two distributors – Kohler distributes me in northern New Jersey, and Hunterdon distributes me in central and southern New Jersey. Just adding central and southern was a whole lot of business I could not get by myself.

"We are available in all of New Jersey, from northern Bergen County to Ocean County, all the way down to Cape May."

But Brian has his sights set a lot farther south than where Delaware Bay and Atlantic Ocean both bathe the state's coastline. Entering the draft and bottle markets of Maryland and Washington, D.C., figures into a game plan that also points north and west to New Hampshire and Michigan

"Soon as I lock down Maryland and D.C., I’m going to go after Virginia. But soon as I lock down one more state, I’m going to order another fermenter," he says.

In April 2009, Brian bought a 30-barrel fermenter that was installed at High Point, where all of Boaks brands are brewed, kegged and bottled. High Point brewed 90 barrels for Boaks last year. Brian says volume is already up this year and could hit 150 barrels by year's end.

Meanwhile, he's jumped on the whiskey barrel band wagon with Wooden Beanie, a stock of Abbey Brown aged in Jack Daniel’s barrels with Madagascar vanilla beans. The beer hit the barrels around the end of August; it's still aging – at just over a month now – and goes to distributors in a matter of days. (Brian says he'll have some of the beer at the Sippin' by the River festival in Philadelphia on Sunday.)

"I had always liked some of those oak-aged porters and all the other beers out there that are oak-aged, and I drink Jack Daniel’s. So, I was like 'Let’s play with this,' ” he says.

But there's some more backstory to Wooden Beanie.

"What actually happened is, Abbey Brown is a beer that hasn’t been out in a while, and the kegs were a little overcarbonated, so I had to figure out a way to (degas) them," Brian says. "So this Abbey Brown is going to be a special treat for people, because it actually is about a year old. It is a well-aged, 7 percent Belgian brown ale that is then aged in Jack Daniel’s barrels with the vanilla beans."

Jersey beers at the Brewers Plate

A quick photo pass through the 2010 Brewers Plate in Philadelphia on March 14. From top down: River Horse, Flying Fish, Triumph, Iron Hill, Boaks Beer, Climax Brewing and Cricket Hill. (As many of us know, Triumph and Iron Hill have locations on both sides of the Delaware.)

A view from the brewhouse

These are shots from the brewing day Steve Moen and Mike Wentzel had late last month at Krogh’s. That’s Steve at right.

Steve says in a note to us that Turnpike Pale Ale, the best-in-show beer from the 2008 New Jersey State Fair hombrew contest, will be on tap in Sparta in about a month, once Krogh’s can open up a tap handle.

Meanwhile, we caught up with Brian Boak of Boak’s Beer/Boak Beverages at the High Point Brewing open house on Saturday. (FYI, High Point has this seriously good schwarzbier, Project Z, on tap in the visitors area. It's totally worth your growler, just like their maibock, a rich and malty brew with a solid hop balance. Call to check on availability of Project Z.)

This is a shot of the 15-barrel fermenter Brian popped for that will be installed at High Point. It was in transit when this photo was shot.

If you recall, Brian has a business relationship with High Point, which brews his line of Belgian-style beers and an imperial stout. This fermenter is a pretty big deal for Boak’s Beer, representing dedicated tank space for the brews that Brian has found a market for in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Over the past year or so, Brian has had to rely on what tank space would come open around the regular lineup of Ramstein beers and High Point’s other contract brewing obligations.

So consider this fermenter, which at the end of last week made it from China to Michigan where it sat en route to New Jersey, to be the first ring in the tree that is Boak’s growth. Brian expects the tank to be installed within the next 10 days. From there, it’ll be filled with a wheat beer accented with lemongrass that'll wind up in a bunch of new kegs Brian also bought, and ultimately bar taps, perhaps one near you.

Updates from River Horse & Boaks Beer

A quick post with some updates (no more tax talk for a change).

We caught up with Glenn Bernabeo from River Horse last weekend at the beer and barbecue festival at WXPN in Philadelphia (a shout out to the Pobutkiewicz brothers, Dave and Russ, for sharing a surplus ticket).

Between pours of RH Belgian Double Wit and a new beer with molasses, Glenn gave us an update on what’s been going on at the Lambertville operation. (Some points he made confirm plans we’ve noted in the past. Also, sorry for the photo quality; iPhones are cool, but a digital SLR camera they are not, especially in low light.)

If you liked RH’s double IPA, Hop-a-lot-amus, it’s coming back around in bottles. Soon. RH released it draft-only back in the fall. Look for the next iteration, with ramped-up hop aroma, to hit the shelves in April (that’s when their Summer Blonde Ale comes out as well).

In early May, RH will release another Brewer’s Reserve, this time a rye hefeweizen, aptly called Hefe-rye-zen (we think that’s how it’s spelled, or something close). RH’s Brewer’s Reserve series has done well for them, notably their first one, Belgian Double Wit, which debuted a year ago and quickly earned a spot in the regular lineup. One of the more recent reserve series beers, an oatmeal milk stout, was quite popular, too; it’s scheduled to come back in October.

Also returning is Dunkel Fester, a big hit of a dark lager that was draft only last year. It’s in bottles in August (a long wait for Fester and the stout's return, but it will be worth it; trust us.) Along the way, you’ll see pumpkin spice in Tripel Horse, Glenn says.

And here’s a cool one, draft-only, but damn, seems like when RH says draft only, things end up available in bottles pretty quickly afterward. Glenn says the brewery is observing Philly Beer Week (it starts this Friday and runs through the 15th) with Dubbel Honey Weizenbock. It's been specially brewed for PBW. You can try it at the Philly Craft Beer Festival at the Cruise Ship Terminal at the Navy Yard this Saturday, or at the Fair Food/White Dog Foundation Brewer’s Plate food-and-beer pairing on Sunday, held this year at the Penn Museum (at U Penn, of course), a popular spot for beer functions, to say the least.

Here’s RH’s tasting notes on the Lenten wheat bock: Munich and caramel malts up front, rounded out by orange blossom honey, clocks in at 7.5% ABV. We're looking forward to it.

Meanwhile, we also caught up with Brian Boak of Boaks Beer/Boak Beverage yesterday.

If you recall, Brian contracted with High Point Brewing in Butler to brew his flagship Russian imperial stout, Monster Mash (10% ABV), and a lineup of Belgian beers. Monster Mash and the Belgian dubbel Two Blind Monks (7.4% ABV) will be at the craft beer fest and the Brewer’s Plate, plus PBW bar events, including the Grey Lodge, on Monday and Tuesday.

To be sure, Brian’s runs a small operation, relying on High Point to work his beers into their brewing schedule wherever they can. That's not necessarily an easy thing, since High Point also does contract brewing for the folks who own the sister restaurants of Trap Rock.

Brian's found a lot of success with his beer in eastern Pennsylvania and expects to be selling his beer in the Pittsburgh area in May or June. Not bad for a guy who has had hand-labeled case after case of bottles and hauled keg after keg to his Pa. distributor in his white Boaks Beverage van.

And there's a change on the horizon for him. By mid-April, a 30-barrel fermenter that Brian had custom-made in China (for about 19 grand) is expected to be installed at High Point. That will give his brews some much-needed dedicated fermenting space. Pretty cool for him, we say.

Central Jersey Beer Fest 2.0, Part 2

Here’s the video we shot in Woodbridge a week ago.

And we’ll make this point about the 2008 Central Jersey Beer Fest: Growth suits it. It doubled in size from last year, and it has more room to grow for next year, room for more brewers and vendors, especially food.

The pizza and bar-type fare are OK, but the event's all about beer, and that creates a great opportunity for more interesting pairings. That’s probably easier said than done, but we still think it’s something to consider, something worth investigating.

Anyway, the video ... It runs a little under 6 1⁄2 minutes. Thanks to everyone who paused for an interview, and a special thanks to Brian Boak for sparing some time from his Boaks Beer station, where for most of the day, he was working solo, keeping up with the demand for his Abbey Brown (7% ABV), Two Blind Monks (7.4% ABV) and Monster Mash imperial stout (10% ABV), all proving to be very popular choices of the day.

A longtime homebrewer, Brian jumped into commercial beer not quite a year ago, hiring High Point (where he volunteers and conducts the tours at the Butler brewery) to turn out a batch of Monster Mash for him under contract. Woodbridge was Brian’s first festival, but he’ll be pouring at Sippin’ By The River, the beer, wine and food fest at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia, on Sunday (Sept. 28).

Monster Mash and Two Blind Monks form the core of his brands right now. But if you check out his Web site or brochures, you’ll notice he has plans for a porter, a wheat beer with lemongrass and Three Blind Monks, a stronger version of Two Blind Monks that's meant to be aged.

Aside from the contract brewing, Brian’s essentially a company of one, labeling his bottled beer by hand from his business digs in Pompton Lakes, and trucking cases and draft versions of his beers in his white van to bars (like Andy’s Corner Bar, the first establishment to carry him) and outlets in New Jersey and a distributor, Stockertown Beverage, in Pennsylvania, a state that’s so far been good for business. (Brian’s beer is in 17 eastern Pennsylvania counties, including Belgian beer-loving Philadelphia.)

With 33 barrels brewed so far this year, Brian forecasts finishing the year at 60 to 75 barrels. If Woodbridge is a bellwether, 2009 could a Monster year.