Seriously, Cape May ain't so little anymore

New brewhouse. Next up wiring and plumbing

The previous brewhouse is now in Michigan, its stay in New Jersey quite brief.

The original brewing set-up is in pieces, its frame and other bits converted into a keg washer, while another more recent component sits on an overhead ledge, looking like a giant, unlabeled soup can on a shelf.

Cape May Brewing Company is growing – again.

Cape May's 2nd kettle

New Jersey's southern-most brewery has begun yet another expansion, taking delivery of a 15-barrel brewhouse from G.W. Kent of Michigan, on Friday morning, promptly proceeding with an initial installation that saw the mash tun, kettle, heat exchanger and brewhouse scaffold freed from their packing and, by early afternoon, standing in place along a freshly cut drain trench.

Now, the spanking-new brewhouse is just days away from striking a mash for Cape May IPA, followed by a honey porter, both in the biggest batch sizes ever for the 19-month-old brewery. 

Righting the kettle

On Thursday, a crew from Rare Bird Brewery and Taproom in Traverse City, Mich., came for the 4-barrel brewhouse Cape May had used since late last summer, a brewing system the folks at Cape May had hoped would help them keep pace.

That it didn't is a success story framed in a problem many breweries wouldn't mind having, meaning steady demand for the beers.

The new brewhouse is a familiar brewpub-style arrangement of a mash/lautern tun atop a hot liquor tank, with the kettle situated to the right of the scaffold. The brewery will add a pair each of 15- and 30-barrel fermenters, expected to arrive in a month. Rectangular wine fermenters the brewery has been using, in what became an intermezzo basis (to borrow a music term), are being sold. The wine tanks were being used in addition to some conicals, by the way.

Danny Otero clears some rough edges

Cape May decided to triple its brewing capacity when it became clear that the demands of their draft accounts and tasting-room retail sales after tours would seriously stress their output by this summer, if not by spring. 

The order for the new system was placed in December. Delivery in early February represents a fast turnaround, given the number of brewery start-ups in the U.S. these days has translated into a seven-month waits for new equipment orders. (Meanwhile, prices on the used market make new equipment, minus the wait time, attractive for start-ups and capacity upgrades.)

Mash tun and kettle after delivery

Original brew stand now keg washer

"It was perfect timing," says co-founder Ryan Krill. "They (Kent) already had one in the process, and it was one that we wanted. In this small space, this combi system works really well for us."

The new equipment marks the second major – but by far the biggest – step-up in size for the brewery in Lower Township, beside Cape May County Airport.

Besides keeping up with a growing demand, the upgrade likely will enable Cape May to make a move toward widening its distribution reach farther north and west. (The brewery self-distributes.)

"This is going really to take us to a whole new level," Ryan says. "This is probably what we should have started with."

That Cape May Brewing didn't brew 30-barrel batches when it started putting its beers into the market on Independence Day 2011 probably spoke more to the business need for caution while becoming a beer producer at the Jersey shore.

Compared to the west side of the state, and the northern end for that matter, the shore region, especially in South Jersey, has embraced craft beer at a much slower pace in the near 20 years since better beers have been available in the Garden State. 

Mark McPherson at the 4-barrel system

Shore-area brewpubs Basil T's (Red Bank), Artisans (Toms River) and the Tun Tavern (Atlantic City), plus a few beer bars, were oases in a region where Coors Light long held sway (and still does in some stubborn pockets) until two or three years ago.  

But Cape May, like Monmouth County beer-makers Kane Brewing (Ocean Township) and Carton Brewing (Atlantic Highlands), have been marketplace reinforcement for the established home-grown craft brands that knocked on the shore's door a decade before. (It wasn't until last year – its seventh – that the Atlantic City beer festival did a Jersey-themed beers section. Incidentally, Carton, Cape May and Kane all launched around the same time in 2011.)

So in deepest South Jersey, the otherwise traditionally seasonal market that is Cape May, it's no surprise that Cape May Brewing would start with batches the size of a 15-gallon keg – what a dedicated homebrewer would likely brew. 

Righting the mash tun

What followed was some baby-stepping up to a barrel and a half more than a year ago, and 4-barrels in late summer 2012, after acquiring a brewhouse from a Maryland brewpub.

What also followed has been the fortunate surprise of a market that met having a local brewery like a gold rush. Weekend tour crowds have continued to be heavy. In fact, as the new brewhouse was being moved into place in early afternoon, people braved a nasty cold rain outside to show up for tours and samples in the tasting room.

Setting the scaffold

"We were shocked," Ryan says. "Even this time of year, it's been so busy – the taproom and the accounts. We needed this just to be able to keep up with what we (expect) from this coming summer. Cape May County has been so supportive of us. All the folks around just really seem to embrace having us, having us in their backyard."

Cape May Brewing ain't so little now

Chris Henke, Ryan Krill, Mark McPherson

 There's a constant thread in craft brewing: A lot of the folks who get into the business gravitated to it from other careers.

In most cases, those people take a lot of the knowledge of their previous occupations and vocations into their new beer careers.

And so it goes for the new faces at Cape May Brewing, New Jersey's southern-most brewery. Take Mark McPherson, who jumped into brewing from a family-owned concrete business, joining the brewery 14 months ago part-time – he's been full-time for 10 – as it ramped up for a big growth spurt. 

"I'm local down here and heard about the brewery opening up. I met these guys and saw them brewing on a small scale," Mark says, standing just off the brewhouse, pausing from an early afternoon task of tending a mash.

Taproom bar

Mark checking the kettle

Cape May launched in July 2011 in Lower Township. At that time, it was just the owners – Ryan Krill and his dad, Robert, running things from the margins of their day jobs (finance and pharmaceutical consulting), while Ryan's college friend, Chris Henke, broke clean from his engineering job to be full-time at the then-half barrel brewery and to make the beer.

The brewery and its lineup of 10 draft-only ales has been growing rather exponentially since, taking over two more units of the small business park building it calls home beside Cape May County Airport. 

The extra space houses a 4-barrel brewhouse picked up last year from a Maryland brewpub; some repurposed rectangular wine fermenters; a 30-barrel conical tank used as a bright tank; a cold box for kegged beer; and a new tasting room that features a 40-foot polished concrete bar with 12 taps hovering behind it. (The tasting/taproom is open five days a week, by the way.)

"My dad is going to be full-time here in the spring," says Ryan. "He's checking out of consulting. He's part-time now, comes down during the week and on the weekends when we need help in the taproom."

Those weekends have been big, with brewery tours drawing enviable crowds; they've been positively booming during the summer, a peak season for any business at the Jersey shore. But that summer success has spilled over into other parts of the calendar.

Count 'em: a dozen taps 

All roads lead to beer

"It's just been busier and busier," says Ryan.

Ryan had planned to make the full-time jump this spring but did so last August and handles the distribution end of the brewery. "Every month our gross number has been increasing. Even though the summer has tapered off, it's just accelerating here for us."

Their list of draft accounts in Cape May County numbers 25 now and includes the Cape May-Lewes Ferry terminal. Their top-selling beer remains their Cascade-hopped IPA, but their seasonal honey porter sees high demand as well (a just-brewed barleywine will further their lineup; bomber bottles of special brews, like that barleywine, are also planned). Weekly production has surged, topping 20 barrels.

"It's not a consistent number for us, because we're still feeling things out," Ryan says. "We're gaining a number of new accounts. Even though that's a few accounts every week, as a percentage of the total, it's a lot for us. So we're still trying to feel out where we need to land for the winter."

Yet, that growth has meant the fledgling brewery needed more hands. 

Taproom manager Danny Otero

Thus, Mark was among a clutch of full- and part-time hires the brewery made to help it keep up. So was Danny Otero, a former corporate chef for Nordstrom's, who now manages the brewery's taproom in addition to handling some cellar duties.

For Mark, 38, signing on at the brewery meant making a decision to leave the family business, McPherson Masonry, in Erma (a section of Lower Township where the brewery is located). 

Peeling away from a family business where he was fourth-generation was a little stunning to his uncles, father and brother. But they were also impressed by the brewery and the realization of suddenly having a brewer in the family.

"It was a shocker," Mark says. "It was a shocker just to have a brewery in our area. The second big shocker was for me to be able to work in a brewery."

Cape May Brewing half barrels

But it's been very advantageous for Cape May Brewing, picking up a skilled construction worker at a time when it was shedding the skin of a very tiny operation. 

In fact, the most popular place in the operation is where you'll find some of Mark's handiwork: He built the tasting room bar.

"I did this section, too," he says, smiling and motioning to another part of brewhouse room. "I jackhammered out the concrete and put in the floor drains and repoured the concrete. I was a valuable asset. They needed a lot of concrete work."

There were advantages for McPherson Masonry, too.

"It alleviated a lot of the pressures, I believe, on the company, my coming here, one less mouth that my dad had to worry about," Mark says. "The housing industry has been very, very tough the past five years in Cape May County, because we're largely a tourist (area), a seaside resort. When the economy is bad, people don't vacation as much. They're not up to buying second homes or fixing up the second homes that they do have."

4-barrel brewhouse for Cape May

New Cape May brewhouse

It looks like Flying Fish isn't the only New Jersey craft brewery that's getting bigger.

Cape May Brewing is living larger these days. Not quite like the new brewhouse and that bunch of 150-barrel fermenters installed at Flying Fish's new digs in Somerdale, but it's nonetheless a healthy jump in size for New Jersey's southernmost beer-making enterprise.

For just shy of a year, Cape May Brewing has been making a splash in its corner of South Jersey, with a range of beers produced in batch sizes of a barrel and half or less. The brewery and its beers have been well-received; check out one of their Saturday afternoon open houses to find out for yourself. (See their Facebook page for hours.)


In light of that reception, owners Chris Henke and Ryan and Robert Krill saw that it was time to grow again.

This time, the jump is a big departure from the capacity tweak they made around last fall, when they stepped up from their tiny initial brew set-up (a trio of repurposed half-barrel kegs) to a 1.5-barrel system that Chris, an engineer, created.

Even with last year's size change, Cape May was staying quite busy, with Chris brewing four times a week.

Now, buoyed by a $68,000 economic development loan from their host town (Lower Township), Cape May Brewing is now stepping up to a 4-barrel Pub Brewing system acquired last November from a Maryland brewpub. The brewery is backing that up with a half dozen 15-barrel fermenters.

To make room for all of this, Chris, Ryan and Robert have taken over two adjacent units in the business park-like building on the Cape May County Airport property where the brewery launched last summer.

But wait, there's more.

Cape May is retiring its start-up Cornelius kegs more common among homebrewers, switching to sixtels and half barrels, for which the brewery is adding a kegger and a keg washer. (It pays to have an engineer on board: Chris is building the keg washer.) Supportive draft accounts accommodated the Corny kegs, but the new industry-grade ones will give Cape May a wider reach.

Meanhwile, the floor drains have been dug and concrete was expected to be poured this week. Ryan forecasts Cape May Brewing version 2.0 will be up and running in June.

Floor drain work

Licensed in May 2011, Cape May's draft beers began hitting the taps at its first account, Cabanas, a nearby oceanfront bar, a couple of months later.

Since then, the brewery has produced a dozen different styles, including a wheat beer, a stout, a honey porter, a brown ale, and a flagship IPA that took a first place in judging at last month's Atlantic City beer festival.

In the pipeline now are a saison and a kölsch, plus a re-release of their cranberry wheat.

"We started out on a shoestring budget, but we're getting more sophisticated as we go. Our licensing happened quickly, our popularity happened quickly, and now our expansion is happening quickly," Ryan says.

Cape May cuts ribbon on tasting room

Joined by local government dignitaries, nanobrewer Cape May Brewing on Thursday christened its tasting room at a special weekday open house.

But perhaps the bigger news for the tiny brewery is that once again it is looking to grow. Cape May Brewing is in talks with the Delaware River & Bay Authority to take over some space adjacent to the brewery, located in a building on the grounds of the DRBA-owned Cape May County Airport.

Ryan Krill, who started the brewery with his dad, Robert, and college friend Chris Henke, says the discussions are in the early stages. The brewery is also doing some preliminary work toward boosting capacity again, he says.

Cape May shed its start-up half-barrel brewing system a few months ago, moving to a 1.5-barrel setup.

"We're pricing stuff out and scaling things out right now and seeing what's going to be appropriate," Ryan says. "That's the whole goal, to be able to have more than four accounts. We want to sell beer, we want to have a lot of fun doing it. We're going to try to find a sweet spot and a good scale for us."

In addition to its tasting room, Cape May Brewing has three bar accounts (Cabanas, SeaSalt and Lucky Bones Backwater Grille, all in Cape May) for its brews – a flagship IPA, a sweet stout, a porter (made with locally produced honey) and a wheat beer. Upcoming is a dunkelweizen, as well as an 8% ABV imperial IPA with Centennial hops that was brewed this week for release around Christmas.

At Thursday afternoon's open house, dignitaries from Lower Township and the DRBA took part in a ribbon-cutting for the tasting room where Cape May Brewing has been welcoming visitors since July.

Ryan says the brewery plans to hire a couple of staffers to help out in the tasting room and with retail sales of glassware, hats and shirts from Saturday tours and tastings.

About the video:
Cape May Brewery's Ryan Krill talks with interviewer Tara Nurin of the women's beer group Beer for Babes at the Somers Point beer festival held Oct. 29.

Still a nano, just a bigger nano

A capacity boost at Cape May Brewing Company.

The nanobrewer located in Lower Township in Cape May County has stepped up its brewing batch size to 1.5 barrels and has added five 2-barrel fermenters that will allow the brewery to phase out the nine 35-gallon fermenters it began operations with back in late spring.

The quick jump to a tripled brewing capacity is part of Cape May's business plan, says co-founder Ryan Krill.

The original brewing setup – designed Chris Henke, the company's brewer, and fashioned from repurposed half-barrel kegs – was directed more at getting the nanobrewery licensed and up and running in the craft beer market than it was to brew and maintain a flow of beer inventory.

"The new setup is stainless steel tanks Chris got from a stainless distributor and got welded with fittings. It's more efficient," says co-founder Ryan Krill, who took some time on Friday to talk about the brewery's jump from brewing 12- to 13-gallon batches to 46 gallons.

Other changes include the addition of a second cold box and regularly scheduled brewery tours. The tours began in July as announced-date events but are now set for each Saturday (noon to 4 p.m.). The tours have proved popular, Ryan says, drawing crowd sizes of 100 people during the allotted hours.

Also, the brewery has also joined the Garden State Craft Brewers Guild, one of three newly licensed craft breweries in the state to do so. (Kane Brewing and Carton Brewing, both in Monmouth County, are the other two.)

Cape May is still supplying a single bar account (the oceanfront Cabanas in Cape May), but Ryan says the tiny beer company that he started with his dad, Robert, and college friend Chris has seen a gradual increase in production.

The brewery produced 16 barrels from July to September, in the form of their flagship Cape May IPA, a one-off dark IPA (a beer that was done on a lark, so it's highly improbable to ever see it return), a porter, stout and wheat beer.

Heading into the Thanksgiving holiday you can expect a cranberry wheat beer, Ryan says.

Elsewhere
Speaking of Carton Brewing, the Atlantic Highlands production brewery that came online in August will begin conducting brewery tours this weekend, Saturday and Sunday from noon to 5 p.m. (Judging from their website, this week they pilot-brewed a milk stout – Carton of Milk Stout – a brew that was always in the company game plan.)

Additionally, Carton is teaming with Kane Brewing, the Ocean Township production brewery that opened last July, for a benefit beer dinner on Oct. 14th.

Cape May Brewing opens doors to public

A week after supplying its first draft account, nano-sized beer-maker Cape May Brewing welcomed the public with its first open house, a four-hour meet-and-greet on Saturday that featured beer sampling and a tour of the brewery's facility nestled in an industrial park-like building alongside Cape May County Airport.

More than a dozen craft beer enthusiasts paid a call on the state's smallest beer-maker and were treated to tastes of a one-off malty brown ale-like dark IPA, and the brewery's launch beer, a deep-golden IPA informally called Jump The Jetty.

Cape May Brewing kicked off July by picking up a tap handle at Cabanas, an oceanfront bar and grill, with Jump the Jetty, which is actually registered with beer industry regulators as Cape May IPA.

Located just a bottle cap's toss from the brewery, Cabanas (on Beach Avenue in Cape May) quickly blew through the IPA over the Fourth of July holiday weekend but is now pouring the beer again thanks to a second sixtel delivery.

Notching nine brew sessions since getting its state license in mid-May, Cape May Brewing is right now the Garden State's only producing nanobrewer. Somerset County nano Great Blue, licensed in March, has been idled with some technical problems with its brewing equipment.

Cape May Brewing cranks out 25 gallons for fermentation, a production rate that for now has the brewery at about one-third of its capacity. The batch volume is produced via combined brews on a horizontal brewsculpture fashioned from repurposed 15-gallon beer kegs, a setup not unlike what you would find in a homebrewer's garage. For its sixtels, the brewery relies on Cornelius kegs, saving money by forgoing the purchase of more traditional kegging equipment.

"It's a brewery, but it's a very small brewery," says Ryan Krill, who's a partner in Cape May Brewing with his dad, Robert, and college friend Chris Henke, an engineer by profession who built the company's brewing rig. "We're not trying to take over the world, and we're not trying to get nuts. It's an affordable business plan."

Ryan says the trio were pleased with Saturday's open house turnout, which had them filling growlers of both IPAs, selling pint glasses and logoed baseball caps, and discussing how the brewery is trying to establish itself.

"I didn't really know how many people would show up today. The only advertising we did was put it on Facebook," Ryan says. "Everything for us so far has been a slow release, a soft open at Cabanas, see how the beer's received ... A lot of people want to carry us, but the whole plan is to take our time, be slow, feel out the beer business, see what we can get ourselves into."

Ryan explained how Cape May Brewing will pace its output: "We're just doing Cabanas now. After about a month, we'll have a good feel for how much they need and how much we need at the tasting room. After that point we'll see how much extra we have, then we can work on new accounts. But we're not going to try and get a new account and then find out we can't supply a new account."

Chris adds: "As we've been saying, it's just figuring it out. We go slowly so we don't get ourselves in a situation where people are yelling at us for not keeping up the supply."

As far as the beers go, if you've had the opportunity to taste Jump The Jetty, you can expect some tweaks to dial up the hop character. The ale trends toward a milder take on IPA, less bitterness up front. "It's good, but it's not exactly where we want it to be ultimately," Ryan says. "The next batches have been hopped up more."

The dark IPA, likewise, sidesteps some of the more traditional hallmarks of the style, and answers some of those variations with a toasty character.

The beer is the result of attempting something off the beaten path with ingredients on hand. "We had an extra day to brew. We said let's brew something different – before that we had four batches of IPA – so we said let's try something different," Chris says. "So we collected all the hops we had in our freezer ... doubled up on our dark malt, which is crystal 50, and we got a very interesting beer.

"We really don't know what to call it. I've been calling it dark IPA because the base was kind of an IPA, but they were older hops so we didn't get the extraction that we thought we'd get out of the hops, bitterness-wise. But you do get the dark malt; that hits you at the end. You get that dark, toasty feel to it," Chris says.

NOTE: Check with the brewery's Website or Facebook page for future open houses.

Cape May licensed; another nano emerges

Just as Cape May Brewing scores its state license to begin making beer, another Cape May County nanobrewery is emerging, hoping to fire up a kettle in the fall and launch with an American pale ale in New Jersey's southern shore draft beer market.

Tuckahoe Brewing Company is a foursome of homebrewers from Atlantic and Cape May counties who have been brewing together since 2006. They established their company back in January and earlier this month leased a 1,000-square-foot building at 369 Woodbine-Oceanview Road in Dennis Township, about a 20-mile ride up Route 9 from Cape May Brewing, which just became New Jersey's newest brewery and the state's second nanobrewery (behind Great Blue Brewing in Somerset County).

State regulators gave Cape May the green light to strike a mash following an inspection of their facility on Thursday. (Federal regulators signed off on the brewery in early April.) Ryan Krill, one of the three owners, says they expect to begin brewing sometime next week.

Matt McDevitt, one of the guys behind Tuckahoe Brewing, says he and his partners – Tim Hanna, Chris Konicki and Jim McAfee – have filed paperwork for a brewers notice with the federal government and for a limited brewery license with the state.

"Our goal is to get started around October/November, depending on how that gets processed," says McDevitt, whose day job is teaching at Mainlaind Regional High School in Linwood. Hanna and Konicki are also teachers at Mainland Regional; McAfee is an architect in Cape May County.

Ahead of them now is the task of getting a floor plan together and turning that into brewing space.

"We all get out of school in mid-June, and at that point we'll do some work on it, make it brewery-ready," McDevitt says. "We looked around for about two months for different places down in Cape May County and found a place that has pretty much everything we need, as far as a new-enough building that we don't have to do that much work to it."

The four plan to brew two to three times a week on a 3-barrel set-up to feed an inventory of sixtels and possibly half kegs. If all their recent outreach to Cape May County bars and restaurants to generate interest leads fortune to smile upon them, they'll look to boost their brewing capacity.

"Once things start to move in the right direction, the next step will be a 10-barrel system," McDevitt says.

The partners have been looking at brewing systems from a couple of fabricators who have become central to the burgeoning nano sector of craft brewing.

"Psycho (Brew) is one of the systems we're looking at. Obviously money is a factor, and that's one of the more affordable systems," McDevitt says. "The other is, we've looked at a system from Premier Stainless, which makes another 3-barrel model and will custom-fabricate a system."

Long-time followers of New Jersey's craft beer scene may remember the planned Tuckahoe Malt Brewing Company, which failed to get off the ground back in the mid-1990s. McDevitt says he and his partners approached the owners of that name about opening a brewpub under that banner, but opted for a nanobrewery instead and formed their business as Tuckahoe Brewing Company.

On their blog site, the four say they intend to launch with four styles: pale ale, wit, porter and another ale or pilsner made exclusively with agricultural products grown in New Jersey.

The pale ale, hopped with Cascade, possibly Centennial, and finished with Mount Hood, will likely be the company's flagship brew, McDevitt says.

"That will be what we start with. It's going to be high production with that," he says. "The plan is, right now, to make two seasonals, like a Belgian wit in the spring-summer and a smoked porter for the fall-winter.

Locally made, locally served is a guiding light for Tuckahoe Brewing's business model. McDevitt believes that's something the buying public is keen on these days.

"This area for the longest time hasn't had any local beers besides Flying Fish (from Cherry Hill), but even that is, a little bit, a ways away," he says. "So hopefully, we can do some good for the Cape May and Atlantic County areas, hopefully get some people excited about drinking some locally made beer."

Feds OK Cape May nano-bewer

Cape May Brewing Company clears a key hurdle and moves one step away from being able to make beer.

Federal regulators – the Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) – OK'd the budding South Jersey nano-brewery last Friday.

That puts the enterprise started by Ryan Krill, his dad Robert, and Chris Henke in position to get the blessings of New Jersey regulators.

(In photo above, from left that's Chris and Ryan sharing a toast with Flying Fish sales director Andy Newell at the Atlantic City beer festival last Friday night.)

Barring any hitches, the state Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control could grant a license by mid-April, enabling Cape May Brewing to fire up the one-third-barrel system Chris assembled and get the brewery up and running at their location in Lower Township, adjacent to the Cape May County Airport.

"We got the TTB license today. The only thing the ABC needs is our TTB license," Ryan said Friday night. "They've already given us comments, and we've responded."

Chris notes the brewing system was designed to achieve short-term goals. "We're calling it our pilot system," he says. "Hopefully that all it is, a one-third barrel system. We built it to get our license. We're going to use it to get our license, we're going to brew on it. But as soon as possible, we're going to upgrade to something bigger."

So close, yet still so far away.

Ryan and Chris say they'll be tending to details big and small before they're striking a mash, meaning there's a lot to do before trying to stand up beers in front of the bar crowds that are part of the state's southern shore population surge in summertime. Cape May Brewing is a business, they say, not a race, so rushing to market is something to be avoided.

"We're a local brewery, serving Cape May and the South Jersey crowd," Ryan says. "The peak is in the summer and we would like to be able to hit that. It would be good for us. But if we're unable to do that, then we're going to have to pass because we're not going to get in over our heads."

Cape May County brewery in the works

New Jersey's craft beer industry entered 2011 with four applications* for production brewer licenses pending before state regulators, among them a venture picking up some steam in Cape May County.

Ryan Krill, his father Robert Krill, and Chris Henke, a friend from Ryan's college days at Villanova University, say they're in the process of leasing a site in Lower Township for their Cape May Brewing Company, an enterprise they want to become a beer supplier in the South Jersey shore market and beyond.

"Our bread and butter is going to be local draft distribution," says Ryan. (Pictured from left to right: Robert, Ryan and Chris.)

Cape May, as a part of the business name, represents more than just a potential market. The region is also the shore destination that the three, as Pennsylvania residents, have a long had an association with. Coincidentally enough, their Pennsylvania haunts – West Chester, where the Krills hail from, and North Wales, where Chris has an address – are home to two Iron Hill brewpub locations. And for the record, Ryan now calls Avalon home.

Aside from being craft beer enthusiasts, the trio's passion for better beer is buoyed by their seven combined years involved in homebrewing, a typical springboard into commercial beer-making (the majority of the Garden State's craft brewers entered the business via this path). But their entrepreneurial sense rests upon 30 years in the pharmaceutical business for Robert, 65; work in finance for Ryan, 28; and engineering for Chris, also 28.

There's a "keener interest in craft beers. The quality is definitely better, and people are asking for local beers," says Robert.

Right now, the three are focused on the lease for their site adjacent to the Cape May County Airport (the property is owned by the Delaware River and Bay Authority, which runs the Cape May-Lewes, Delaware, ferry and the airport). After that, they'll turn their attention to installing their brewing equipment and securing their federal and state licenses. (They hope to have an initial 10-gallon brewing set-up installed around April, and then a three-barrel system.)

The trio would like to see Cape May Brewing up and running by Memorial Day, but they're also realistic that much needs to happen beforehand. (An April opening is noted on their Web page, but they say that will most likely get pushed back.)

In the meantime, they're also pounding the pavement to establish accounts for Cape May Brewing Company, which could launch with an IPA (Jump the Jetty IPA is a working name), followed up with wheat beer that makes use of Jersey-grown cranberries, plus seasonal brews.

"We're taking our time. We're not running into the market. It's easy to talk about starting a brewery," Ryan says.

*More on the other three soon.