Medal works

Call it the Bronze Age, Iron Fish edition.

Flying Fish, now officially calling Somerdale, NJ, its home, took a bronze medal at the Great American Beer Festival, while Iron Hill Brewery notched a silver, plus a pair of bronze medals. (Here's the complete winners list.)

Bronze finisher Exit 8, a chestnut Belgian Brown ale, debuted just before spring 2012 as the last new Exit Series brew to come out of Flying Fish's founding location of Cherry Hill.

You may recall FF's Exit 4 won gold in 2009, while its Abbey Dubbel won a silver the year before.

Speaking of Exits, Exit 16 is now a year-round beer in 12-ounce bottles and draft, giving Flying Fish shelf and tap representation in the double IPA heading.

That tidbit has been out in the beer headlines for a little while now, but it's worth repeating. Double IPAs have been immensely popular for sometime now, and this wild rice take on the style is worth your glass.

Meanwhile, Iron Hill kept its winning streak alive with a silver medal for its Rauchtoberfest (Lancaster, Pa., location), and bronze medals for its Roggenbier (Phoenixville, Pa.), Black IPA (Wilmington, Del.) and Russian Imperial Stout (Media, Pa.).

This year's medals extend Iron Hill's impressive winning streak to 16 years. That's how long the nine-location brewpub chain has been in business and more than half the existence of the GABF. 

About the pictures:
Flying Fish held an open house back on Sept. 29, an event that coincided with a town festival in Somerdale. It was a one-off open house, since the brewery is putting some finishing touches on the new digs before it begins brewery tours on a regular basis. Check the brewery's multiple feeds (Facebook, Twitter and website) if you have any questions about tours.

Putting his stamp on things

Catching up with Chris Sheehan, brewer at J.J. Bitting brewpub ...

In a few days' time Chris will be heading west to the Great American Beer Festival, catching up to the five beers the Woodbridge restaurant-brewery sent to this year's gathering in Denver.

Bitting is one at least four Garden State breweries sending beer to the Oct. 11-13 festival (according to the GABF website, the other three are Flying Fish in Somerdale; Harvest Moon in New Brunswick; and Iron Hill Maple Shade, a bronze medalist last year for Vienna lager).

Bitting selections that Chris sent are Victoria's Golden Ale; Knockout Bock; a dunkelweizen; the hoppy foreign export Onyx Stout; and Bad Boy Oktoberfest, a GABF bronze medalist a dozen years ago. (They're all entered into competition.)

With just over a year under his belt at Bitting, having arrived shortly after Newark's Port 44 Brew Pub closed over the summer of 2011, Chris has spent his time in Woodbridge bringing to tap beers from his own recipe catalogue.

For instance, this year is the second go-round at Bitting for his wet hop Harvest Ale made with home-grown hops. Onyx Stout is a Jersey remake of the well-received Black Hole XXX Stout he turned out at Chelsea Brewing in New York.

The Harvest Ale went on tap a couple of weeks ago, the same day as the Central Jersey Beer Fest, the event Bitting has sponsored at a park near the pub for the past six years.

The 10 pounds of wet hops (of differing – some unknown – varieties) were used mostly for finishing, though some did get a 30-minute kettle addition. They came from upstate New York and Chris' home in Bergenfield, where one of his bines was a big-time producer, providing a fifth of the fresh hops he used.

Chris has also been tweaking some of the Bitting flagships, but he has been rather conservative in that regard with the Oktoberfest.

"I reworked all the recipes, except the Oktoberfest because it's an award winner from years ago. I did have to take sack of grain out of it. I was getting better (mash) extraction from a change in the crush of the grain and just better brewhouse techniques."

Good luck in Denver to Bitting, Iron Hill, Harvest Moon and Flying Fish.  

NJ @ GABF

New Jersey beer enthusiasts who descend upon the Great American Beer Festival tomorrow through Saturday will find some of the trappings of home in Denver.

Jersey craft brewers attending the 2011 incarnation of the nation's biggest beer fest are Cricket Hill, Flying Fish, Harvest Moon, Iron Hill and Long Valley.

There's also a group presence of the Garden State Craft Brewers Guild: Flying Fish, Iron Hill, Cricket Hill, Kane Brewing (one of the state's newest breweries), Basil T's and Harvest Moon.

Cheers.

Gold Fish

From judging at the Great American Beer Festival in Denver ...

Flying Fish's Exit 4 American Trippel, the inaugural beer in the Cherry Hill brewery's bomber bottle-sized specialty brews, picked up a gold medal at the biggest beer party in the US this weekend.

Maybe now the folks at the New Jersey Turnpike Authority will graciously accept the fact that New Jersey gets some accolades, not just sarcasm and standup comic punchlines, thanks to FF's Exit Series beers, which are a nod to the Turnpike's place in state and pop culture.

The brew that is Exit 4, as we all remember, is a fusion of Belgian and American tastes, and it won top honors in the category of that interpretation. (Belgian beer styles have been good to Flying Fish. The brewery's Abbey Dubbel went silver last year.)

Also, Flying Fish's IPA, Hopfish, won a bronze in the classic English Pale Ale category.

Meanwhile, Long Valley Pub & Brewery's Lazy Jake Porter took home a silver for brown porter. Lazy Jake has been in the winner's circle before, bringing home GABF gold nine years ago.

Triumph Brewing (which wraps up its two-day Oktoberfest blast in New Hope on Sunday) won a pair of gold medals with its Pennsylvania locations (hefeweizen from New Hope and kinderpils from Philly). Alas, no medal for Triumph's Princeton brewpub.

Similarly, Iron Hill, which opened an eighth location in Maple Shade last summer, won gold and silver with brews from its Delaware properties (schwarzbier and raspberry torte).

Congrats to all.

General silliness & looking back

Seems like a good year to do a GABF poster a la the three days of peace & music.

Jersey at GABF

The lineup of participating breweries for the Great American Beer Festival (Sept. 24-26) is out.

Five Jersey brewpubs and one production brewery, namely 2008 silver medalist Flying Fish of Cherry Hill, are on the list for Denver.

Hometown Beverages, which contracts with the Lion in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., to make its tri-state-named flight of lighter lagers, is also going.

The brewpubs are: Original Basil T’s from Red Bank; Gaslight in South Orange; Long Valley from scenic Long Valley in Morris County; and Triumph in Princeton (as well as New Hope, Pa., and Philadelphia). Iron Hill is also in there but listed as coming from Delaware.

Here's a heads-up: The Saturday afternoon session (Sept. 26th) has just about closed the books on available tickets.

Hi-ho, Silver!

Congrats to Flying Fish for winning a silver medal in Denver at the Great American Beer Festival over the weekend.

FF placed for their Abbey Dubbel, a brew that a while back won kind words from the late Michael Jackson, the Beer Hunter himself.

Bishop’s Tipple Trippel, from Main Street Brewery in Corona, California, took the gold out of the 53 entries in the Belgian-Style Abbey Ale category.

At 7% ABV, the Dubbel is the biggest beer in FF's year-round lineup. (BigFish, a 10% ABV commemorative barely wine, tops the Dubbel as, indeed, the biggest Fish in the brewery's pond.)

FF's Web site says the Dubbel was first released in January of 1997. We seem to recall its inaugural brew on a Saturday in the fall (October?) of 1996, a brew day that also served as an open house, a couple months or so after beer started flowing for FF.

Folks who popped in at the brewery in Cherry Hill that day got to try their hand at an essential element of the commercial brewing experience – cleanup! The handful of beer aficionados got to help dig out the mash tun, but were rewarded with some samples of FF's Extra Pale Ale and ESB, first two styles under the brewery's belt.

FF's Web site lists demerara sugar as one of the adjuncts in the Dubbel, but we seem to remember Belgian candy sugar at some point (or more like we remember seeing sacks of candy sugar stacked in the brewery.)

Nonetheless, congrats. Next year, gold.

Speaking of MJ, congrats also goes out to Lew Bryson, who was named one of the three Michael Jackson Beer Journalism Award recipients. Lew won for trade and specialty beer media.

The complete winners list can be found here.