Jersey beers in Europe

Jersey brewers get a European audience.

Climax, Cricket Hill and High Point sent beer to the three-day Mondial de la Biere, held this past weekend in Strasbourg, France.

The Jersey brews were part of the event's American beer tent, which included a sampling of craft beers from across the US (Troegs, Weyerbacher, Allagash, Sierra Nevada, Left Hand, Smuttynose, Boston Beer and Blue Point, to name a few).

Roselle Park-based Climax sent its Hoffmann Oktoberfest and its IPA, while Cricket Hill ponied up its Colonel Blides ale as part of its flight of brews.

"We sent over the Colonel because that's a really an English-style beer. We figured Europe, English style ... it works out even though the French and English don't get along. We sent over the East Coast Lager; we sent over the American Ale," says Cricket Hill founder Rick Reed. (Mondial's Web site lists the CH beers as the Fairfield brewery's summer ale, IPA and fall seasonal.)

It was a repeat appearance for High Point, which sent its Ramstein Classic dunkelweizen to the event. Last year, Butler-based High Point sent its Classic and Blonde wheat beers.

Calendar Notes

This Saturday – Sept. 13th – will be a busy one for beer fans. (Actually, all of September is.)

Pizzeria Uno (Metuchen/Woodbridge, located along Route 1) hosts its first-ever cask ale festival, featuring smooth unfiltered brews from Climax, Chelsea Brewing, Captain Lawrence Brewing, Troeg’s, Weyerbacher, and of course Uno, the only Uno in the USA that brews its own beers with the pizza it makes.


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Brewer Mike Sella says it’s a pay as you go event, starting at noon and running to the last drop (or thereabout). Have no fears, the per-glass prices will be reasonable, complemented with happy hour food prices during the event.

Mike says the cask fest, while definitely a first for Uno, is possibly the first such fest in the Garden State’s modern brewing history. So go, be part of history.

Also coming from Uno is their Oktoberfest, which goes on tap Tuesday (Sept. 9th), and a popular wee heavy that returns in October-November (and again around February).

You can also enjoy Mike’s beers at the Central Jersey Beer Fest (more on this one soon) on Sept 20th at Woodbridge's Parker Press Park and at the Manhattan Cask Ale Festival at Chelsea Brewing, Sept. 19-21.

Meanwhile, if you're the kind who likes to pack an itinerary, High Point will debut its 2008 Oktoberfest at the brewery in Butler at 2 p.m., also on Sept. 13th. (Again, more on that one in a day or two.)

And coming up, Oktoberfest in Philadelphia, Sept. 27th, where Flying Fish will be pouring Oktoberfish. (Yes, more details are on the way).

The Don of beers

If you already have a copy of Don Russell’s road map to Philadelphia’s beer scene, then you know that this Philly guy spends some time on our side of the Delaware, too.

(To be sure, as a man worthy of his beer hunter-chronicler occupation, Don gets around: He once returned a call to us while he was in Austria, if memory serves us correctly.)

Don’s new book, “Joe Sixpack’s Philly Beer Guide,” spotlights eastern Pennsylvania neighbors Flying Fish Brewing (Cherry Hill, pp 44-45) and River Horse Brewing (Lambertville, pp 46-47). Besides its obvious quick-read, utilitarian design, the book is seasoned with interesting tidbits.

Don will be signing copies from 5-7 p.m. Friday (May 9th) at Flying Fish. FF plans to have a well-aged barley wine and a sixtel of Espresso Porter on tap for the occasion. Like to talk beer? See this guy.

We caught up with Don at the Philly Craft Beer Fest back in March and asked him about the genesis of his book. Check out the video.

Don’s been keeping up with beer under his working-class nom de plume for a dozen years as a Philly Daily News and Web columnist. So sandwiching his expertise and wisdom between book covers was a natural beer-writer arc.

It’s not on the video, but we also asked Don for beer-consumer advice, some how to buy, not so much what to buy. He threw in a little of what to drink.

Don’s advice: Buy fresh, buy local. Fresh beer is always a goal, and what brewers save on transport costs trickles down to store shelves and tap handles. One more word: Step off your beaten path; don’t just drink your favorites from your favorite brewers. Explore their other styles, too.

Elsewhere:
To us anymore the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry is as shopworn as the Mac-PC feud or Canon-Nikon debate. So our pulses didn’t quicken over that Sox jersey jinx attempt that had to be retrieved from concrete poured at the under-construction Yankee stadium.

But this one is mildly funny: A Cricket Hill fan apparently emblazoned a tribute to the Fairfield brewer’s brews on a girder at the stadium in the Bronx. Check out CH’s blog for the picture.

The Dance Card
Jersey brewers are busy this month. Check out this from the Garden State Craft Brewer's Guild calendar:

• German wheat beer specialist High Point Brewing is hosting an open house from 2-4 p.m. on Saturday (May 10) at the brewery and will be featuring their maibock. (It’s billed as a last chance for that seasonal.) High Point will also have its Ramstein beers at Spuyten Duyvil in Brooklyn May 8 for a niche brand night. (Check out Spuyten’s jukebox listing. XTC’s “Big Express” is currently in the mix; “All You Pretty Girls” is a great tune. King Crimson’s hypnotic disc “Discipline” is on the juke, too.)

Also look for High Point/Ramstein on May 25 at Old Bay Restaurant in New Brunswick for OB’s annual Maifest.

• More Fish: Flying Fish is on the card of 48 U.S. breweries at the Brewers Association's inaugural food-beer matchup, "SAVOR: An American Craft Beer and Food Experience," May 16-17. FF is among only eight mid-Atlantic brewers on the Washington, D.C., happening's lineup, and this is one of those events that (happily) breaks from oversold chug festivals and marries beer to great food in a more intimate setting. It's also rounded out with educational discussions on brew and food.
Website: www.savorcraftbeer.com

Don’t forget:
• Tuesdays are cool at Triumph Brewing in Princeton, meaning it’s a jazz house on Nassau Street. Have a pint and get Mingus eyes (that one’s for Richard Thompson fans).

• Double up at JJ Bittings in Woodbrige with two for one on Tuesdays, a good deal now that a gallon of gas rivals happy hour prices and will probably pass them before summer's done. Live entertainment on Thursdays.

• Cask of the Amarillo … OK we’re taking some wordplay license with E.A. Poe works, but cask ale is featured at the Gaslight in South Orange on Thursdays and on Fridays at Harvest Moon in New Brunswick.

Cheers.

No fest like O fest

OK, so what if those rolling hills, and yes even mountains, in northwest New Jersey can’t hold a candle to the Alps. There’s still a taste of Bavaria to be found where Passaic and Morris counties draw their border.

And August is when you’ll find the small crew at High Point Brewing toiling away to produce one of the brewery’s draft beer specialties: Oktoberfest. Come next month, the second Saturday in September (Sept. 8th, 2-4 p.m. to be exact), you’ll be able to catch the spirit of the deutscher party that defines the fall season.

And at High Point, that moment goes something like this: A big oak barrel from Austria spills forth a hearty, copper-hued, malty beer (6% ABV) that’s become a favorite across North Jersey and a distinguished guest on Samson Street in Philadelphia.

“We take a big brass spigot and wooden mallet and just bang away on it until, BOOM! we open the keg. And that’s how we debut Oktoberfest at High Point Brewing Company,” says Greg Zaccardi, the brewery’s founder.

The tapping is the high point, if you don’t mind the wordplay, of the brewery’s September tour and draws a faithful crowd each year. Right now, High Point is busy brewing, fermenting and lagering what will eventually be seven 16-barrel batches of the seasonal. That's about 3,500 gallons of a beer you don't want to miss.

Greg, like a lot of Jersey craft brewers, followed the arc of homebrewer to professional brewer – he also has an undergraduate degree in chemistry – opening his brewery about a dozen years ago in an old mill along a rail line in Butler.

Before he started turning out traditional German wheat beers with a touch of American styling under his Ramstein brand – which now boasts eight beers (including a new pale ale) – he put in some apprentice time at a brewery in southern Germany, in the foothills of the towering Alps.

And so, all things Ramstein, whether bottled or draft, enjoy a German lineage, from the imported barley malts, wheat and hops to even the yeast.

Worth noting: High Point’s Oktoberfest uses a monastery yeast that goes back to the 1400s – Johannes Gutenberg’s lifetime! (Sorry about the pixel typeface era, Johannes. But hey, movable type and printing presses had a good run.)

Greg says Ramstein Oktoberfest was born from a request by the Hofbrauhaus in Atlantic Highlands, six or seven years ago.

The now-closed Monmouth County restaurant (shuttered after 58 years, alas) did well with High Point’s blonde and dunkel wheats, and asked Greg and his crew to line it up with a fall fest beer.

So he obliged, and beer enthusiasts who popped in the brewery for tours were rewarded, too: A keg of the beer was kept on hand for those occasions.

The beer’s popularity grew. And grew.

Ludwig’s Garten, in Center City Philadelphia, where the blue-and-white lozengy of Bavaria wafts in the breeze on Samson Street, also calls on High Point’s fest beer to join the lineup of brews it serves at its Oktoberfest street fair. Ditto for Andy’s Corner Bar in Bogata in Bergen County, one of New Jersey’s premier specialty beer bars.

So as you dab the August sweat from your brow, think of the folks who are laboring to quench your thirst. And toast them this fall.

Prost!

Figuratively speaking

Sluggish growth for the big domestic brewers, double digit growth in craft beer. That’s from the Brewers Association earlier this spring, which took a look at supermarket sales from 2005 to 2006 in a snapshot of the nation’s craft beer industry.

The breakdown, according to the trade group, goes like this: 2.4% growth for the big brewers (personified here as Bud C. Miller), while craft beer saw a nearly 18% percent surge in sales. Craft beer is the alcoholic beverage industry’s segment to watch, boasts the Brewers Association.

Given that news, and with Garden State craft beer’s showcase festival coming up June 23rd, we wanted to see where New Jersey’s microbrewers and brewpubs were situated in the industry nationwide, and what the landscape, numerically speaking, looks like for the state’s craft beer business.

The Brewers Association was kind enough to pull together some production stats for us (a million thanks to BA director Paul Gatza, who took the time during a busy spring schedule to whip up the Excel files).

If you’re into figures, then you’ll be well-armed in case there’s a pop quiz at the 11th Annual Garden State Craft Brewers Festival aboard the USS New Jersey. (These numbers probably aren’t going to help you charm the ladies, and spouting them could just get you sucked into a beer geek debate or two.)

So sit back, pour a cold one and crunch some pretzels or Planters, while we crunch the numbers, with visual aids, too! (Some quick points: The stats are drawn from figures reported to the BA by member breweries and brewpubs. New Jersey-specific figures are for the years 2001-06. Also, click on the charts to enlarge them.)

• Top state producer of craft beer: California. That's probably no surprise to anyone who really follows the industry. Golden State craft brewers brewed up 1.3 million barrels (bbls) last year. Rounding out the top five: Ohio, Colorado, Oregon and our foamy neighbor to the north, New York.

California reigns as production king with nearly a half-million barrel advantage over Ohio (859,098 bbls). North Dakota finished last at 550 bbls.

In case you’re wondering (as we were and hence pursued this project), New Jersey came in 29th with 26,384 bbls. (That’s a 2.3% increase from ’05, by the way.) Our neighbors west and south are running laps around us: Delaware (20th) cranks out nearly twice as much craft beer as New Jersey, while Pennsylvania (14th) brews almost 4 1/2 times as much.

• Most disappointing stat (for some reason, this bugged us): Alaska, which in terms of population density has less than one person per square kilometer, compared to our nearly 300 people per square kilometer, is apparently more into craft beer than we are. Alaskan craft brewers made nearly 121,000 bbls last year (for 12th place). Maybe we’re crying in our beer for nothing, but geez we’re on the East Coast, anchored by the metropolitan poles of New York and Philadelphia. Sigh, even Montana finished better than we did, at 64,306 bbls to rank 17th.

We’re not, by any stretch, laying blame on the good New Jersey brewing folks who put the better beer beside our jazzed up steaks, barbecue and hot-off-the-grill dogs and burgers. Jersey is a tough place for any business to be in business. Get into an enterprise that comes with some added regulatory pressure (à la the alcoholic beverage industry) and you can put an exponent on the degree of difficulty. More on this issue at some point soon.

Moving on … Jersey-specific stats

• The Garden State’s top craft brewer is again Flying Fish. The Cherry Hill brewer is closing in on the 10,000 bbl mark (9,785 bbls, a 3.4% percent increase) and dominated the state’s craft beer production for the period observed. River Horse Brewing in Lambertville continues as the place horse (4,750 bbls), while taking show is High Point and its wheat beers. (See the charts for the production trends and the 2005-06 year-to-year micro results.)

• In the subset category of brewpubs, Triumph (Princeton) is tops at 1,310 bbls, followed by Harvest Moon (New Brunswick), 850 bbls. (See the chart for the top six brewpubs.)

• Gone but not forgotten: Heavyweight Brewing. The purveyor of the ever-interesting Perkuno’s Hammer (imperial porter) opted to pack things in last August, with an eye toward popping up on the PA side of the Delaware River in some form. But as beer scribe Lew Bryson has recounted on his blog (with some reminiscing) the Hammer was taken in as a foster child by Victory Brewing in PA.

• Worth mentioning: High Point – aka Ramstein – in Butler and Climax Brewing in Roselle Park were rated among the top 50 craft beers based on user reviews on BeerAdvocate.com (see the June 2007 issue of their hard copy mag). Also, Philadelphia's the City Paper gave top accolades to Flying Fish's Farmhouse Summer Ale in its rating of summer brews.

The Brewers Association is upbeat for 2007’s industry prospects, forecasting the nation's 1,400 craft brewers and brewpubs will top the $500 million sales mark. All stats aside, we’re going to pour another brew in support and follow the BA's lead.

Cheers.