Where the sun chills the beer

A spotlight on going green ...

If you've had the chance, say on a brewery tour in Cherry Hill or a beer event somewhere, to talk to the folks at Flying Fish Brewing about their plans to take up new digs in Somerdale, then perhaps you know they want to put solar panels on the building to supplement their electric power demands.

Word is that FF's hopes to partner with the sun have run into an environmental glitch concerning the building, leaving their plans for the solar panels up in the air. That's just a minor status update, not the final word, so stand by.

However, there is a place just outside Atlantic City where the sun does play a role in beer.

For more 2 1/2 months now, the Joe Canal's packaged goods store in Egg Harbor Township has been chilling the beer in the cold box, running the lights and everything else that needs juice, using a 255 kW solar panel system – 1,245 of the obsidian-looking panels distributed over a parking lot carport, the building's roof and an area behind the building.

Owner Stuart Stromfeld says the panels went into service at the beginning of July and can provide nearly 85 percent of the store's electrical power needs. (Stuart graciously took for a phone interview a couple days after Labor Day, as he was heading to Philadelphia airport to catch a flight to Tuscany, Italy.)

The cost advantages for the long run are obvious. It's not cheap – 65-grand a year – to power cold box space that measures 60 feet by 20 feet by 20 feet and sits in the center of the store. It always needs to always be on, of course, to keep shelves of beer and wine refrigerated.

Stromfeld says the solar panels will pare the electric bill sharply. But they're also an environmentally conscious move, and that was a factor in the decision to have them installed. Plans down the road include fitting Stromfeld's second Joe Canal's location across town with the solar panels.

Brite Idea Energy of Egg Harbor Township installed the panels. The longer days of summer provide more power production, but "actually in winter time we do very good with production because the panels stay cooler," says Christopher Brown, sales manager for Brite Idea.

Brown says Stromfeld's store was a two-year project, from design and engineering work, getting regulatory agency approvals, and then installation.

"It's been a showpiece project for us," he says.

Getting into the growler game

Four-packs, sixpacks, bomber bottles, 12-ounce singles and now growlers.

These days, the yardstick by which you judge a great package store that's big into craft beer may not just be a selection of brews as wide as the US. It may include whether the establishment has a state license to fill jugs with take-home draft beer.

For a long time in the New Jersey craft beer scene, filling growlers has been the province of the dozen brewpubs spread across the state and a couple of production breweries (High Point in Butler and Cricket Hill in Fairfield) that offer them as an option to the two sixpack maximum allowed for retail sale at breweries.

One one brewery, Climax in Roselle Park, bottles exclusively in the half-gallon containers, using a filler system that founder Dave Hoffmann, a former machinist, built himself.

But nowadays some of the big discounter package goods stores in the Garden State are tapping into the market, capitalizing on a thirst for draft beer from Jersey brewers and craft brewers whose labels are hot tickets among beer enthusiasts.

Count the two Joe Canal's Discount Liquor Outlets on Route 1 in Islen (Woodbridge) and Lawrenceville among those establishments with taps dispensing take-home draft in proprietary growling-bulldog-monogrammed glass. Refill prices range from about a fin to 16 bucks depending on the brand of beer.

"We started in the Lawrenceville store at the end of June, and end of July over here," Michael Brenner, the stores' general manager, said last week. "We do a decent business."

(You'll find growler stations at other independently owned Joe Canal's in South Jersey, i.e. West Deptford.)

"Craft and microbrews are popular to begin with. They're getting more so," Brenner says. "There's as much interest in the different styles and regions where they come from, as we see in the wines. Folks are talking about it; they're exchanging notes, and it's a lot of fun."

Brenner says patrons are able to keep up with what's available from the taps by signing up with the stores' email notification program. The two stores, which also sell koozies to keep the jugs cold, have even scored some choice, hard-to-get brews for growler fills. "We had (Founders) Kentucky Breakfast Stout. We had a sixtel in both locations," Brenner says.

The beer sold out lightning quick. "It was great; it got a lot of people talking" Brenner says.

To help drive sales, store crews sold the empty jugs at a recent craft beer festival in Trenton. A Princeton marketing firm created the logo that's emblazoned on the brown glass.

"We think that this is such an interesting and unusual thing that you don't see every day that we wanted to brand it separately," Brenner says.

Besides hot-ticket crafts, the stores also put on some of more familiar brands, like Samuel Adams Summer Ale and Blue Moon, Brenner says, "because we want this to be accessible for everybody."