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!

Dark side of the Moon

There’s just something seductive about black. Tell us that a lass decked out in elegant black and trimmed with some well-heeled boots wouldn’t grab your attention and we’d call you a liar. Or dead.

Well we love black and we’re not dead, and those are just a couple of reasons why a beer that dances in the dark caught our eye at New Brunswick’s Harvest Moon Brewery Café.

This is not just any obsidian brew. This raven has lager contours and an accent that’s refreshing, inviting you back for more.

And right now, she can be yours.

Paint it black

This is schwarzbier, that cool German cousin of ale-leaning stouts and porters. It’s a beer style whose most well known example is probably Köstritzer, but Samuel Adams and Saranac have been known to paint it black, too.

Schwarzbier (auf deustch, schwarz = black, bier = beer, duh) traces its roots to 17th century eastern Germany (Saxony). That’s all well and good if you’re fielding questions on “Millionaire” or “Jeopardy!” (Bonus trivia for a college town: Goethe supposedly favored Köstritzer in his stein.)

But we’re talking about a Jersey bar and your glass, so just know that Harvest Moon brewer Matt McCord has chalked up a fourth incarnation of schwarzbier on the pub’s lineup for this spring/cusp-of-summer time of year that usually finds folks returning to the pub at their Belgian wit’s end.

“It’s our summer option for people who want to enjoy a darker beer,” says Matt, whose own palate tends toward English ales, and whose labors have put plenty of stouts and porters of all inflections into the pint glasses of Moon patrons.

Brewed in early spring, Matt styled the schwarzbier with German malts – deriving that deep inky color with chocolate malt and roasted barley – and jazzed it just enough with Czech hops (Saaz), while turning in an ABV of just under 6%.

That’s a little more robust than the typical 4-and-change -to-5% ABV of a schwarzbier, Matt concedes, but his beers tend to run a notch or two higher than what the beer fetishists say is style. And honestly, to drink this beer you wouldn’t know it's elbowing that envelope. Nor would you care since it has an easy-drinking, thirst-quenching quality you’d expect from the lager it is.

So it’s no wonder that among the Moon’s specialty beers, the schwarzbier has earned a following at the establishment, located along a bustling block of George Street just off the center of town.

“Last year we didn’t do it and caught a lot of heat for it. People came in and asked for it, so we weren’t going to make that mistake again,” Matt says.

Doing that would be just plain ... lunacy.

About Harvest Moon:

With 30 specialty beers that can be stirred into the mix of six house beers (including an IPA, America pale ale and a red), plus a roster of seasonals, there’s a lot to like about Harvest Moon. Not to mention the fact that the pub’s within walking distance of the train station, and its growler prices are a comparative bargain at $15 and 10 bucks for refill. (Some brewpubs command $18 before the $10 refill, while others can hit you up initially for $24). On Fridays in the summer, the pub taps a keg of fruit-flavored Belgian wit to feature through the week. Later this summer look for Matt’s take on a saison.

Throwing your beer a curve, Part 2

The taste-test results are in.

That new, curvy Samuel Adams pint glass won’t make your favorite Jersey-brewed beer taste like champaign.

It will, however, help the beer taste more like what it was intended to, complementing the flavors and aromas of malt and hops. But a word of warning to you fans of big beers: The glass seems to wreck their flavor profile. More about that later.

A quick recap:

Boston Beer Company created this tulip-meets-shaker pint glass for its flagship Boston Lager after some R&D by some topnotch beer palates and technical minds. Folks at Samuels Adams stick to their proviso that the glass is intended for their lager’s malt profile and Hallertauer Mittelfrüh hops.

Fair enough -- their glass and their beer. (Their marketing, too.) But we suspected what’s good for their lager could be good for our bitters.

So we put the glass through the paces, pitting it against the sturdy and bar-ubiquitous shaker pint glass, enlisting the sensory help of Flying Fish head brewer Casey Hughes and two of his crew -- brewer Tim Kelly and cellarman Frank Winslow. The Fish’s brewing operations chief, John Berardino, also popped in with some observations.

(Note: Both John and Casey were skeptics. John: Looks too much like a vase and its undulations rob the beer of a uniform appearance when held up to light; also looks tough for bars to clean quickly and slip back in their rotation. Casey: Chatter about the glass sounded like a lot of hype; wonder how it stacks against a Chimay glass …)

For the test bench, the Jersey brews sampled were: Cricket Hill’s East Coast Lager, Climax Brewing’s Extra Special Bitter and Flying Fish’s HopFish India Pale Ale.

Carrying things out a few more decimal places, so to speak, we also tasted a great, 8% ABV whiskey barrel-aged version of the Fish’s Belgian Abbey Dubbel. (And we can't wait to leisurely sip this baby again.)

The findings
Generally speaking, the Sam Adams glass topped the shaker pint, providing:

• Cleaner malt and hop aromas
• Readily noticeable malt flavors (unlike an initial bitterness you got drinking from the shaker pint)
• An overall support for the delicate flavors of the beers

Yes, these are the pretty much the same claims Boston Beer makes about the glass. But it’s what we tasted and what we found to be the case.

Another observation: Your palate won’t tire with the Sam Adams glass. For that, you can credit a laser-etched ring on the bottom. It triggers a constant stream of CO2 bubbles over the life of the pint to produce aromatics. (Chimay’s Belgian beer glasses have similar etching to create the same effect.)

Now, about those high-gravity beers ... The shaker glass and its wide V-shape proved friendlier to the Fish’s dubbel, holding the alcohol-warmed malt flavors and fruity aromatics in a tighter integration of pleasing sensations.

Not so with the Sam Adams glass.

It slammed the nose and palate with the booze, a jet stream of alcohol heat that shut out the vanilla notes that should have come from the oak barrel aging. The alcohol in that dubbel is a flavor that should do more weaving and less sensory cleaving. (For comparison sake, we also sipped an Old Ale from Sam Adams’ LongShot sixpack and got pretty much the same impression from that 10% ABV beer.)

Overall, says Casey: "For what the glass was made for, it does very well and complements a variety of beers ... styles that are hoppy and malty but don't have the extreme alcohol."

And, just for kicks …
On our own, we put the Sam Adams glass through a separate test, using River Horse Brewing’s ESB, Flying Fish’s Farmhouse Summer Ale and a black and tan made from Guinness and the Fish’s summer seasonal.

The results were largely the same as with the first round of sampling. But the black and tan was really interesting, a blend of Guinness tang swirling with Summer Ale tang and a tinge of its malt sweetness, all up front but nicely giving way to some slightly muted hop flavor in the Summer Ale. (The head was kind of cool, too, a tan-against-white froth. And by the by, the Summer Ale was excellent by itself in the Sam Adams glass.)

So why all the fuss over a pint glass?
Because beer has such a range of flavors that it deserves some an attention toward capturing and enriching those flavors. Plus, matching the proper glass to a beer is a common practice in Europe.

As it should be here, too.

NOTE: We're not going to offer a buying recommendation. But we will point out the glass is priced at $30 for a set of four, with shipping to New Jersey and tax boosting the grand total to nearly 41 bucks.

Throwing your beer a curve, Part 1

There’s something about beer in a glass.

It’s inviting and relaxing, mesmerizing almost, as it settles beneath a foam crown, bubbles rising.

It’s a siren in the classical sense.

So when we heard Boston Beer Company (aka Samuel Adams) was shaking up the reliable pint glass, giving it the heave-ho in favor of a new 16-ounce model styled for its Boston Lager, we were suitably curious.

After all, the sturdy, simplistic shaker glass is practically the icon of poured beer. It blew the chunky, workhorse mug of our fathers’ generation off the bar years ago to become the alpha glass.

But this new Sam Adams glass … it has starlet curves. And we wondered if it would make the shaker pint a Sony Walkman in an iPod world.

For some answers, we turned to Boston Beer.

And happy to explain what was on their minds by commissioning the design, engineering and manufacture of the glass was brewing manager Grant Wood (a different Grant Wood, but an American artist in his own right, albeit in the media of malt and hops).

With a dozen years at Boston Beer, Grant has a hand in the 20-plus beers produced under the Samuel Adams brand. So he knows beer.

And if he’s not practicing what he preaches -- drinking what he’s brewing -- he may be inclined to sip a Belgian beer, a lambic perhaps. So he does peer through the bent-back tulips, so to speak, to see how the other half lives (if you don’t mind a Beatles metaphor).

That said, two of our key questions to Grant were:

Our old friend, Shaker Pint, you got a problem with it? (Pardon the phrasing, but this is New Jersey, you know.)

And …

If the new glass is good for a Boston Lager, what about a Princeton brewpub porter?

Second question first.

Grant says the new glass -- a fusion of the shaker pint and the tulip glass typically associated with some Belgian beers -- was indeed tailored for the Boston Lager, its malt profile and noble hops. Even among Samuel Adams’ stable of brews, the new glass is the province of the Boston Lager.

So, we surmise that for Garden State beers, we’re on our own, and our mileage is probably going to vary.

And to our other question, Grant says there’s no problem with the shaker pint. It has done quite a functional job at the bar. But …

“You can do better, and I think we proved that with this particular glass,” he says.

The devil is in the details. And that’s where the difference between curvy newbie and shaker pint comes in, Grant says. It’s the nuances of flavor and aromatics and how and when you encounter them. Smell then taste, sweet before bitter, and a dynamic in which that can continue over the life of a pint. (Smelling is a compass for the taste buds. The nose knows, and it delivers more than half of your flavor sensations.)

Some test tasting zeroed in on the shortcomings of other glassware.

The shaker pint wasn’t well suited for capturing aroma. “Especially when you get to the bottom of glass,” Grant says. Pilsner glasses and their tall V-shapes were worse, generating a lot of bubbles and allowing the beer to warm quickly. They were like chimneys “and aroma wafted away faster,” he says.

But the new glass -- Grant confesses he was an early skeptic -- and its somewhat double-goblet shape offered a different experience.

When you sip from it, he says, the rolled tulip lip fits to the mouth and puts the beer to the front of your tongue, so you taste maltiness, that sweet before hop bitter. (Reminder: He is referring to drinking a Sam Adams Boston Lager.) And, Grant says, he anticipated hop aroma, but the new glass also provided enhanced malt aroma. (Remember, the nose knows and the importance of that.)

The glass is also laser etched on the bottom, some engineering work that keeps feeding bubbles. The result is sustained beer aromas. (We’d like to reiterate that nose comment.)

It should be noted that Boston Beer wasn’t trying to reinvent the wheel, just create a glass for beer drinkers that brings out the best in its best-known brew, a “next step to bringing them to beer nirvana,” as Grant says.

He hopes the glass is something for other brewers to look at, perhaps consider, even if it’s just across beer culture.

So maybe it’s not autumn for the shaker glass after all, just a nice set of curves set on the bar that can make one beer better and beer in general more fun.

And for us …

Accepting what Grant and others at Boston Beer say about the new glass and the beer it was designed for (and we’ve enjoyed a Boston Lager from it), we’re still curious about how a Jersey ESB or IPA would fare within its contours.

Stay tuned. We’re going to find out.

NOTE: Boston Beer is providing the new glasses to its better draft beer accounts nationwide. So you could see it show up in the rotation at your favorite bar. It's also for sale in sets of four from Boston Beer (check their website), so you don't have to return to those days of slipping your server a sweeter tip so she'd look the other way as you swiped a glass.

Shore bet

Good news for beer drinkers along the Jersey shore who have discriminating palates.

Fairfield brewer Cricket Hill, purveyors of a quite quenching American lager, have added bottle and draft distribution to Monmouth and Ocean County. As Jersey beer fans, we hope this helps further turn the tide toward the side of taste and choice.

It’s been a month-plus since Cricket Hill widened its reach with its East Coast Lager, amber American Ale and Hopnotic India Pale Ale, the latter being a very enjoyable session IPA (so don’t go looking for the hop hammer to come slamming down. Instead, it's a cumulative hop taste balanced with a not-too-filling full body. No problem standing up two or three of ’em.)

Because of some distribution overlap, Cricket Hill may have already been available in bottles to some shore drinkers. So that means the best news here is the availability of Cricket Hill on draft, which we advocate as the preferred way to have any beer.

You won’t get an argument from Rick Reed, Cricket Hill’s founder, either. Bottling, he says, tends to beat up a beer. The extra handling that bottling necessitates can rough up a beer and change some of its character.

So on that advice, sign up for the draft. And hopefully some savvy and supportive bar owners will help you out.

About Cricket Hill
Founded about five years go, the brewery operates from a former welding shop in an industrial park in Fairfield (Essex County).

Capacity: 3,000 barrels, producing about one-third of that now, with healthy year-to-year growth.

Beer lineup: Besides its lager, American Ale and IPA, Cricket Hill produces the seasonal Paymaster’s Porter (draft only), Colonel Blides Altbier (with plans to bottle that German style offering) and a Belgian summer ale (draft) that’s looking to find it’s way out of the bright-beer tank soon and into a glass.

Name game: Cricket Hill actually has less to do with the insect that stars in the brewery’s logo and more to do with the game cricket. The name is a reference to a vantage point for watching cricket matches in Australia. The cricket hill is the equivalent of the bleacher seats, but the spot where the social atmosphere and camaraderie is more inviting.