Big brew theory

How do you make a big imperial beer when your business model is dedicated to making accessible beers that invite Bud, Miller and Coors Light drinkers to step up to craft brews, but also promise not to overwhelm?

That's the challenge for Cricket Hill Brewing, as it works to replicate a brew the Fairfield beer-maker crowned the winner in a homebrew contest it sponsored last year. CH has pulled off big-yet-accessible brews in the past with some beers made to celebrate brewery milestones.

Founder Rick Reed (pictured applying an instant Cricket tattoo on festival-goer) says the brewery will do that again with homebrewer Bill Kovach's recipe for a Russian imperial stout. The specialty brew isn't due until January 2012, but test batches are already being produced. Rick took some time at the Philly Craft Beer Festival this past weekend to talk about the stout and how the beer landscape in New Jersey has changed since Cricket Hill opened its doors 10 years ago.

BSL: You've done bourbon barrel and cask beers, a barley wine ... they were higher-alcohol beers.

RR: Only 8 percent, even the barley wine was only 8 percent. We did it as a signature for our 500th brew, and we kept it at 8 percent, low-balled the alcohol because we're trying to do gateway beers.

BSL: So even though you're doing an imperial stout, you're going to keep to your traditional approach?
RR: We going to try to keep the alcohol as low as we can, as long as we get the full flavor. If that means the alcohol goes up, then it has to. The homebrewer (who had) the winning recipe, we've altered it to his satisfaction. We've done two different pilot brews with the modifications – he used some (malt) extract, and we won't do that. We're having some preliminary tastings ... it's very, very good, and it looks like the alcohol is going to be held down.

BSL: What kind of range, 8 percent like the barley wine?
RR: Eight percent, yeah. We're also doing some small-batch stuff with the second, third and fourth-place winners. One is an imperial IPA; one's an American pale ale, and the other's a dubbel.

BSL: And again you're dialing it down in that Cricket Hill style of making an accessible beer that still has craft qualities?
RR: We consider it the gateway philosophy. We're trying to get the Coors, Miller and Bud drinkers of New Jersey – and there's still plenty of them, only the lord knows why – to come over to an all-malt without getting scared off. In a perfect world, if you're a beer geek, and somebody says, "I want to try a new style," you say, "Try Cricket Hill first, they'll show you what it can taste like without overwhelming you." And from there, you can go hog wild.

BSL: You guys have been at it for 10 years now. Do you feel like you've carved out a niche?
RR: We're comfortable now. If things continue the way they have over the last year and half, we're going to be very comfortable. New Jersey's accepting craft beer now with open arms. Our (brewery) tours, we're averaging 100-plus people every Friday. Our sales are up over 50 percent from the year before and the last two years.

BSL: What about your volume?
RR: This year we think were going to hit just over 2,000 barrels. For a brewery our size, that's really amazing. We lend ourselves to draft; for a small brewery, 50 percent of our beer is draft, 50 percent is bottles. Usually it's 80-20, bottles to draft.

BSL: Is your East Coast Lager still your top beer?
RR: Yep.

BSL: What's No. 2?
RR: I would bet No. 2 is the IPA (Hopnotic IPA). It's amazing, because no matter where you go and do these shows, they either love IPA or don't drink it. In Pennsylvania, they're IPA freaks, and Stockertown (Beverage, a CH distributor) sells a lot of it for us. We're the official beer of the Philly Roller Girls (roller derby team) and they take the lager and the IPA, until the Summer (Breakfast Ale) comes one, and then they take the Summer. The lager's also in some minor league baseball clubs.

BSL: You've also been a friend, lent support to the newcomers on the Jersey beer scene, New Jersey Beer Company in North Bergen and Port 44 Brew Pub in Newark ...
RR: It's a tight community. The more the merrier.

BSL: Beer in New Jersey is dramatically different than it was, even just four years ago. Talk about that.
RR: When I first got in this business, New Jersey really had nothing. It had microbreweries that were selling their beer anywhere but New Jersey. Flying Fish was selling their beers in Philadelphia; you had River Horse selling in Pennsylvania and New York; you had Ramstein selling in upstate New York, because New Jersey's a fickle marketplace.

We've been banging our heads against the wall, all of us breweries, and now New Jersey is coming around. New Jersey is a very hot marketplace; you can tell because all the little breweries from across the country are trying to get into New Jersey because they see it perking up and coming alive.

Campaign for New Jersey Beer*

Been there, been living it: Think Jersey, drink Jersey.

But this like-minded initiative is all about putting a bug in someone’s ear, namely bar owners.

For six weeks now, Rick Reed has used his Friday night sermons from the mash tun at Cricket Hill Brewery to imbue the tour crowds to be foot soldiers in a rebellion to get New Jersey beers on tap at Jersey bars that find it fashionable to crowd their tap space with crappy Coors Light, yesteryear's Guinness, and that god-awful Bass wannabe, Smithwick's.

Those crowds in Fairfield are running about 130- to 150-people strong each week, and Rick’s arming his legions with cards that bear the name of the cause – Campaign for New Jersey Beer – and are to be left with bars and restaurants' wait staff, bartenders or managers. The accompanying text on the cards explains that Garden State brewers make topnotch beers, and bars in New Jersey should have at least one of those beers on tap. It’s a matter of taking pride in something that's made in the state.

On another level, the cards are the equivalent of a polite boycott, since the person leaving the one intends to not patronize the establishment until a Jersey beer gets tap space.

Of course, Rick’s preference is to see Cricket Hill tap handles grow from this action, and he says his draft accounts have jumped by a half dozen since the campaign started. Whether that’s directly related to his foot soldiers and the 1,000 cards that have been passed out so far is anyone’s guess, he says.

But the six new accounts are welcome business, and the awareness served by the cards is undeniably important: Drink Jersey-made beers. They’re local, they’re fresh, and they can hold their own against anything on the store shelves that pours in from New York, Pennsylvania, Michigan, California, Massachusetts, Delaware or Europe.

Meanwhile, this thought came to mind after reading about Carrotmobs in a recent issue of Time magazine. In effect, the movement is a reverse boycott: rewarding businesses with patronage in exchange, in the case of Carrotmobs' requests, for going green.

It would seem like there’s potential for applying that technique to Jersey bars, prevailing en masse upon those places to put the locally made beers on tap and rewarding those bars with regular patronage. Granted, it’s easier, and perhaps more noble, to get businesses to change their light bulbs to CFLs, but we think the idea has potential for Jersey beer somehow.

Who knows, Jersey Maltmobs may be the next story in Time.


* FYI: The graphic above is of our making for the purpose of this post.