Meadowlands fest back for 2nd round

If math isn't your best subject, well don't worry, this is beer-drinker math, so it will be some simple division and multiplication.

Event promoter Starfish Junction stages nine beer festivals in a year and serves 37,546 gallons of beer in that time. So, how many pints would that stand on the bar?

Answer: 300,368.

Poured into shaker glasses placed side by side, it's enough pints to circle the Earth at the equator about 1,600 times.

By any count, it's a lot of beer. (See the chart for some more stats. Kegs are most likely a mix of halves, quarters and sixtels.)

And come Saturday, Starfish Junction gets a jump on tallying some figures in Secaucus, with its second edition of the International Great Beer Expo at the Meadowlands Exposition Center.

Veterans of beer festivals know the drill well: Start with lighter styles and work your way up to the hoppier brews, and remember to drink plenty of water to stay hydrated.

For fresh faces in the crowd, Joe Chierchie, sales and marketing manager for Starfish Junction, has some advice: pace yourself; there's a lot of beer, and some of it is strong.

"The alcohol content is higher, the beers are heavier, and for first-timers it can sometimes be a surprise," Joe says.

Also, don't go with the just usual suspects or familiar-sounding brands.

"Keep your options open, this is a tasting event," he says. "If you're not a stout guy keep an open mind, give it a try."

Around the world in 100 beers & Jersey, too

Jersey-made brews pouring in Secaucus on Saturday.

Festival promoter Starfish Junction is bringing the international beer show it staged last fall at Nassau Coliseum on Long Island and last June in Philadelphia to the Meadowlands Exposition Center, marking Starfish's first foray into Garden State beer festivals.

The International Great Beer Expo boasts 100 beers from 50 breweries hailing from 25 countries.

"This is a festival for those who enjoy imports and not so much the craft brands," says Joe Chierchie, sales and marketing manager for Starfish Junction.

Still, if you're going, you can get an array of 2-ounce pours of American craft beers in your logoed sampler glass, including Jersey-made beers from Cricket Hill, Flying Fish, High Point, and River Horse, and contract brews from Jersey-based Boaks Beverage, East Coast Beer Company and Hometown Beverages.

You'll find the Garden State brands interspersed throughout the international labels. "We like to mix in the local guys with the big guys, so you can get a real taste between certain styles," Joe says.

Starfish Junction is widely known for its beer shows in Philly and New York. The timing was right, Joe says, for Starfish to set its sights on New Jersey.

"We're based in Long Island and the business partnerships made with those festivals there led to the (2007) Philly festival," he says. "There was an outcry for a Jersey festival. Through distributors and the connections made in New Jersey we found venue that would work."

Tickets, priced at 40 bucks ($10 for designated drivers), are still available for both the afternoon (12:30-4 p.m.) and evening (5:30-10 p.m.) sessions.

March of the beer fans

It’s been a week since the Philly Craft Beer Festival, and here’s our look back on it in moving images and sound.

A word of thanks to a lot people: Greg Zaccardi and everyone at High Point Brewing for some really key support; festival organizers Starfish Junction Productions and TotalBru for letting us shoot; Glenn Bernabeo of River Horse for taking the time to do an interview; Joe Sixpack himself, Don Russell, for likewise sitting for an interview (we’ve got some more footage of Don taking about the origins of his Philly Beer Guide book that we’ll be posting soon); and Gregg Bevan of VideoLink in Philly, who, by chance, noticed our work online, and gave us a shout-out and a compliment, and lent some technical advice and even a helping hand. It was greatly appreciated.

So now here we are, a week into March … Philly Beer Week has already notched one day done (the official Friday, March 7th, start), with nine more bottles of beer events left on the wall. (Pitty about the crappy weather on Friday; hope the turnouts for those first-day events didn’t suffer.)

And down the shore, beer enthusiasts will be trolling the aisles at the Atlantic City festival (tickets are still available) today and tomorrow, so get out your funky hats, T-shirts and beer goggles and enjoy the show that is uniquely Atlantic City.

Remember when talking beer, if you describe a brew as having hints of licorice, chocolate, nuttiness, citrus notes ... well you could very well be on the mark.

Or navel-gazing.

We prefer the less Socratic Homer J. Simpson way to discuss beer:

• "Here's to alcohol, the cause of — and solution to — all life's problems.
• "Homer no function beer well without."
• "Son, when you participate in sporting events, it's not whether you win or lose: it's how drunk you get."
• "Son, a woman is like a beer. They smell good, they look good, you'd step over your own mother just to get one! But you can't stop at one. You wanna drink another woman!"

Homer: Got any of that beer that has candy floating in it? You know, Skittlebrau?
Apu: Such a beer does not exist, sir. I think you must have dreamed it.
Homer: Oh. Well, then just give me a sixpack and a couple of bags of Skittles.

Of course we jest.

So after AC, we’re hitting tomorrow’s Brewer’s Plate in Philly. Beyond that, we may check out the Tippler’s Tour at Once Upon A Nation on the 12th in the Philly Beer Week lineup. Why not embrace those long-lost days when beer was a go-to potable beverage because water was, often enough, teeming with more microbes than a funked up petri dish?

Then it's on to the Real Ale Festival at Triumph Brewing in Old City on the 16th, the period at the end of the sentence that is Philly Beer Week.

Beer. Live it.