Jay Misson

Very, very sad news, indeed, coming out of Triumph Brewing this week ...

Jay Misson, the director of brewing operations for Triumph and one of the pillars behind the great beers that Triumph always makes, died suddenly on Monday. He was 45.

Lew Bryson has an eloquent and fitting tribute over at Seen Through A Glass. Jay's brewing roots run deep in New Jersey and place him at the forefront of the Garden State waking up to craft beer.

Our interaction with Jay was fleeting. But in March, at the Philadelphia Real Ale Festival, he was kind enough to participate in the video we produced from that event. It may sound like a small thing to bring up, but not exactly when you consider it was a very busy festival, the sign-off point for Philly Beer Week, and Jay played no minor part in seeing the day’s happenings meet with success.

We greatly appreciate anyone who takes the time for an interview. It's tough for the person when things are so busy. But Jay (that's him on the right in the picture) graciously gave his time, joining Tom Kehoe of Yards to talk about the pleasures of cask-conditioned ale (although you’ll note Jay was a true lager champion, notably German-style beers).

Thanks, Jay. Rest in peace, brother.

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.

And Philly Makes Three, Reprised

No more talk, speculation.

Triumph Brewing’s doors are open and taps flowing in Old City Philadelphia.

The stylish brewpub that built a reputation for some great beers in Princeton has been serving to growing crowds in Philly since Wednesday.

On the slate you’ll find eight styles listed, including Triumph’s signatures like Bengal Gold IPA and honey wheat, as well as its gold medal-winning kellerbier (a German style unfiltered lager).

Rounding out the lineup are an amber ale, porter, oatmeal stout, chico ale and a dunkel lager well known at Triumph’s New Hope, Pa., location.

Triumph folks say they’re bullish on the Philly site (on Chestnut Street), and expect to do well in a city where beers of all walks draw legions of fans.

Makes you want to pull up stakes for Old City.

Wikognition, Part II

Recapping: The prefix “Wiki” made it into the Oxford English Dictionary (despite already earning a place in other reference works).

Why we cared: Because we needed a blog entry. No wait, um, because Flying Fish and Triumph have been immortalized in Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. (Yes, it’s just Jersey beer trivia we’re fatuously falling all over here.)

How we tried to gin up the first take on this entry: Ask Wikipedia founder and Internet entrepreneur Jimmy Wales if he’s ever had a Jersey-made beer.

Two weeks later, we have an answer. (And we forgive Jimmy for the delay; he’s a busy guy. After all, he does occupy a spot on Time magazine’s list of 100 people who shape our world. He’s quite a sporting guy, too, for entertaining our query. Thanks, Jimmy.)

First off, Jimmy emails us that he does like beer, German beer, in fact, although he didn’t indicate a brand or style. Incidentally, he’s also learning German (of which we know a little: Bier schmeckt immer ausgezeichnet … we won’t swear to the correctness of our usage.)

Jimmy’s a traveling guy, too (he was in Japan when we emailed him last month), so of course he’s been to New Jersey.

But he notes that he’s never had a Jersey-made beer.

“Hmmmm. I think I am entirely unaware of the existence of New Jersey beers!” Jimmy wrote us.

Ouch.

OK, we’re being a little melodramatic. And truthfully, we can scare up a dozen born-and-raised New Jerseyans who, with a Coors Light in their grip, can say the same thing. That’s a bigger ouch, since New Jersey has a rather large résumé as a brewing state (just a lot of it is relegated to beer history now), inlcuding some award-winning craft and pub-brewed beers.

But Jimmy’s answer does play into a bigger picture. And that is the Garden State has a fairly low profile, comparatively, in the era of craft brewing. We're the Garden State, but not quite the beer garden state. That’s a conclusion we’re fairly certain will be underlined, figuratively speaking, when the Colorado-based Brewer’s Association unspools some extensive 2006 industry data this month.

But you don’t have to be big to be well known. And maybe we can make a convert out of Jimmy. Of course, we’re not implying that you FedEx Jimmy and the Wikimedia Foundation a mixed case of Jersey’s best. Let’s reiterate, we’re not suggesting that.

But if you infer it, who’s to throw cold water on a good idea?

Uh, maybe you should throw in some pork roll, too.

And Philly makes three

The newest flower in the beer garden is set to bloom in early spring with some honey wheat, amber ale and Bengal Gold IPA.

We are, of course, referring to Triumph Brewing’s much anticipated new location in Philadelphia (two bars and a restaurant and a 15-barrel brewery inside 12,000 square feet), its third after Princeton and New Hope, Pa.

When the doors to the Old City site swing open, you can also expect a stout on tap, as well as beer on a hand pump.

Rounding out the location’s amenities: Internet WiFi, a 100-inch projection TV with surround sound, a private dining room and a business center.

The chat board buzz about Triumph pouring beer at Second and Chestnut has mentioned “early spring” since mid-winter. Regarding the grand opening, company reps were staying with that phrase on Monday.

If you’re the antsy type and not satisfied with that explanation, think about it this way: Spring starts Tuesday and Triumph probably wants to be open in Philadelphia as much as anyone who wants them to start filling pint glasses.

(Side note: Brewing operations chief Jay Misson will oversee the Philly location and Patrick Jones, the current New Hope brewer, will handle daily brewing duties.)

Trivial pursuits

Speaking of Triumph (which recently celebrated the 12th anniversary of its Princeton brewpub) …

The Oxford English Dictionary has just given the word wiki its lexicographic due.

Wiki's joining 287 other words in the latest online version of the venerated reference tome. (Wiki had already made the cut in the dictionary in Mac OS X that runs our PowerBook and G5, by the way.)

The word refers to websites that allow collaborative editing of content and structure by users and perhaps is most famously associated in mainstream usage with Wikipedia, the free online encyclopedia. (Wiki comes from wiki-wiki, a Hawaiian phrase meaning “quick-quick;” it owes its cyber life to programmer Ward Cunningham. We know all this because we looked it up.)

Winning a spot in the OED is probably a big deal somewhere to someone, but it has virtually nothing to do with Jersey beer, were it not for two entries in Wikipedia: Triumph and Flying Fish Brewing (Cherry Hill).

Somewhere along the line, the two Jersey brewers picked up some wiki-nality and were immortalized in Wikipedia. (See entries here and here.) Tun Tavern also has an entry, but it details the history as the Philadelphia birthplace of the U.S. Marine Corps and only offers a link to the Tun's Atlantic City brewpub.

Such wikognition doesn’t strike us as having the same bragging rights as grabbing a gold medal in Colorado in the fall.

But if you follow the logic that any publicity is good publicity, then appearing in a compendium that lives its life as a work in progress where anyone can chime in with his knowledge on the subject probably can’t hurt. (By the by, for the ambitious out there, you can bump up Wikipedia’s article count by authoring entries on the rest of New Jersey’s brewers.) We’re wondering: Is there a Pete’s Wiki Ale out there?

(Side note: We reached out to the Wikimedia Foundation and its founder Jimbo Wales last week to ask three important questions: Do you like beer? Ever been to Jersey? Ever had a Jersey-made beer? The foundation said he was in Japan, and we suspect our email to him posing those questions got snagged by his spam filter. Or he just plain thought we were drunk.)

Summer in April, no foolin’

And speaking of Flying Fish, April 1 will see the 11th release of the Farmhouse Summer Ale, the Ra of the Fish’s seasonal beers.

Once upon a time, Flying Fish made this beer with a dash of sour mash, an intrepid endeavor for any brewery. These days acidulated malt gives the beer the tang that Farmhouse fans expect.

If you’re sprucing up the back yard and wheeling the grill (or smoker) out of winter storage, keep this beer in mind. We like it as the denominator in a half and half with Guinness. Or try it straight up with a bacon cheese burger turbocharged with some jalapeños.