Beer and roaming in Las Vegas

The cabdriver kept apologizing for the unforgiving choke points in afternoon rush-hour traffic en route to the Draft House, ground zero for the beers made under the Big Dog’s Brewing Company brand.

As we rode along, the driver held up his end of the beer conversation: Bud’s no longer in American hands, he says he heard, shaking his head at the fact that some European outfit snapped it up; the Draft House is a Packers bar, he adds (as in Green Bay; the brewpub’s founders originally hail from Wisconsin; brats and cheesy things on the menu); good beer there, he says, and best of all, about 5 miles from his home.

The driver knew plenty about the place, but had one question: Why the special trip to a brewpub 10 miles off the Strip, where there was no shortage of beer, food and gambling?

Answer: The Draft House has a Jersey connection we needed to check out … that and the release of the brewpub’s Belgian Wit seasonal. It seems that Miss America isn’t the only one who fled Absecon Island for the desert palms and bright lights of Las Vegas; it’s just that she’s far better known, of course, than Dave Otto, the guy behind the stouts, IPAs and pale ales from Big Dog’s.

Dave’s been in Vegas longer than Miss A, heading out there about a dozen years ago, when Bill Clinton hadn’t yet regretted giving Monica Lewinsky a copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Ray Rhodes was still coaching the Eagles. In beer terms, Flying Fish was still swimming up stream then, releasing its Abbey Dubbel for the first time; the now late, mutton-chopped Michael Jackson made a beer hunter stop at the Cherry Hill brewery; and the Tun Tavern existed only as a venerated piece of Marine Corps history, not a place for fresh beer in the shadow of Atlantic City Boardwalk casino glitz.

Indeed, craft beer and the beer renaissance in general were starting to take firm hold in the Mid-Atlantic back then. And Dave, originally from Cinnaminson, did his pubcrawls at Philly bars, while Home Sweet Homebrew provided him with malt, hops and other homebrewer supplies. (He still remembers, Nugget, that colossal-sized cat that used to keep George and Nancy company at the Sansom Street shop.) Back then, Dave was also kicking around Ventnor and the Atlantic City scene, parking cars at the Showboat and Tropicana, and driving a limo for a company with ties to Trump casinos. Not much of a job, nor direction, he says, recalling those days. He did what anyone does when life starts to seem like four walls: seek a sunnier vista. So he headed west, looking for a place to go to school and study history.

Welcome to fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada.

Dave applied to a few schools, but it was UNLV that accepted him; so did Holy Cow Casino Café & Brewery, the first throw of the beer dice for Big Dog’s Brewing and Sin City’s first microbrewery. Dave worked as an assistant brewer at Holy Cow on the Las Vegas strip, turning his homebrewer knowledge into pro brewer skills while on the job.

Holy Cow closed in 2002, and its owners shifted brewing operations to their Draft House property, where fermenters, conditioning tanks and the brew kettle are housed beside the barn-shaped building and its spacious bar area, video poker and dining tables. (Big Dog’s has two other locations: Big Dog’s Bar and Grill and Big Dog’s Casino Café.) Dave took over as brewmaster a year and a half later. Besides the brewhouse, these days you’ll also find him mingling with the crowds and beer geeks that turn out for the tasting parties for new beer releases (the first round is on the house, by the way, with a complimentary appetizer), or writing about beer for Southwest Brewing News.

Dave still has family in New Jersey, and except for the White House Sub Shop, and maybe the Baltimore Grille, he’s not one to get wistful over Atlantic City. Vegas is, after all, his roll of the dice.

Looks like it came up 7. Yep, a natural.

•••••••••••

Brews we had at the Draft House (served in nonic pint glasses, with 20-ounce imperial pours and 16-ounce pours; slip a $20 into a video poker machine at the bar, your beer is comped):

• Black Lab Stout (5.5% ABV): Well-balanced, smooth and tasty, poured under nitrogen, a good starter if you’re looking for a session brew but wanting to go beyond the pale. And of course, a black Lab is the iconic brand image of Big Dog’s Brewing.
• Holy Cow! Original Pale Ale (5.3% ABV): Clean aroma and lots of hops, but not overboard with bitterness. Very much the American version of pale ale, will remind you of the first time you had a West Coast-style beer.
• Sled Dog Winter Stout, aged in Jim Beam bourbon barrels (9% ABV): Vanilla signatures abound in a quite good imperial stout. Nice brew to come back to after the hop-centric Holy Cow. Just a hint of alcohol in the flavor, tucked in behind the roasty notes.
• Belgian Wit (4.8% ABV; in wheat glass): Nice and hazy from wheat and oats, orangey and refreshing to sip. Saaz hops, coriander and curacao. Our only regret with this brew is we had to chug it and dash, so we could keep to a schedule.

The envelope, please ...

Atlantic City ... there are winners and losers. But if you recall your John Mellencamp, "that ain't no big deal."

Still some folks like to have their names up in lights on glory row. So we have the list of who got what in judging at the AC beer fest last weekend. The category headings in bold are ours; contest ones are in parentheses. And, just in case, the Belgian one, well that's our joking referenece to Brussels, not editorial comment on beer flavor. (It just kills a one-liner when you have to explain it ...)

Oh, and if we may, how about a congratulatory round of applause to River Horse, the Tun Tavern and Flying Fish.

However, we take exception to that show finish for FF's IPA and think it was miscategorized. (We also think Sly Fox's Phoenix Pale Ale was miscategorized.)

FF makes one of the most drinkable IPAs around. Emphasis on drinkable. Some of the IPAs these days are about as enjoyable as lighting matches and putting them out on your tongue. (Though we like and drink a number of the imperial beers out there, we're just getting wary and weary of them.)

Anyway ... what Mellencamp said ... no big deal. But like Buffalo Springfield said, for what it's worth ... Here's the list:

Bringing in the sheaves
(Wheat)

1. Blanche de Bruxelles
2. Black Dog Crystal Weiss
3. Baltika #8

Gossamer beer
(Light lager)

1. Obolon Lager
2. River Horse PennBrook
3. Baltika #7

Brownie you're doing a heck of a job
(Brown ale)

1. Ipswich Dark Ale
2. Abita Turbo Dog
3. Tun Tavern Brown

Not dark yet
(Pale Ale)

1. Lancaster Hop Hog
2. Boulder Mojo
3. Flying Fish Hopfish India Pale Ale

Isn't that special?
(Specialty beer)

1. Lancaster Strawberry Wheat
2. Tun Tavern Gruit
3. Black Dog Honey Raspberry Ale

Amber alert
(Amber ale)

1. Boulder Hazed & Infused
2. Red Seal Ale
3. Sly Fox Phoenix Pale Ale

Amber alert, reprise
(Amber/dark lager)

1. Baltika #4
2. Samuel Adams Black Lager

Sturdy enough to carry
(Porter/stout)

1. Lancaster Milk Stout
2. Young's Double Chocolate Stout
3. North Coast Old Rasputin

Manneken Pis
(Belgian style ale)

1. Allagash Tripel
2. Allagash Dubbel
3. Flying Fish Abbey Dubbel

Mighty brew
(Strong beer)

1. Malheur 12
2. North Coast Brother Thelonious
3. Saranac Imperial Stout

Yawn
(People's choice)

1. Long Trail Blackbeary Wheat

Milestones, Part 2

We’re not much on crowing about ourselves, but Beer-Stained Letter marked its first anniversary last week, Jan. 31st to be exact.

To give ourselves a perfunctory pat on the back, we headed to Firewaters in Atlantic City, not so much to toast the past year and usher in the next, but to dig into a couple pints of Baltic Thunder and chat with Victory Brewing sales rep Pete Danford, who was on hand for the draft release of the imperial porter at the bar in the Tropicana casino.

Baltic Thunder has grabbed some blogosphere limelight, owing to its artisanal Heavy Weight Perkuno’s Hammer ancestry (a bit of the beer’s history can be found here), and has now made its way to Jersey taps. Look for the dark clouds to form over P.J. Whelihan's in Haddonfield this month and High Street Grill in Mount Holly on Leap Day. It’s also in bomber bottles at package goods stores with good beer sensibilities.

Want three words to summarize Baltic Thunder? Try rich, velvety and inviting. But a heads up, Thunder has a clap, too, at 8.5% ABV. So, you can toss in a fourth word, too: hearty.

While at Firewaters, we ran into Mark Haynie, a founding member of the NJ Association of Beerwriters (more on that in a minute). Mark came to the BT pouring armed with a cellared bottle of Perkuno’s Hammer, offering a handy taste reference for those at the bar sipping Thunder. Many thanks, Mark. Hope to cross paths again soon, owe you a pint.

Comparatively speaking, Perkuno’s alcohol flavors are more up front than Baltic Thunder’s. And since we were watching “High Fidelity” when we wrote this, and patting ourselves on the back for having Jimmy Cliff on our iPod (watch the movie, you’ll know what we’re talking about), we'll say we can’t decide if PH is the Bob Dylan version of “All Along The Watchtower,” while BT is the seminal Jimi Hendrix cover. Whatever, both make the charts.

Yearling
Speaking of Mark Haynie, he’s working on the New Jersey Breweries book with Lew Bryson. Mark says their efforts are being edited now, and Lew told us last month that it’ll probably be August (or sometime thereafter) when the book becomes available.

Speaking of this blog and books about New Jersey-brewed beer, writing a guide to the Garden State’s breweries, brewpubs and homebrewers market was the reason BSL jumped into the über crowded field of beer blogging.

But early on, it became obvious that gathering string for a book would take us a minimum of two years, three was more like it, to make up for five-year a gap in our tracking of the region’s beer scene. That’s about half the life of Jersey’s craft beer movement (we blame the hiatus on a mind-numbing five-plus years of working at the AP in Trenton and the subsequent demanding, all-over-the-place schedule; thankfully we said farewell to that insanity).

Nonetheless, when Lew announced in August 2007 that he was undertaking NJ Breweries, well it only made sense to stand clear and let someone with the time in, contacts and publisher do their thing. (Lew has written books on Pennsylvania breweries; likewise for Maryland, Virginia, Delaware and New York, and is/was a Keystone State member/founder of NJ Association of Beerwriters.)

We’re looking forward to the finished work on Jersey. And if you support the endeavor, buy a copy not from Amazon, Barnes & Noble or Borders but at a book-signing; you’ll be supporting the author directly that way.

On camera
Meanwhile for BSL, stepping away from the book ambitions freed us up to pursue more video projects with New Jersey beer & brewers, which rather emerged as a passion and focus for us. (If you’ve appeared in the handful of vids we’ve done thus far, or have agreed to participate in an upcoming one, then we owe a huge debt of thanks.) Our favorite video over the past year was Oktoberfest (even though it’s a little off the top in the approach to the topic); our best work was the Brewers Guild festival on the battleship USS New Jersey. Our most successful videos have been on Rich Wagner’s Colonial brewing demonstration and an animation on Cricket Hill’s dart-throwing challenge, assembled from stills shot at the Philly Craft Beer Festival a year ago.

And as we noted last month, we have a few video projects under production now, plus more on the way. The camera never blinks.

Lastly, the focus of this blog has been more chamber of commerce-like to the Garden State’s microbrewing industry, championing those efforts, and not trying to gaze upon them with critiques and evaluation. For a state of nearly 9 million people, you’d think New Jersey would have a higher profile in the industry. Alas, no. Jersey’s micros and brewpubs are somewhat spread out, scattered, and we remain a state where the blandness of Bud, Coors and Miller still claims legions of drinkers, and observations like "at least they have Sam Adams (or Guinness) on tap" make you pine for the successes of Pennsylvania (and have you wishing you were in craft beer-friendly Philadelphia more often). Sigh.

So cheers and thanks to everyone who clicked on our site over the past year or took a phone call from us. Check out our new logo, but more importantly have a beer and salute the choice that craft beer provides.

Moves at the Tun

A changing of the guard’s on tap at the Tun Tavern brewpub in Atlantic City.

Brewmaster Ted Briggs is heading to Lake Placid Pub & Brewery in the Adirondacks. (Flagship beer: Ubu Ale, an English style strong ale that found favor in the Clinton White House; Bubba liked the brew and had some sent to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave. Lake Placid was also crowned best craft beer in the Hudson Valley at the Tap New York festival last month, winning the FX Matt and Matthew Vassar Cups.)

Roots

Ted grew up in Michigan and is an outdoorsman. So hunting and fishing in the scenic mountains of upstate New York will be like returning to his roots. His last day is May 15th. Swing by the Tun, have a beer and toast his years of hard work as he hands the mash rake to Tim Kelly, the No. 2 brewer at Flying Fish in Cherry Hill, who’s getting a chance to captain a ship.

Tim takes over May 21st, with the Tun’s hefeweizen as his first beer. And yes, our recommendation is to pop in when the wheat’s neat and inaugurate Tim’s tenure at running the Tun’s 10-barrel, one-person operation, a system he’s familiar with after filling in last year when Ted was sidelined with a knee injury. (The Tun brews about 550 barrels a year.)

“I hope to hit the ground running," Tim says. He notes it's been a year since he's worked on the Tun's system and he'll filter beer his first day on duty.

Incidentally, like Tim, Ted is also an alumnus of Flying Fish (not to mention his stints at brewhouses in Manayunk, Pa., and Michigan), and both he and Tim sharpened their brewing skills first as homebrewers, then through the American Brewers Guild program.

On Thursday, Tun CEO Monty Dahm gave some props to Ted’s service, and looked ahead to Tim’s turn. The Tun’s a brand that has earned its place with “the quality of the beer and we complement that with our food,” he says.

The brewpub’s also evolving, Monty says, with local clientele, tourists, crowds from the nearby convention center and a new shopping district that gives Atlantic City another attraction besides the casinos.

Seven year itch

After 6 1/2 years at the Tun, Ted put his stamp on the brewpub with a great crop of specialty beers and seasonals, plus regularly featured beers like Sterling ESB, American IPA, Leatherneck Stout and Devil Dog Pale Ale (the Tun’s heritage is the U.S. Marine Corps; hence the Semper Fi styling in some of the beer names). To drink at the Tun is to browse Ted’s recipe book.

So he leaves behind a respected body of work. And his decision to move on is about the wider opportunity at Lake Placid, where he'll be one of two brewers.

It goes something like this: Lake Placid started as brewpub before branching out with a production brewery -- Lake Placid Craft Brewing Company in Plattsburgh, N.Y. -- that added bottled beer to its product lineup behind a healthy boost in brewing capacity.

Having both production and pub breweries under one banner is something you can’t do in New Jersey, since the law limits your brewing operation to one or the other. (That never-the-twain-shall-meet restriction is high on the list of dumb-ass beer industry regulations in the Garden State. Sigh.)

But there’s more.

Lake Placid has a reciprocal brewing agreement with Matt Brewing Company in Utica (widely known for its Saranac line of beers). Under the deal, Lake Placid provides pilot brewery services for Matt, which in turn offers some extra capacity for Lake Placid as a contract brewer. Observant drinkers of Flying Fish’s Farmhouse Summer Ale will recognize Matt Brewing as the contract brewer of the Fish’s April-through-August seasonal.

And speaking of Flying Fish, it’s been home to Tim Kelly for the past two years, a place where he worked his way up from the bottling line and cellarman to a spot as assistant brewer behind Casey Hughes.

“It’s quite a privilege to be mentored by Casey and Ted ...” Tim says.

That Tim will be leaving the comforts of the Fish comes unexpectedly and with some sadness, he says. But, proverbially, opportunity knocked with an offer that well serves Tim's ambition -- to have his own brewpub some day.

Arrivals and departures

Tim will pick up where Ted leaves off, initially relying on his predecessor’s recipes but tossing in some of his own beer interpretations soon. (In Tim’s file are his take on doppelbock, English mild, and he’s interested in trying out a tropical wheat beer jazzed up with passion fruit.) Tim also plans to take the Tun's beers on the road, hitting more of the festivals in the region.

(Note: The timing of the transition at the Tun could put a question mark on the brewpub’s appearance at the Garden State Craft Brewers Festival next month. Keep your fingers crossed that the Tun can hustle and make the June 23rd event.)

The Big 1-0

Tim also inherits a big (15% ABV) Belgian ale that Ted brewed to mark the Tun’s 10th anniversary next year. The outgoing and incoming brewers on Wednesday sampled the beer, which still needs some finishing. That process could include dosing it with some active Belgian ale yeast to get the job done. Early ideas for the beer call for it to be racked into 750ml bottles, then corked and capped.

So stay tuned.

Word to the weiss

Some notes from Atlantic City and the Tun Tavern …

Look for the Tun to rotate its Summer Weiss into the line-up sometime in June.

This is an annual brew from the gambling mecca’s only brewpub, located at the foot of the Atlantic City Expressway, across the street from the city’s busy convention center.

Brewmaster Tedd Briggs says the beer will continue in the German style of hefeweizen, but will eschew the traditional clovey or fruity hallmarks of the style. The brew will be “well balanced,” Tedd says, charting at about 4.5% ABV.

It will also be a brew that takes well to some apricot or raspberry flavoring, an addition that helped it attract a wider following when the Tun poured the Summer Weiss at last year’s Garden State Craft Brewers Festival along the Camden waterfront.

Tedd plans to return to the decks of the USS New Jersey this year (June 23rd) with the wheat beer, and maybe some brewer’s reserve surprises up his sleeve for the 11th incarnation of the festival. (Stay tuned.)

The Tun’s weiss is expected to run the duration of the summer. But Tedd is also looking at turning in a Belgian wheat to take up a tap handle along side the Tun’s mainstays of Sterling ESB, All American IPA, Leatherneck Stout and Irish Red.

About the Tun

Military historians will recognize the name “Tun Tavern” as the birthplace of the U.S. Marine Corps. The 18th century Philadelphia watering hole was where troops were marshaled to suppress uprisings by indigenous tribes, and most famously where two battalions of Continental Marines were recruited in November 1775 as the American Revolution was taking shape.

If you want to find the original Tun Tavern, drive along Interstate 95 through Philadelphia and somewhere along the way look down because the location is multilane pavement now. There is a replica at the Marine Corps’ museum at the corps’ base in Quantico, Va.

And then there’s the Atlantic City brewpub, which salutes the corps with a Semper Fi and some iconic tributes throughout the bar and open-kitchen style restaurant.

You’ll find no less than seven beers on tap created with the Tun’s 10-barrel brewing system, as well as Bud and Coors Light on tap and Corona in the bottle to satisfy the more mainstream beer tastes. (Unlike a lot of brewpubs, which chiefly draw their base clientele from their surrounding areas, the Tun pours beer in a gambling resort that attracts millions of people annually. Translation: The brewpub has to serve a wide range of palates.)

Top-selling beer -- Tun Light (4.7% ABV); fan favorite -- All American IPA (6.5% ABV), a hoppy and assertive but not overwhelming session take on the India pale ale style.

Foam by the Sea, Part II

Some follow-up thoughts and details (behind the scenes stuff, some forward thinking and yes, even some more numbers) from last weekend’s Atlantic City Beer Festival (March 10-11).

Quick post-show tallies put attendance at the Convention Center show at about 8,300. That breaks down as 2,400 for the Saturday afternoon session; 4,400 for Saturday night’s leg; and finally 1,500 for the Sunday afternoon session.

Those are unofficial counts, but a rep from festival promoters Unsuited Entertainment says the final figures probably will be somewhere in that ballpark.

Growth spurt

But more than anything, U-E notes the attendance was up from the 2006 show, which saw the gate do about 6,000 people for an inaugural festival that had 100 beers -- a number that doubled this go-round.

And as one could expect, U-E is already thinking 2008 while it puts 2007 under the microscope to zero in on what went right and what went wrong.

Glass, house

Contracting with the Convention Center for a festival means the promoters are kinda like guests in someone's house. And there are some unbendable rules that just come with the deal. One of those was that the souvenir taster, the small logo-inscribed mug that you chug, had to be plastic, not glass. Guess that shatters hopes for our preference.

Garden State variety

U-E had hoped to lure more New Jersey breweries and brewpubs to the festival, and notable ones from Philadelphia and Delaware. “Try, try again” is pretty much their thinking, so it’s possible some fence-sitters in 2007 may make an appearance in 2008. Stay tuned.

The ol’ in-out, Alec

Uh, not that kind, dirty mind. The restriction against re-entering after exiting the festival hall, well thankfully, that’s not a hard limit set by the house. This is pretty key, since there are additional restrooms just outside the meeting halls, and that could help keep the lines to the loo short. We hope there’s a return to the 2006 policy that allowed folks to exit and come back. Smokers will probably be happy, too.

Rinse and repeat

This is something we didn’t point out previously, but there was a shortage of rinse water for the taster glasses. It’s fairly routine at festivals for the beer/brewery stations to have some rinse water on hand for patrons’ glasses, so the next beer doesn’t taste like the one before it. U-E is on top of it.

Comestibles

The food … another topic that’s on U-E’s collective minds. They know there’s room to improve, meaning they’re working on it. We have faith.

Be good

Yeah, it’s what your mom said as you headed out the door for school or to play all those many years ago. Little did you know, she also meant it to include when you go to beer festivals. Why do we bring this up? Well, seven of you didn’t listen Saturday night, and the Community Chest card you drew said, “Go directly to jail.” So for 2008, we’ll remind everyone of mom’s proviso: “If you’re gonna drink, don’t be a jerk.” Enough said.

Shopkeeping

The photo gallery is up, and so is the video. (Thanks, Gary; thanks, Ted.) Tech note: The audio is slightly out of sync with the video. It's a YouTube thing, since users upload already compressed video to the site and Y-T turns around and formats (read: recompresses) it as Flash video. We're working in Final Cut to QuickTime (a Y-T compatible format) and have tried several different QT compression settings to resolve the problem. We'll keep trying as time allows and will repost the video when we find the magic number.

Cheers.

Foam by the Sea

When Atlantic City parties, you can bet there’s going to be some spectacle. It is, after all, the playground by the sea that once brought you midget wrestling, boxing kangaroos and, of course, diving horses.

Then perhaps that’s why the Atlantic City Beer Festival is really as much about the sideshow as it is the beer. It’s a raucous two-day party where you can lose yourself in the moment with silly hats, shirts, beer goggles, cheesecake (the leggy kind) and scooters made from coolers.

And it doesn’t hurt that the second annual Celebration of the Suds (held Saturday and Sunday at the Convention Center) had a wide selection of brews to sate every taste.

Details make the story, so here they are …

By the numbers

Beers: 200-plus that generously spanned the globe. The mix included a lot of familiar faces (almost too many; great festivals offer a chance to discover), such as domestic mainstays Sierra Nevada and Samuel Adams; regional craft brewers Brooklyn Brewery and Dogfish Head (Delaware); and imports Guinness, Harp, Duvel, and Young’s. (Alas, we didn’t see Fuller’s in the mix, a UK favorite that’s always in our fridge.) Toss in Singha from Thailand and Asahi from Japan, and you get the picture.

Full house: 2,000 or so beerheads (our estimate) at the first Saturday session (noon to 4:30 p.m.) that we attended (admission was $25 in advance, $30 day of). We suspect the remaining two sessions (6 to 10:30 p.m. Saturday and 1 to 5:30 p.m. on Sunday) had similar turnouts.

Jersey Guild brewers: One, the Tun Tavern. The Tun is the home team, located across the street from the Convention Center. We had several samples of the Tun’s quite able ESB. And for the second year in a row, the Tun served as our post-fest place to unwind and grab a bite to eat (try their One Tun Burger with a pint of the Irish Red). Some day we’d like to see the Suds fest attract more Jersey craft brewers and neighboring state brewpubs (like Iron Hill or Nodding Head), for that matter.

Serving size: 2 ounces. It’s what the New Jersey beer police say is the hard limit for serving patrons. For the hale and hearty, it’s a swallow; for the more relaxed, it’s a couple of sips.

Floor plan: 80,000 square feet of elbow-bending room. That’s a step up. (See below).

Details et cetera

Beers of note: Brooklyn Brewery’s Local One, a tasty bottle-conditioned golden ale that was really smooth for clocking in at 9% ABV; a creamy organic oatmeal stout from Wolaver/Otter Creek (Vermont), no harshness from the roasted barley, despite being poured under CO2 (and not nitrogen); Double White Ale from Southampton Ales & Lagers (Long Island, NY), a nice blend of oranges and coriander; and a dark lager from Podkovan (Czech Republic), rich but not cloying.

Obligatory beer: Guinness. This is after all March, and the color of the day was shamrock green. We love a Guinness any time of year, but seeing it poured in 2-ounce shots just kills the whole ritual surrounding it. Maybe we’ll pass on this next year.

Sweet memory: Tröeg’s Troegenator Double Bock tasted a little sweeter than we remembered from the Philly Craft Beer Festival (March 3). No matter, it’s a great beer.

Missed opportunity: Baltika … Russian beers. For a while, their station always had a crowd queuing up for a pour, which kept us moving. We never made it back before last call (4 p.m.). Hopefully, another time.

Music: Neo-Celtic band Birnam Wood -- kilts, bagpipes, fiddles, acoustic guitars, and a redheaded lass. They headlined the entertainment at last year’s Celebration of the Suds, and again this year, sharing the stage with Beatlemania Now, which we saw standing there. Speaking words of wisdom, let ’em be. We love the Beatles, and we were curious about Beatlemania Now’s run at Harrah’s casino this month. But there’s a difference between tribute bands and impersonations, and oh darling, please believe us, this was just kind of silly.

Food: Gotta work on this one. There was a concession station shoehorned into a corner. It just looked so unappetizing. There’s quite a lot of talk and copy written about pairing food with beers, and cooking with beer, for that matter. Hence, the need to step up on this one. We understand trying to balance what’s realistic for a festival, but at the same time, food is really worth the extra effort. One bright spot here: Samples of a killer crab bisque from High Point Pub. High Point’s a bar (not brewpub) in Absecon (outside Atlantic City); they hit the festival to drum up some business with this awesome soup that’s worth a trip through their doors.

Disappointment: This year’s taster glass went plastic. Last year it was the real deal -- glass. We’ve cried in our beer over plastic vs. glass before, but when the topic came up while in line for the men’s room, well, we felt validated. True, plastic is safer and cheaper, and honestly the change wasn’t unexpected. But the taster is a keepsake, and it would have been great if they kept it glass.

Overheard: “Is this the line?” Speaking of the bathroom, there was just one location each for men and women (but additional facilities just outside the festival hall). So relieving yourself meant sacrificing drinking time in painfully long lines.

Smokin’ in the boys’ room: Yeah, you know it’s against the rules. But unlike last year, there was no re-entry to the festival hall upon leaving. Which made for that bitch of a line to the john, and turned the can into Marlboro Country when the nicotine crowd wasn't willing to wait.

Logistics, Take One: A bigger hall and rectangular layout of sample stations made for easy movement. Last year’s festival had a linear set-up, a stretched oval, with two main aisles that made for horrid bottlenecks in almost parallel locations. The improvement was welcomed. But …

Logistics, Take Two: Speaking of long lines … they snaked around the Convention Center from the ticket windows and from the turnstiles. There was also too much showing of IDs. Next time, please separate the will call window from the day-of ticket sales. Also, we understand the need to prove drinking age when buying or picking up tickets and for entering the hall. But patrons were carded yet again after receiving a wristband they could only get after showing their IDs. Overkill.

The wind-up: Yes, this is the same festival for which we held low expectations just a few weeks ago, based on our experience from the inaugural gathering last year, and perhaps a snobby comparison to the Philly fest and Suds 2.0’s shortage of Garden State brewers. We, uh, forecast AC to be a yawner and a frat party. Yawner? No, there was plenty to enjoy. Frat party, well it came close. We did see more folks who got drunk on the 2-ounce installment plan than compared to Philadelphia.

But this is Atlantic City, and the sideshow must go on.

FOOTNOTE: Look for a photo gallery, plus interviews with Beer Radio's Gary Monterosso and Tun Tavern Brewmaster Ted Briggs later this week.

The Way We Were

Reminiscing … there’s a danger to it, a danger in clinging to the past.

Then somehow gets a rose-colored upper hand on Now, no matter that a cell phone these days effortlessly fits on your ear, while that size-10 Topsider with an antenna and Motorola logo on it you once carried barely fit your mitts.

But glory days are something that go well with a beer. So what the hell, let’s pour one and talk about Then and less about Now, as last Saturday’s Philly Craft Beer Festival slips lower on the horizon and this weekend’s Atlantic City gathering (Celebration of the Suds) gets ready to take the stage …

Go big or not at all

Philly beer columnist Don Russell, dispensing advice for making the most of the 2007 Philly festival, pointed out the 10-plus years since Philadelphia beerfest planners went growler instead of pint to summon the thirsty for a giant mixer.

We checked with Don to see if he was referring to that April 1995 festival at the Philadelphia Civic Center. Indeed, he was.

There were other notable Philly festivals that followed -- the Electric Factory and Poor Henry’s. But the Civic Center bash still stands as a benchmark, as if some gates had just opened to a wider world. The official taster glasses even stirred up the crowd for more, with a teaser to a planned summer Atlantic City festival emblazoned on one side. (New Jersey’s beer police saw to it that a 1995 AC festival wouldn’t get off the ground. But the ball was already rolling in the bigger picture, and Garden State beer fans would eventually gather for festivals at Waterloo Village in Sussex County and elsewhere.)

Sometimes memory lane has potholes in it (there’s a joke in there; think about it). But if you recall, a dozen years ago, the microbrew craze (with the West already in its pocket) was homesteading in the Mid-Atlantic region. The import craze continued to whet appetites, too, and pretty soon you weren’t thinking about the ones you already knew: Beck’s, Heinken or Lowenbräu. St. Pauli Girl, well, you did end up forgetting your first girl.

Your palate was challenged to mature. And British ales were a major reference point, with ESB the call letters. (Seems like ESBs are to Then what IPAs are to Now.) At that Civic Center bash, beers you clamored for included some of the UK’s choice names, Fuller’s … Young’s … Batemans Good Honest Ales (their XXXB was pretty good; honest).

Remember Double Diamond? Forget Foster's, how about Cooper’s Australian stout? U.S craft brewers weighed in, too. Hooked on Red Hook? Get Wicked? Hike the Sierras? And did an in-law sign you up for a beer of the month club? The beer geek in you was being groomed and served.

In New Jersey, The Ship Inn and Triumph would open their doors; Flying Fish would find a lane on the Information Super Highway and go from modem to a glass.

Planet Beer had Boston Beer’s Jim Koch inspiring the do-it-yourself set as a keynote speaker at the American Homebrewers Association conference in Baltimore (where an on-the-road version of the Great American Beer Festival would be held three years later, the same weekend the media would start spreading the news that Sinatra had died).

Speaking of homebrewing, seems like every time you mentioned to someone back then you had joined the brew-your-own crowd, they felt compelled to offer some tale of an uncle and exploding bottles in a basement.

And speaking of uncle, ready to cry it? Too much reminiscing? Well there’s more. But maybe another time, another beer.

(By the way, the Civic Center in University City is gone now, demolished, turned into a memory. Atlantic City Race Course has practically gone condo and shopping mall. Trivia tidbit: Joni Mitchell stormed off the stage during a 1969 pop festival at AC Race Course, pissed off at the audience. Legend has it, the experience soured her enough that she skipped Woodstock. Reality or Wikiality?)

FOOTNOTE:
A photo gallery from the Philly Craft Beer Festival can be seen here. And then there’s this photo animation ...

A Tale of Two Cities

There’s beer. And then there’s great beer.

There’s run of the mill. And then there’s compelling.

There’s the Atlantic City Beer Festival, and then there’s the Philly Craft Beer Festival (just a week apart from each other).

Sorry to be a buzz kill, but judging from its Website, the AC beerfest -- the 2007 Celebration of the Suds (March 10th and 11th at the Convention Center) -- looks like it will be the yawner the inaugural version was last year: a frat party with a pumped up beer menu.

The inaugural Philly fest (March 3rd at the old Naval Yard), well it looks like the best bet for your hard-earned beer dollar.

Let's cut through the foam and take a look.

Suds 2.0 boasts some changes for '07. Notably, it’s now three sessions instead of the long, twin sessions that marked the two-day ’06 fest. It also claims a bigger hall at the Convention Center, so the parallel bottlenecks that choked the main aisles last year may be resolved.

But that’s just logistics. There’s a deeper ache that nags this young festival.

For instance, take the list of beers (not participating brewers, as the Website claims). It’s like browsing the import and domestic cold boxes at the big discount liquor stores. A been-there-tasted-that feel comes on. Sam Adams and a four-pack of Guinness anyone? Some Young’s? And we like those beers (ditto for a lot of the list). We even once toured Young’s brewery outside London. But notice the near absence of Jersey beers.

Now browse the lineup at the Philly Craft Beer Festival (it’s also a charity event, while AC is not). There's some overlap, sure, but Philly can claim loads of small microbreweries and brewpubs, as opposed to mostly beers from a distributor’s portfolio. And it says something that Philly landed Jersey brewers (five), while Suds 2.0, like last year, is Jersey largely by geography (an exception: The Tun Tavern, whose brewpub and restaurant stands in the Convention Center's shadow; recommendation for any AC fest-goers: do a whirlwind tasting, but settle in at the Tun Tavern for the real drinking).

We do give the AC fest appropriate points for promoting the culture of beer (and we hope they try again next year). And AC gets points for the 2006 keepsake sampling glass -- it was glass while everything these days is plastic. It’s just that this fest has the trappings of a monster truck rally or indoor motocross.

(Last year’s sideshow featured twin-sister Playboy Playmates from the 1990s. But the two sisters pouring at the Guinness booth were younger and hotter, especially the one in the halter top, pleated leather skirt and spiky boots. The Playmates were like Teri Hatcher trying to out-dazzle Sienna Miller.)

It pains us to grouse and be so brutal. We champion all things Brew Jersey. But giving folks more elbowroom to taste beers that can be had by the six at the liquor store is not value-added.

The tale of the two cities?

In Philly, the breweries and their beer are the entertainment. In AC, the beer’s just there.