Flying Fish tasting room & Menendez visit

Senator Robert Menendez notes some
accomplishments of Flying Fish
after touring the brewery on Monday

Flying Fish toasted its year-old Somerdale facility with a visit from U.S. Senator Robert Menendez, whose tour of the brewery on Monday was also the highlight of a soft opening of Flying Fish's new tasting room and the bottle release of its hurricane fundraiser beer, FU Sandy.

Senator Menendez, a co-sponsor of legislation to cut federal excise taxes for craft brewers by as much as half, took a brief tour of Flying Fish's brewery space, checking out some firkins and wooden barrels at the foot of towering fermenter tanks. He then raised a pint of Flying Fish Farmhouse Ale with company president Gene Muller and sales director Andy Newell in the new 10-tap tasting room. 

From left: Andy Newell, Gene Muller,
and Senator Robert Menendez

The senator saluted 17-year-old Flying Fish as a groundbreaker in the state, noting the brewery's growth since its move last year from its founding location of Cherry Hill, and saying: “It’s the first microbrewery here in southern New Jersey, and the first new brewery in the region in more than half a century. The $6 million expansion in 2012 has enabled Flying Fish to triple production and create two dozen new jobs.” 

There's more growth ahead: Flying Fish has two more 150-barrel tanks coming later this month.

Last May, Senator Menendez highlighted the introduction of the federal legislation to cut the excise tax on craft breweries from $7 a barrel to $3.50 on the first 60,000 barrels of beer produced, a reduction that would actually make the federal tax slightly lower than New Jersey's tax on craft beer production. (Others from New Jersey's congressional delegation who are supporting the measure include Reps. Rush Holt and Leonard Lance.)

Meanwhile, Flying Fish's new tasting room opened quietly on either

side of the Fourth of July holiday for growler fills and sales of six-packs and of the limited-release bottled FU Sandy.

Joe Torres, who recently joined Flying Fish to run the brewery's tasting room, says a total of 109 growlers were sold last Wednesday and Friday, plus nine cases of Sandy, the wheat-pale ale first brewed last winter to raise money for Hurricane Sandy relief efforts. 

Initially draft-only, FU Sandy sold out effortlessly and was brought back with a draft release in June and 750-milliliter bottles that began hitting store shelves early last week. 

Flying Fish's tasting room is still somewhat a work in progress: Some wallboard still needs to be hung, and the air-conditioning is getting a tweak. Thus, the soft opening. (Check with the brewery for tasting room hours; by the way, Flying Fish has logo'd growlers.)

•••

Casey on brewhouse steps

It's been several weeks since former head brewer Casey Hughes left Flying Fish for Tampa, Florida, and Coppertail Brewing, a start-up brewery of similar size to his New Jersey alma mater. But Casey, an avid fisherman, didn't leave without sharing a one-that-got-away tale, specifically, a beer with a Garden State-crop ingredient whose brewing eluded him during his 10-year tenure.

"Cranberry Berliner weiss. It's a style, being in the state of New Jersey, the one beer I've always said I wanted to make," Casey says. "That was the beer. I love Berliner weiss, and I'd love to do one down in Florida. It seems now that everyone brews Berliner weiss in Florida. The state seems to have really (glommed) onto that style, so I probably won't be able to do one for a while until it all calms down there."

Here in New Jersey, Casey says,  "somebody else will get to make that beer." 

Federal brewers tax cut proposal reintroduced

Legislation to cut in half what craft brewers pay in federal excise tax has been reintroduced in both houses of Congress. 

Craft brewers now pay $7 per barrel on the first 60,0000 barrels they produce and $18 for every barrel on top of that. 

The proposed Small Brewer Reinvestment and Expanding Workforce Act would halve the first tier of the production tax and create a second tier of $16 levied on production from 61,000 to 2 million barrels. 

The tax after 2 million barrels would remain $18.

Proposals to cut excise taxes were last introduced in 2011 for the 112th Congress, but the legislation stalled. (There have been several instances of similar legislation proposed in Congress in the past.)

The legislation was reintroduced in the House of Representatives three months ago. Last week, the Colorado-based Brewers Association, the trade group representing the craft brewing industry, announced companion legislation had subsequently been introduced in the Senate by Ben Cardin, a Maryland Democrat, and Susan Collins, a Republican from Maine. 

New Jersey Sen. Robert Menendez posted a statement on his website that he is a co-sponsor of the bill.

Nationally, the craft brewing industry employ more than 108,000 full- and part-time workers, generating more than $3 billion in wages and benefits, while contributing $2.3 billion in business, personal and consumption taxes.

Supporters of the legislation say lowering the tax rate would enable the nation's 2,400 craft production brewers and brewpubs to hang on to an additional $60 million annually, money that could be reinvested in their brewery operations to grow them regionally or put them on a national footing. In the process, supporters say, brewers would likely be creating jobs. 

The bill numbers are H.R. 494 and S. 917.

Draft Magazine swings and misses

Not to beat up on them, but Draft Magazine completely zoned out with this. How they followed this item and came up with New Jersey as the culprit is anyone's guess.

The NewJerseyNewsroom.com story is merely localizing a national story, and in this case, how a federal excise tax increase would hurt Garden State microbreweries, like other brewers nationwide. Sen. Bob Menendez was contacted for comment to further localize the issue and even said nothing is set in stone. Even a skim of the story would guide you to the conclusion of a national issue being localized.

Anyway this is our posted response to what Draft Magazine's Web editor wrote (FYI: We did minor style editing and fixes to our hasty writing on Draft's site):

Although we’re reluctant to defend politicians, we do have to take exception to this brief about the excise tax and reasons to avoid New Jersey.

Not to seem obnoxious correcting you, but it is the federal excise tax you are referring to. And while Sen. Bob Menendez of NJ is on the US Senate Finance Committee, Max Baucus of Montana is the chairman. And so far it is only talk of raising excise taxes. Also, as an FYI, the soft drink industry could be asked to pony up, too. This is all connected to Congress’ plans to overhaul the US healthcare system, so it’s improbable that a single state would be behind it.

The folks at the Brewers Association put out an action alert on this.

But meanwhile, there is another bill that proposes halving the federal excise taxes on beer. You’ll find information about that on the Brewers Association site, too.

Perhaps you’re confusing the federal measure with the New Jersey Legislature’s increase in the state's tax on liquor and wine. That budget measure excluded beer, and Governor Jon Corzine’s administration, although a bit ham-handedly, stressed that beer was excluded from the increase.

And again, not to seem rude, but your space is better spent calling on beer enthusiasts to write their lawmakers and register their objections to a tax hike, and not singling out a particular state for blame, which, in this case, is completely erroneous.

Again, we're not trying to beat up on Draft Magazine (although they did disparage New Jersey for no discernible reason, other than the apparent cliche of making Jersey the butt of a joke). But their interpretation of things is just so hopelessly flawed, totally mangled.