Ship shape

The ship’s still there, but the hopheads have shipped out.

Until next year.

But we hope no one has to wait that long.

If you went to the Garden State Craft Brewers’ 11th take on their beer festival, you know it was a perfect day for a party: sunny, practically no humidity, plenty of food and – most import – a great cross-section of brews to sample.

And resample.

Like that rauch beer from Triumph. Or Cricket Hill’s maibock.

Those are just a couple of reasons the guild should have another festival this year, say in the fall. (Late September/October anyone? It’s been done, you know. And, say in a different location, like farther up north, for parity’s sake. Yeah, it’s the North Jersey/South Jersey thing. Bombard them with email, we say. Demand your fall festival.)

Save the credential check; we know a maibock isn’t such a reach. Pizzeria Uno, too, had a nice one in tow at the festival, and without trying too hard, we can think of other brewpubs in Jersey that served bock under the sign of the bull.

What we’re saying is that tying up fermenter and other tank space for lagering when you’re a small brewery speaks to some measure of faith in your beer and your public and that what you’re doing is worth the trouble.

And a festival is a great platform to underscore that spirit, that you cover the basics beyond the alphabet soup of ales (ESB & IPA), and can step off the beaten path, like with that rauch beer, or even get funky like that hefeweiss flavored with hibiscus that the Tun Tavern had in a growler.

And if the more cosmic-related arguments aren’t enough, then consider the practical.

Craft beer’s enjoying a bounce right now, says the Brewers Association. Sales growth, double digits, an industry segment to watch, yada et cetera yada …

So strike while the iron’s hot (or make hay while the sun shines, whatever cliché you’re into).

Plus, we’d swear that the crowd at the stern of the USS New Jersey last Saturday skewed toward the younger demographic. Not overwhelmingly, but enough that we took notice. Enough that if you mentioned Buffalo Springfield … well, you get the picture.

Now stir in this variable: We’re talking the gadget/instant message culture. Word of mouth seems to spread at light speed in that world. Word of ur kickin’ beer isn’t 2 B past ^.

But, giving credit where credit is due, that younger crowd plying the decks of battleship last weekend was really into beer.

Take the guy who told us that at home he’d probably be cracking open a Miller Lite. He rattled off a list of brews aboard ship he thought were worth his mug.

We’re thinking that after Saturday, he’s had his last pils-E-ner.


Footnote:

As you can see, the video is up. It's also viewable here at blip.tv, and here at YouTube. Blip has better image quality – we originally had the blip file posted on the blog, but subbed in YouTube, the more widely known site, and finally swapped in Current.tv, which became available much later. (By the by, HomerJDoh works for Beer-Stained Letter.)

If you're unfamiliar with Current.tv, it's the site and cable television channel that Joel Hyatt (of Hyatt Legal Services fame; you have our word on that) and Al Gore (yes, that Al 'Inconvenient Truth' guy) created in 2005. There's some fantastic, very credible and intellectually challenging – even moving – work on Current.tv. Check it out.

The video is also viewable on iTunes – just in time for iPhone!

Thanks to everyone who availed themselves of an interview. Thanks to Flying Fish for some key support; thanks to the brewers guild and the battleship folks.

And thanks to yeast for making beer.

PS: We usually don't do this, but since we got an email from a beer fan in Illinois recently ... DVD copies of the video are available at no charge; just send us an email and we'll oblige.

PPS: Contest! A prize (to be determined eventually; heads up, though, it won't be beer) to whoever can create the most words from these six letters: ESB and IPA. Entries by email throughout July.

Have fun.

The Eleventh Hour

A beer festival is like a big potluck dinner … That kind of reminds us of Homer’s advice to Bart: “Son, a woman is like a beer. They smell good, they look good, you'd step over your own mother just to get one!” Anyway, we were saying festival, potluck etc … The point is, one thing you want to know about a festival is who’s bringing what.

Well, we’ve got some answers, albeit a partial list, but it can help you navigate Saturday’s 11th Annual Garden State Craft Beer Festival aboard the USS New Jersey.

We’re not going to go into the how-to’s of festival tasting, i.e. beer styles to start with before working your way to heavier styles. Or remind you to keep up your water intake. A lot of that’s been covered in the past by so many other beer writers. (Think back to Don “Joe Sixpack” Russell’s take last March before the Philly festival.)

Plus, so much about beer – flavors and favorites, ales vs. lagers – is as individual as an iPod, so we’ll just say what we know about the beers that'll be going into your logo’d commemorative tasting glass. (A barrel-sized thanks to the brewers – many of whom were up to their elbows in prep work for the festival – for fielding our emails and calls asking for their beer lineup.).

So here’s what we know:

The Brewpubs

• Tun Tavern (Atlantic City):
The Tun has a new brewmaster, Tim Kelly, who invites you to check out some Devil Dog Pale Ale and the Tun’s summer staple, hefeweiss. Tim also promises to have something else to wow the festival crowd with.

• Pizzeria Uno (Metuchen):
Make your bock maibock, says Uno’s brewer Mike Sella. His golden bock (7.2% ABV), fashioned with Hallertauer and Saaz hops, is among a flight of beers that includes the brewpub’s year-rounds Ike’s IPA, Gust N Gale Porter, plus a dark mild.

• JJ Bitting (Woodbridge):
Like lager? Like a dark lager? Still like a lager when it goes goth? We do. And we’ll be looking for this schwarzbier, Bitting’s Black Magic. (Totally tangential trivia: The USS New Jersey was launched in 1942, the same year that christened the Harold Arlen-Johnny Mercer tune “That Old Black Magic,” a song that would go on to chart for boatloads of singers, including Sinatra, Sammy Davis Jr. and Louis Prima.) Other brews Bitting will have in tow: Bierstrasse Hefeweizen, Bitting’s Best Bitter and J.J.’s Raspberry Wheat.

• Long Valley Pub and Brewery (Long Valley):
If you, like the USS New Jersey, call South Jersey home, chances are you haven’t been to Long Valley. It’s worth the trip up, for both the brewpub and the scenic part of Morris County the pub draws its name from. In the meantime, brewer Joe Saia is sending a crew to Camden to share some Lazy Jake Porter, a gold medal winner at the Great American Beer Festival. Rounding out Long Valley’s N.J. festival lineup is Grist Mill Golden Ale and an IPA that cuts an English jib.

• Harvest Moon (New Brunswick):
It doesn’t take a Rutgers math major to figure out an IPA that has Hops2 (that's squared) in its moniker means you’re in for an exponentially hoppy drinking experience. The equation here is German hops + American hops + English varieties for dry hopping = Harvest Moon’s Hops2 Double IPA. Brewer Matt McCord plans to have enough of the IPA on hand so hopheads, and anyone else with an adventurous palate, won’t be denied. Ditto for the casual beer drinker.

The Production Breweries

• Cricket Hill (Fairfield):
Co-owner Rick Reed once told us he thinks a well done American lager is a style that's becoming a little bit forsaken. Perhaps that’s why the Cricket has one, aptly named East Coast Lager, a refreshing brew that has found a niche in our fridge. Look for it, plus their American Ale, Hopnotic IPA (another one of the Cricket’s that is usually in our fridge), and the Colonel, that is, Colonel Blide's Altbier.

High Point Wheat Beer Company, aka Ramstein (Butler):
What’s that old saying, that bit of advice for success, “Do what you do best …” Well, High Point’s name says it all: Wheat Beer. Greg Zaccardi used to work as a brewer in southern Germany, and took a lot of that Deutschland bier ethic and sensibility back home to create some great German style wheats and lagers. Look for Ramstein Blonde, High Point’s take on the traditional unfiltered weiss, and Ramstein Classic, a dark wheat that beer writers 10 years ago dubbed the future of dunkel wheats. See for yourself how that claim holds up.

• Flying Fish (Cherry Hill):
The Fish is the big fish when it comes to Garden State craft beers, and will probably crack the 10,000-barrel mark this year. We remember when they were just starting to swim and recall the Saturday open house in October ’96 when the mash was struck for their very first Abbey Dubbel. Fish folks say they’re bringing a bit of everything to the festival. We hope that means HopFish, their really creamy and tasty IPA, in addition to their ESB and quenching Farmhouse Summer Ale (which we turned our neighbors onto).

Festival Details

Admission: Tickets are $35 and still available online through ticketweb.com or at the ship's ticketing office, 856-966-1652 x107. Price includes keepsake tasting glass and self-tour of the battleship.
Entertainment: Music by the Cabin Dogs.
Food: Vendors will sate your appetite for the right price (seriously, there will be stands where you can buy food).
Parking: Garage is located at the Camden waterfront complex; shuttle buses will be available to the battleship.

Two for the Show

Some quick notes from Sunday’s annual Brewer’s Plate festival in Philadelphia.

This is an affair that really underscores the inseparable tie between beer and food.

So if you weren’t one of the 1,000 people at the Reading Terminal Market savoring fine cheeses, seafoods, smoked meats and a some really kickin’ “beeramisu” at the third outing of this event, you’ll definitely want to put it on your calendar for next year.

Here’s why ...

The Brewer’s Plate (a fundraiser by nonprofit White Dog Community Enterprises) unites artisinal foods and dishes from some great Philly area restaurants with beers from craft brewers within a 150-mile radius of the city. Great food, great beer. Great expectations.

(This year, the festival featured 18 restaurants and 18 breweries, with each brewery and its two beers styles paired off with two different restaurants.)

But the event also makes a deeper statement about locally grown and produced food. And locally made beer. And that is, when you make those establishments your go-to purveyors, you create and nurture a community, not to mention giving an important boost to local economic development.

What’s that mantra about craft beers? Support your local brewery? Well, that’s part of what the Brewer’s Plate is saying.

And it’s one of the reasons we stepped across the Delaware to check out the pours from Jersey gems like Climax Brewing and Flying Fish and Triumph. (River Horse Brewing was also extended an invitation to the event but apparently could not make it.)

Some highlights of the Garden State at the event, a bit of what went on our plate and in our glass: Climax (Roselle Park) saw its very able ESB paired with a fantastic crab bisque from Ortlieb’s Jazzhaus, whose wonderfully spicy jambalaya was also matched up with the Farmhouse Summer Ale from Flying Fish (Cherry Hill). We’re big on spicy food, so this was a line we hit a few times more than we should admit.

(Climax’s Nut Brown Ale was paired with some excellent cured meats from London Grill. HopFish, the creamy IPA by Flying Fish, was served with pan-seared scallops from Patou.)

Triumph, which spans both sides of the Delaware, featured a dunkel larger (on tap at its New Hope, Pa., location) with pork loin and lentil pilaf from White Dog Cafe. (Triumph also poured its signature Bengal Gold IPA with a really tasty pulled pork sandwich.)

Great food and great beer always keep good company. Two for the show.

Calendar Note

Attention! Numbers to remember: 700, 23 and 5.

The 11th annual Garden State Craft Brewers festival will again dock at the pier in Camden, on June 23rd, marking the third consecutive year Jersey-made brews will be served on the flagship of Bull Halsey.

More on Bull Halsey in a second.

Right now, know this: Admission to the event aboard the USS New Jersey -- the floating museum at Camden's Delaware River waterfront -- this year will cost you 5 bucks more (this is not a bad thing, stay with us here) and attendance will be limited to 700 of you beer fans. (We’re not sure what the gate did last year, but capping the attendance is good, since it translates into shorter lines for necessities aboard ship, be they edibles or that ever-important line to the loo.)

So it’s going to be $35 to cruise with some of the Garden State’s best in brews in 2007. But don’t flinch. If you sailed with the Philly craft beer festival on March 3rd, you remember that passage was 40 bucks. And let’s face it, that was a pretty good time, followed by the Atlantic City festival a week later for a few bucks less.

So now it’s time for New Jersey beer’s annual showcase event. And for it, event organizers are putting the extra admission money where your mouth is. And by that we mean better food to go with the malt art you have come to expect from Jersey brewers.

So put on your sailing shoes (yes we’re Little Feat fans), the ship’s waiting for you.

(Last year the number for tickets was 866-877-6262 ext. 108. That’s the USS New Jersey’s line. We can’t say for certain it’s where to call now, but if we were starting somewhere, those are the digits we’d dial.)

About Bull Halsey: (we’re talking the Admiral Halsey here, so forget Uncle Albert and butter pies) … William Frederick “Bull” Halsey Jr. was born in Elizabeth, NJ, 125 years ago, and cut a distinguished jib as a US Navy admiral in World War II (a mere 60-plus years ago). The New Jersey was Halsey’s 3rd Fleet flagship during the battle of Leyte Gulf, the mother of all naval battles (so history tomes tell us).

All this has little to do with beer, but a lot to do with where you stand when you sip one aboard the ship. So when the time comes, tip your glass to the Bull and the Garden State.

Dismissed.

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 ...

Eight bells and all is well

Here’s an update from Saturday’s inaugural Philly Craft Beer Festival. (We’re sure the cruise terminal at the Naval Yard has been swept and the deck swabbed by now, no small task when it comes to a building that nearly rivals a football field in length.)

If you’re one of the beer enthusiasts who may have ended up three sheets to the wind by drinking 2 ounces at a time, we hope the hangover was mild, although we didn’t notice anyone totally hammered during the noon-to-4 p.m. session we attended. Buzzed? Absolutely, but hammered, not really. We can’t speak to the evening session (6 to 10).

Incidentally, the festival's website reports both sessions sold out. (Admission was $35 in advance, $40 at the door.) Success!

And with that said, here are some details by the numbers …

Beer: Fifty brewers and 120 beers, more brew than you could possibly drink in two four-hour sessions, but so many different kinds that the beer geek in you might have been tempted to try. And we confess, those figures are what the promo literature declared. In our quest to taste some beer (we sampled from 17 breweries) and support these words with photos, we didn’t have time to check in with the management to see if any breweries were no-shows.

New Jersey beers: The Garden State five were Climax Brewing Co. of Roselle Park (pouring an ESB and an Oktoberfest); Cricket Hill Brewing Co. of Fairfield (a session IPA, East Coast Lager and Colonel Blides Alt Bier); Flying Fish Brewing Co. of Cherry Hill (XPA and Abby Dubbel; special thanks to Gene Muller for some key assistance to Beer-Stained Letter); High Point Brewing (Ramstein) of Butler (amber lager and blonde wheat); and Triumph Brewing Co. of Princeton (and New Hope, Pa., with a Philly location soon; Bengal Gold IPA, and our sincerest apologies for not taking down the other styles poured).

Details et cetera ...

The compass: Brewers came from near (Philly, Philly burbs, greater Pennsylvania, Delaware, Maryland and of course New Jersey) and from afar (Colorado, Maine, Vermont and Upstate New York, to name a few).

Interesting beer: Origin, a pomegranate-infused beer from New York and San Francisco-based Shmaltz Brewing Co. He’brew brews, the chosen beers; funny schtick, pretty good beer.

Reconnecting with a brew: Pig Iron Porter from Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant (Delaware and Philly burbs). A former co-worker once slipped us a half-gallon of this porter back in the mid-’90s. It was good then and tasty still.

Attendance: Seemed like a battleship-load of people. Again, according to the literature, attendance would be cut off at 1,500 per session, and not oversold so folks could get served easily. Some of the participating brewers, however, marveled at the crowd size, speculating it was an aircraft carrier-load instead.

First session peak attendance seemed to be about 2:30 p.m. That’s when the dissonant drone of a thousand-plus voices chattering at once was the loudest. Also, navigating from port to starboard in the terminal was toughest about this time. Oh the sea of humanity. The lines to the heads were also quite long, but observant folks discovered a unisex head in the side room where the brewers’ panel discussion was held. Virtually no line! Way cool. Overall, a patient crowd, well behaved.

Food: Concession fare, but we must offer some props. It wasn’t bad for an event that had to deal in volume and do it fast to keep long lines moving (24-minute wait when we ate). Sample purchase: Turkey wrap, soft pretzel (this is Philadelphia) and a crab cake sandwich. Pinch to the wallet: 16 bucks, (but we’ve seen worse -- six bucks for a half liter of Deer Park at a Meadowlands parking lot party for the New Jersey Devils’ 2003 Stanley Cup win.)

Music: The Bullets. And sadly, we couldn’t hear them aft. Not their fault, though. We did make a point to move to the bow and actually listen to them. (Caught their cover of the Wallflowers’ “6th Avenue Heartache.” Coincidentally, we listened to “Bringing Down the Horse” during the ride into the city.) Fender guitars (one with the fat headstock, a reissue of an early 1970s model), stand-up bass, fiddle, a modest 20-inch bass drum on the drum kit ("It gets the job done" we were told) ... we'd liked to have spent more time listening, but duty called.

Minor letdown: Keepsake sampling glass was plastic. We prefer actual glass. Some day we’ll get over this hang-up.

Missed opportunity: Dock Street. We liked Dock Street back in the 1990s and used to take a six or two to friends for the Kentucky Derby. Then the brewery closed. We read about a return of the beer, but alas we didn't get a taste before hitting our limit for safe driving.

Cool Display: Pint and shot glass setup at Raven Beer. With the sunlight filtering through from behind, it sometimes made for a ghostly effect in Poe's visage on the glassware. Quoth the Raven: You break, you buy.

Quotable quote: “Dude, are you Troegenating her?”A metaphoric, wink-wink, nudge-nudge appropriation of Tröegs’ double bock name. We’ll let it go at that.

FOOTNOTE:
Look for a photo gallery to go up soon. We’re still editing the nearly 300 frames we shot, weeding out the chaff. Also, if we took your business card and promised to email you some photos, we hope to get that done within a week.

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.