Have a taste for tours? Growlers, too?

Touring the brewery is a big part of craft beer culture; it has been from the start.

Thanks to the law changes in New Jersey, the tasting room is poised to become a breakout star for production brewers, much bigger than it had been in years past. Those brewers can now do more to receive their tour guests.

Think back, if you were old enough to drink then, to the bad old days of getting only a tiny sample pour and being told you could buy just two six-packs or a couple of growlers, and that was it.

It sucked, really.

Defied logic, too.

Was positively Jurassic.

Last fall, Trenton finally understood the point its craft beer industry had been making for years: It's time to join reality. Catch up to modern times. We're all adults here. (If you think the Garden State had some less-than-reasonable rules, take a look at Mississippi. It just finally made homebrewing legal. Not that that's a reason to move there.)

Now up and down New Jersey, production breweries are either refining their tasting room practices to better serve tour patrons or remodeling, adding some creature comforts (i.e. a place to sit for a few) or some swanky-looking bars to park a pint on and talk, or decide on a growler purchase and maybe some swag.

Life's good, and now you have more reasons to support your local breweries.

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POLLING PLACE
Polls are sort of passé, but what the hell? Here are a couple:

How frequently do you visit your favorite brewery's tasting room?
	Twice or more a week
	At least once a week, usually weekends
	Once a month
	Usually before a big holiday to get a growler
pollcode.com free polls

Growlers, growlers, growlers ... a staple of the brewery tour for some time now. When you visit, how many do you take home
	Just one, drink in moderation, you know ...
	Usually just a couple, so I can have more than one style.
	One of everything on tap, I'm just that indecisive/I gotta have it all.
	For family gatherings, I get several to ensure variety. Otherwise it's usually just one.
	If they fill half sizes, then I'm definitely getting more than one.
pollcode.com free polls

Speaking of growlers ...

Some raw video footage of growler filler at Iron Hill, shot to test a new Flip Ultra video camera. So basically this one's for the idly curious.

Nothing truly spectacular here, except the beer, which by the way, was an Oktoberfest.

Getting into the growler game

Four-packs, sixpacks, bomber bottles, 12-ounce singles and now growlers.

These days, the yardstick by which you judge a great package store that's big into craft beer may not just be a selection of brews as wide as the US. It may include whether the establishment has a state license to fill jugs with take-home draft beer.

For a long time in the New Jersey craft beer scene, filling growlers has been the province of the dozen brewpubs spread across the state and a couple of production breweries (High Point in Butler and Cricket Hill in Fairfield) that offer them as an option to the two sixpack maximum allowed for retail sale at breweries.

One one brewery, Climax in Roselle Park, bottles exclusively in the half-gallon containers, using a filler system that founder Dave Hoffmann, a former machinist, built himself.

But nowadays some of the big discounter package goods stores in the Garden State are tapping into the market, capitalizing on a thirst for draft beer from Jersey brewers and craft brewers whose labels are hot tickets among beer enthusiasts.

Count the two Joe Canal's Discount Liquor Outlets on Route 1 in Islen (Woodbridge) and Lawrenceville among those establishments with taps dispensing take-home draft in proprietary growling-bulldog-monogrammed glass. Refill prices range from about a fin to 16 bucks depending on the brand of beer.

"We started in the Lawrenceville store at the end of June, and end of July over here," Michael Brenner, the stores' general manager, said last week. "We do a decent business."

(You'll find growler stations at other independently owned Joe Canal's in South Jersey, i.e. West Deptford.)

"Craft and microbrews are popular to begin with. They're getting more so," Brenner says. "There's as much interest in the different styles and regions where they come from, as we see in the wines. Folks are talking about it; they're exchanging notes, and it's a lot of fun."

Brenner says patrons are able to keep up with what's available from the taps by signing up with the stores' email notification program. The two stores, which also sell koozies to keep the jugs cold, have even scored some choice, hard-to-get brews for growler fills. "We had (Founders) Kentucky Breakfast Stout. We had a sixtel in both locations," Brenner says.

The beer sold out lightning quick. "It was great; it got a lot of people talking" Brenner says.

To help drive sales, store crews sold the empty jugs at a recent craft beer festival in Trenton. A Princeton marketing firm created the logo that's emblazoned on the brown glass.

"We think that this is such an interesting and unusual thing that you don't see every day that we wanted to brand it separately," Brenner says.

Besides hot-ticket crafts, the stores also put on some of more familiar brands, like Samuel Adams Summer Ale and Blue Moon, Brenner says, "because we want this to be accessible for everybody."

Beer from the takeout menu

Jersey's brewpubs are neighborhood bars for the folks lucky enough to live that close (imagine being so spoiled as to live within walking distance to one).

For others, especially the traveling beer geeks among us, the brewpubs are a destination, a planned trip, with maybe some local things to do: The Tun Tavern puts you within a couple of blocks of Atlantic City's casinos; the Ship Inn, near the Delaware River in Milford, is a nice weekend afternoon excursion, as is Krogh's in Sparta and Long Valley, which is located in that portion of Washington Township in Morris County that lends a name to the brewpub.

Elsewhere, JJ Bitting is an oasis in the middle of the state, not even a half block from the NJ Transit train platform in Woodbridge, while Triumph feels like a natural fit in Princeton, like some form of it was there when tricorn hats were in fashion in New Jersey.

So yeah, the brewpub experience in Jersey can translate into some distance traversed. Which ususally means justifying the trip by taking home a growler or two of beer. Which means, in this not so happy economy, you might want to know what that jug is going to set you back before you set out on the beer trail.

What follows is handy chart of current growler prices, cobbled together by calling around to the pubs this week. (Double-click the chart to open it larger in another page.)

Cheers.

In the glass

We're making a conscious effort to drink Jersey-made beers for a while, not exclusively, since good beer is good beer, and we have an ample supply from around the tristate region and a number of imports.

But Jersey's the home team, and we're trying to support the state's brewers by thinking local and drinking local. So with that in mind, here's what's in the glass this week:

Tim’s Peculiar Porter, from the Ship Inn.

We grabbed a to-go box of the Brit-style porter (think church, not odd, as in Old Peculiar with this beer's name). We liked this beer from the ’07 NJ craft brewers festival on the battleship in Camden, and were a bit forlorn when the Ship skipped this year's event (we hear there was a death in the owners’ family, so that may be the reason they passed on it).

When business took us in the Ship's part of the state over the weekend, we made a point to stop by and get some take-home beer after a quick lunch there in Milford (grilled chicken sarny … the Ship is British motif from bow to stern; a sarny’s a sandwhich. We had Jethro Tull’s Thick as a Brick stuck in our head afterward “… queuing for sarnies at the office canteen.”)

Some buying advice on the beer box:

• Don’t plan on same-day consumption if you have to travel far to get home or wherever. The drive can shake it up quite a lot, and it degasses, making that inner plastic bladder swell up like a soccer ball. (If that happens, just leave it in the fridge for a few days. The beer will be fine waiting and will reabsorb the CO2 that was released into the ullage.)

• Do try to keep the beer cold for the trip home. So yeah, a cooler is a smart idea, again especially if the ride is long. Warm beer degasses more than cold. But remember, the outer carton is cardboard – and under pressure from the inner bladder – so make plans to keep that dry somehow if you’re using a bag of ice. (Cover it entirely in a few layers of plastic or something.)

• Discard the box when done, hang on to your white plastic tap for when you …

• … Get another. The Ship makes good ales. Plus the beer box is a pretty cool idea, and at 5 quarts (their smallest size), it’s more than a traditional, half-gallon screw-top growler, and actually takes up less space in your fridge.

Also in our glass …

Hoffmann Hefeweizen, from Climax Brewing.

We ran into Dave Hoffmann at the annual mug club dinner at Basil T’s (Toms River) last week (June 27). Dave, who has a side gig as brewer there, was kind enough to provide a sample of this year’s rendition of his hefe, produced at his home base in Roselle Park.

If you’re familiar with Dave’s Union County operation, then you know his German-style brews are his eponymous beers. His IPAs, brown ales and EBS go under the Climax banner.

Calendar item:
Lew Bryson and Mark Haynie roll out their New Jersey Breweries book on Sunday, July 27th with a brunch affair at the Grey Lodge in Philly. Yeah, the Jersey beer book is getting christened in Pennsylvania, as if Jersey doesn't have enough of an inferiority complex as it is.

But Lew says he and Mark have three Jersey dates planned for the book, and scheduling can pose some issues. Hence the Grey Lodge, which has hosted Lew's book debuts twice in the past.

And, besides, the Grey Lodge is everyone’s all-American when it comes to supporting craft brewers, including ones from the Garden State.