Office trolley

An aggregator moment ...

Nate Schweber, whose name some folks may recognize from New York Times bylines, takes a beer snapshot of Westfield for patch.com, and highlights the Union County town's watering hole, the Jolly Trolley, which sets up pints these days under its corporate banner, The Office Beer Bar & Grill. (The item also is in today's news feed column on the right; Nate also fronts the band New Heathens, who have a couple of albums to their credit – Hello Disaster and Heathens Like Me.)

The Office wades into craft beer deeper than just being a chain of craft beer friendly bars. The folks there also sponsor competitions for the brew-it-yourself crowd, Homebrew Wars, in which winners get to go commercial and make scaled-up versions of their beer at High Point Brewing in Butler.

A West Coast-style IPA turned in by Ian Burgess and Brett Robison landed in the winners circle of the most recent Homebrew Wars. The beer is scheduled to go on tap at Office locations during the week of October 18th.

Great minds collaborate – maybe jam, too

Do a Web search on brewing collaborations and you'll find plenty of brewers and breweries that have put their collective minds and talents together to produce imaginative beers.

Oregon beer-makers Deschutes Brewery and Hair of the Dog Brewing have a collaboration brew due out in 2011. And here in New Jersey, Flying Fish's Exit 6 Wallonian Rye is the effort of the Cherry Hill brewery working with Nodding Head (Philadelphia) and Stewart's (Bear, Delaware) brewpubs earlier this year.

We're thinking of another collaboration that COULD (all caps because it hasn't even been brought up) produce a great beer and a musical tie-in to boot: River Horse in Lambertville and High Point in Butler, two breweries whose mash tuns are manned by quite capable guitar players.

First of all, neither brewery has been approached with an idea to collaborate (that we know of), so let's make that clear. We're not reporting something, we're suggesting something.

The collaboration would work this way: Pick a beer style (a weizenbock or a dunkel of some sort), refine the idea, brew it. Chris Rakow, guitarist-brewer at RH, and Bryan Baxter, guitarist-brewer at High Point, take things a step further and put their musical minds and fretboard chops together on a tune, too.

Easier said than done of course. But imagine the rocking release party for the beer.

Beer Here? Where have you been, SL?

Not to go too far with this, because having more voices in the village square that is craft beer is a great thing.

And that's a sincere comment.

But The Star-Ledger of Newark and its online entity nj.com do deserve a thumbs down for their sudden interest in the craft beer scene with the column Beer Here and for not knowing that Port 44 Brew Pub in Newark is New Jersey's newest brewery.

SL says New Jersey Beer Company is the newest. The North Bergen brewery fired up the kettle this past spring. Port 44 began brewing its lineup of ales in August. It's a quibble yes, but isn't SL a Newark newspaper?

A couple more quibbles: The recycled use of "New Brewski" as a nickname for the state. That moniker was tossed out in 2008 when SL launched its monthly magazine, Inside Jersey, which featured a column that pretty much slammed the state's brewpubs. (Afterward the magazine seemed to care more about wine than beer, save an article by Jersey Brew author Mike Pellegrino about Jersey's beer past, and a back-page item about the Krueger brewery and canned beer being born in the Garden State.)

And didn't SL sponsor the beer festival at Monmouth Park over Labor Day weekend? (That was a festival, that while it had contract-brewed beers with state ties, none of the craft brands actually brewed at home were represented; yet Beer on the Pier last week in Belmar had five Jersey-based brewers there.)

Sadly, this seems more like a dash for advertising dollars (look for the SL hotdog mobile to show up at every festival on the calendar) than genuine interest and a keen read of the marketplace, since New Jersey has had a viable (and yes, now growing stronger) craft beer industry for 15 years.

But newspapers are slow to react (which is why they're dying, and this newfound love of beer sort of reminds us of how the Asbury Park Press newspaper cold-shouldered Bruce Springsteen until he was obviously too big to ignore. However, it's not always the case: Eric Asimov and The New York Times didn't wait until the Brewers Association announced that craft beer was a $7 billion a year industry).

In all fairness, this is the early goings for SL's effort. Stay tuned.

FOOTNOTE: Yes SL did do that silly beer-tie in to the NCAA tournament (March 2oo9 comes to mind), and Climax Brewing owner Dave Hoffmann's Helles got a nice bounce from it. But we seem to recall that tasting panel put styles like IPAs, pale ales and imperial stouts side by side in the same judging session. Make no mistake, Dave's beers are solid and he deserves props, but folks who are seriously into beer would call a foul for the mashup.

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.

Jersey-wide distribution for Boaks

The Garden State is proving sunny for Boaks Beer, the Pompton Lakes-based beer company that Brian Boak started with a white van, a storage facility in Wayne and a contract with a brewery.

Two-plus years ago, if you called Brian on his cell phone, he'd probably answer from the driver's seat of that van, en route to or from Pennsylvania, where he would truck to a distributor kegs and cases of his Belgian brown and imperial stout brewed at Butler-based High Point Brewing, better known as the makers of the Ramstein beer brands.

Pennsylvania represented a real foot in the door of the beer industry for Brian, who at the time had a handful of New Jersey accounts and was doing bigger business west of the Delaware River.

That was then, this is now. Growth for Boaks has swung to Brian's home state.

New Jersey now represents the lion's share of business for Boaks Beer and its top-seller Belgian-style Two Blind Monks, Monster Mash imperial stout and Abbey Brown, another Belgian style, that will soon see a limited-release, barrel-aged version.

"Jersey represents about 65 percent of business right now," Brian says. "That is a swing. But that’s mainly because, first I was just distributing myself in New Jersey and I was having a distributor in Pennsylvania. Now I have two distributors – Kohler distributes me in northern New Jersey, and Hunterdon distributes me in central and southern New Jersey. Just adding central and southern was a whole lot of business I could not get by myself.

"We are available in all of New Jersey, from northern Bergen County to Ocean County, all the way down to Cape May."

But Brian has his sights set a lot farther south than where Delaware Bay and Atlantic Ocean both bathe the state's coastline. Entering the draft and bottle markets of Maryland and Washington, D.C., figures into a game plan that also points north and west to New Hampshire and Michigan

"Soon as I lock down Maryland and D.C., I’m going to go after Virginia. But soon as I lock down one more state, I’m going to order another fermenter," he says.

In April 2009, Brian bought a 30-barrel fermenter that was installed at High Point, where all of Boaks brands are brewed, kegged and bottled. High Point brewed 90 barrels for Boaks last year. Brian says volume is already up this year and could hit 150 barrels by year's end.

Meanwhile, he's jumped on the whiskey barrel band wagon with Wooden Beanie, a stock of Abbey Brown aged in Jack Daniel’s barrels with Madagascar vanilla beans. The beer hit the barrels around the end of August; it's still aging – at just over a month now – and goes to distributors in a matter of days. (Brian says he'll have some of the beer at the Sippin' by the River festival in Philadelphia on Sunday.)

"I had always liked some of those oak-aged porters and all the other beers out there that are oak-aged, and I drink Jack Daniel’s. So, I was like 'Let’s play with this,' ” he says.

But there's some more backstory to Wooden Beanie.

"What actually happened is, Abbey Brown is a beer that hasn’t been out in a while, and the kegs were a little overcarbonated, so I had to figure out a way to (degas) them," Brian says. "So this Abbey Brown is going to be a special treat for people, because it actually is about a year old. It is a well-aged, 7 percent Belgian brown ale that is then aged in Jack Daniel’s barrels with the vanilla beans."

Down in the valley

Bucolic Sussex County gets another beer festival this weekend, but folks behind The Best of the BrewsFest are looking beyond the inaugural event that will be held under that banner on Saturday.

Specifically, the festival at Hidden Valley ski resort in Vernon Township (Sussex County) is being viewed as a chance reclaim some of the past glory for the state's northern half, harkening to the days when the Garden State Craft Brewers Guild would hold its summer festival at Waterloo Village in Stanhope.

Coming on the heels of August and September beer events at Crystal Springs Golf Resort in Hamburg, Best of the Brews is not an official Guild-organized event, but it is expected to feature a beer/brewery lineup that's built on seven Jersey-made brands from the Guild's membership roster.

Best of the Brews is also expected to feature some beers accented with regionally grown hops – Garden State Harvest IPA from JJ Bitting brewpub (Woodbridge), Catskill Hop Harvest by Port 44 Brew Pub (Newark), and Wet Hop NJ Pale Ale by festival organizer Cricket Hill (Fairfield). Port 44, the Garden State's newest brewing entity, began pouring its house-made ales in August and Best of the Brews marks the brewpub's first festival pouring.

"We have 10 breweries showing up. We're going to have some food, and we're going to have a good time," says Rick Reed of Cricket Hill.

The Guild "used to have a beautiful show up at Waterloo. It would attract 1,200 to 1,500 people," Rick says. "All of a sudden it went away, and it was replaced with the tour down on the (USS New Jersey) battleship in Camden. North Jersey got robbed of a great beer show. So we're trying to resurrect the North Jersey beer show."

The Guild's last festival at Waterloo was 10 years ago. A change in stewardship over Waterloo Village pushed events like concerts and beer festivals to the sidelines. On top that, the facility has had to deal with financial issues.

The Guild did hold a fall festival, nicely augmented with a cask ale station, in Newark two Octobers ago. But some sharply compressed planning time – and the festival date falling on an NFL Sunday that saw the Giants playing at home – unfortunately made for an anemic turnout.

"We tried to do it at Newark Bears stadium, but they were between owners and they went bankrupt. The Guild got financially screwed, and so that didn't work out," Rick says. "We (Best of the Brews organizers) found Hidden Valley, a ski resort at the base of a mountain that's just a beautiful venue for a beer thing."

Rick says organizers are cautiously optimistic about the turnout for Saturday. But there is competition for the beer drinkers' stomach space and festival dollar: Oktoberfest events at the Headliner bar in Neptune (Monmouth County) and the Blue Monkey Tavern in Merchantville (Camden County), not to mention the annual Kennett Square beer festival in Chester County, Pa., and Sipping By the River in Philadelphia the next day.

"We're hoping for a crowd. We know the first year is going to be small. All we're trying to do is plant the seed for a revival of the North Jersey show. Hopefully in three or four years, we'll be back to the 1,200 to 1,500, and North Jersey will get its beer show back."

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."

Another one in development - update

Looks like the brewing of craft beer is returning to Ocean Township in eastern Monmouth County.

Followers of New Jersey-brewed craft styles will remember Ocean Township as the home base of Heavy Weight Brewing, the Tom Baker enterprise that earned acclaim for artisanal beers like the imperial porter Perkuno's Hammer, Lunacy Belgian golden ale and Cinderbock lager.

Tom shuttered the brewery in 2006, pulling up stakes to cross the Delaware into Philadelphia, opening the brewpub Earth Bread + Brewery in the city's Mount Airy section a couple years later.

But now entrepreneur Michael Kane says he's signed a lease for space in Ocean Township to house Kane Brewing Company.

Back in the spring, Michael had his eye on a site a few miles south in Manasquan, winning some favor among town officials but encountering flak from some ill-informed town residents who stridently opposed the proposed venture.

Hence he opted for another site where he could brew the line of Belgian and American ales envisioned in his business model.

Meantime, Michael's in the process of setting up a Web site and working on licensing and procuring equipment.

Märzen chronicles, Book III (or yet again)

Oktoberfest is a short season, but the beer that distinguishes it from other fall observances deserves a lot of mention.

So here's some more, specifically, a spotlight on a couple of interpretations of the style that are worth your stein and leisure time.

It just went on tap at Uno Chicago Grill & Brewery in Metuchen a few days ago, and the Oktoberfest that brewer Mike Sella turned in this season is richer than Warren Buffet and more enjoyable than watching Jon Stewart riff on Glenn Beck's chalkboard, kabuki histrionics.

In fact, it's also a taste of two seasons: Clocking in at over 7% ABV, the beer has all the signatures of Oktoberfest but a middle flavor and coppery color that hints at doppelbock.

Mike's brew is also proof that you can take an ale yeast and bend it to a lager will. He used an American ale yeast and fermented at 58 degrees. If you didn't hear him cop to that, you'd never know it. (Yeah, other brewers have done this, too, but sometimes you still get that ale nose in the beer. Not here, Mike's is malty and lager-clean.)

Not quite a hundred miles down the Garden State Parkway from Uno, Tim Kelly set up the Tun Tavern in Atlantic City with some of his finest work since taking over as the brewer there in 2007.

Like Mike's fest beer, Tim's 6.6% ABV, noble-hopped Oktoberfest will have you time-traveling to March. By your second round, you'll swear you've poured a Maßkrug of doppelbock. (Honestly, that second glass will feature a middle flavor quite reminiscent of Salvator. And by the way, Tim did use a lager yeast.)

Tim's an ambitious brewer and has turned in some interesting Belgian styles for the Tun (a brown he made a couple Christmases ago tasted great at yuletide, but a filled-to-the-rim growler of it we aged until February became a really superior beer). For his first try at an Oktoberfest at the Tun, Tim reached for toasty melanoidin signatures and attempted a decoction mash.

"I'll never do that again," he says, with some self-deprecating humor.

The beer was fine. But problem was the Tun's brewing system isn't set up to do decoctions. Tim (with the help of Flying Fish head brewer Casey Hughes, as we recall) used buckets to ladel a portion of the grist from the mash tun into the kettle to be boiled, then back into the mash.

A regular five- or six-hour brew day thus grew by more than a couple of hours, a noble effort for a payoff that could still be attained by infusion mash means and some Munich and aromatic malts, as his efforts this season ably demonstrate. (That's not a swipe at decoction; try High Point's Ramstein fest beer to taste what decoction can do.)

Look for Tim's Oktoberfest at the Central Jersey Beer Fest on Saturday. Or better yet, head to the Tun. And Uno.

Woodbridge, Belmar & Iron Hill's F.red

Turnpike Exits 4 and 11 figure big into the beer picture on Saturday, but the day has nothing to do with the Flying Fish Exit Series beers theme-brewed to those numbers.

Exit 11 on the turnpike is Woodbridge, where the 4th edition of the Central Jersey Beer Fest runs from 1-5 p.m. About an hour's drive south, in Maple Shade off Exit 4, Iron Hill brewpub will be hand-bottling and making available for sale some well-aged Flemish red ale.

On top of that, there's a worthy beer gig at the Shore where more Jersey beers will be poured.

Woodbridge
Parker Press Park, along Rahway Avenue, just past the bend in Main Street, is once again the location for the JJ Bitting brewpub-sponsored Central Jersey Beer Fest. From its debut in 2007, this has been a charity event, and this year's proceeds will benefit a cancer-stricken mother of two from Woodbridge and American Legion Post 87.

Jersey brews at the event, according to organizer and Bittings owner Mike Cerami, will include brewpubs Harvest Moon (New Brunswick), Tun Tavern (Atlantic City) and host JJ Bittings; production brewer Cricket Hill (Fairfield); and Boaks Beer (contract brewed at High Point in Butler) and East Coast Beer Company (contract-brewed in New York). Rounding out the list will be beers from Brooklyn, Blue Point, Ommegang, Erie Brewing, Boston Beer, and Doc's Cider.

There will also be food vendors and live music.

Admission is $25, and $15 for designated drivers. Unlike last year, no tickets will be available at the gate (you can buy them at Bittings on Main Street).

If you were at last year's event, you may recall things got a little testy when the admissions outpaced the beer. In order to keep things running smoothly this go-round, ticket sales will cut off at 800.

The park is spacious, with plenty of shade trees. Plus you'll find picnic tables to relax and take a load off. Travel tip: There's construction planned to commence very soon on Route 9 in the area, so coming in on Routes 1 and 35 may be the best path. NJ Transit is a good bet, too, since the train station is a bottle cap's toss from the park.

Maple Shade
The folks at Iron Hill always have something up their sleeve. This time, it's a bottling party for a 9-month-old, barrel-aged Flemish Red tricked out with wild yeast and bacteria to give it a tang that's worth writing home about. (It's a pay as you go event.)

The brewpub will be tapping some F.red (5.3% ABV, 20 IBU), as it's called, while it packages the beer (made in December 2009 and stored in Beaujolais barrels since the headwaters of this year) in corked and caged 750 ml bottles, labeled, signed and numbered by head brewer Chris LaPierre (who's a big fan of sour beer styles) and assistant brewer Jeff Ramirez.

Bottles will then be available for sale at the bar.

FYI: This deep red ale is a bottle-conditioned beer, so the bottle you buy must be stored until it carbonates naturally (Chris recommends a couple of months, or even letting it mature for years).

From Chris' note to mug club members: "This will be a couple of firsts for us: our first beer available in bottles and the first time we’ve done an entire batch of sour, wood-aged beer in Maple Shade."

Belmar:
With this festival, Beer on the Pier, look for Jersey brews from Climax (Roselle Park, go for Dave Hoffmann's well-regarded Oktoberfest and his IPA) and Artisan's brewpub (in Toms River where Dave is the hired consultant/brewer), Cricket Hill, River Horse, New Jersey Beer Company (North Bergen, makers of 1787 Abbey Single and Garden State Stout), and East Coast Beer Company and Hometown Beverage. Hometown, like East Coast Beer Company, is a shore-based contract brewer. East Coast is based in Point Pleasant Beach, while Hometown, the purveyors of New Jersey Lager (as well as New York Lager and Pennsylvania Lager), is based in Manasquan and closing in on a second anniversary in the beer business.

Both Cricket Hill and East Coast Beer are doing double duty on Saturday. Newly minted in the beer scene, East Coast is a co-sponsor of the event with BeerHeads and the borough of Belmar, and just brought its Beach Haus pilsner to market (it's brewed by Genesee in upstate New York) late last month.

"We actually sold through 650 cases in three weeks. We’re thrilled; we're just starting off and we're at the higher end of expectations," says East Coast founder John Merklin. Saturday's event is part of a marketing blitz that has seen the company hit nine craft beer events or tastings in those three weeks.

John says the company has message beyond the flavor and style of its beer, a pre-Prohibition pilsner. "This is not a summer seasonal. It's regional; it's a reflection of the region ... a direct reflection of being at the Shore. The analogy I'm using is the Beach Boys, (hearing them) you know what it's like to be in California," he says.

Beer on the Pier, Belmar Marina, Route 35.
VIP Tent: 1-3 p.m
. General Session: 2-6 p.m

$40 online; $50 Gate; $60 VIP (soldout); 
$10 designated drivers. (A portion of the proceeds go to benefit the Monmouth County Foodbank.)
Food from 10th Ave Burrito, Mr. Shrimp, Crab Shack, Jacks Tavern, Federico's Pizza.
More info (732) 681-2266

The region

As goes New York City and its environs, so goes New Jersey ...

New York's third annual Craft Beer Week begins Friday. Find details here.

Cheers.

Singles scene

Some Jersey singles (top shelf) mingling.

Meanwhile, this is worth a read. And this is curious. (They're from news feed at right.)

Wurst case scenario

For a moment, set the märzen aside.

Because there's also plenty of hearty food rolled into this 2 1/2-week thing called Oktoberfest.

And you don't have to be in Münich to find it.

Try Toms River for some of that Old World flavor.

Detlev Barsch's business, D.A. Barsch German Butcher Shop, is tucked inside in brown, single-story building along Route 9, in the northern part of town where used car dealerships practically outnumber the people.

(Incidentally, for beer in Toms River, it's along Route 9 that you'll find the more well-stocked packaged goods stores, not busy, main-drag Route 37 into Seaside Heights.)

German food is Detlev's life; the butcher profession is a family affair, going back to when he lived in Oranienburg, Gemany, just north of Berlin.

“We had a sausage factory with 150 employees … we had our own store and our own delivery trucks," Detlev says, his voice gently seasoned with a German accent. "I learned my profession in Germany. In competition, I was the best butcher in all of Berlin in 1968; I was No. 3 in all of Germany, and my mother was the only female master butcher for 15 years in all of Germany."

Detlev, 62, has been plying his profession in New Jersey for decades (he came to the US in 1970), and many people remember him from the German butcher shop in Forked River (Lacey Township), about a half-hour drive south of Toms River.

"I started off with the whole family in Forked River. In the '80s, I sold the business to my brother (Wolfgang), then I started my own business on a dairy farm in upstate New York. I had a butcher shop there, Hamden German Butcher," he says.

A flood in 1996 pretty much devastated Delaware County, New York, and Detlev returned to New Jersey, working for his brother for about 10 years. He opened D.A. Barsch 2 1/2 years ago.

Standing behind his shop counter, he flips the calendar page from September to October. The Saturdays of the months are marked with catering orders. Predictably, this time of year is busy, and finds his shop lining up area retirement villages, German-American clubs and anyone else planning a fall fest event with bratwurst, knackwurst, sauerbraten, schweinshaxe, potato pancakes, red cabbage and other traditional German and European foods.

But Oktoberfest has gained an even wider reach as a time to entertain.

"The younger generations that spent time in Europe, they just throw a party for their friends and want to make it an Oktoberfest," Detlev says.

Märzen chronicles, Book II

Dave Hoffmann probably brews more Oktoberfest beer than any other brewer in New Jersey.

With turns at two different breweries – his own Climax brewery in Roselle Park and as the hired brewmaster for Artisan's brewpub in Toms River – Dave has churned out barrel after barrel of the fall seasonal, tailoring the brews for different markets.

Across North Jersey, the beer made under his Hoffmann lager label is a rich, hearty brew like the seasonal German imports his dad, Kurt, enjoyed years ago; the version Dave just put on the taps at Artisan's is quite malty, too, but dialed back just a notch. (That's Dave pictured at last year's fest dinner at Artisan's. This year's is set for Oct. 8th)

In either case, Dave hews zealously to his German heritage, making true-to-style märzens – "not much bitterness, not much hop flavor but very toasty, very caramelly" – that you can't get these days from the deutscher breweries known for creating the style in the first place.

"A lot of the Oktoberfests coming out of Germany, they don't even resemble Oktoberfest," Dave says. "I don't know what the hell they are, some kind of generic fest beer. It's not really true Oktoberfest beer.

"They're not orange any more; they're straw-colored because most of the breweries got away from brewing traditional Oktoberfest beers. Me, as a German and as a brewer, I feel I have to brew it according to the style definitions."

And brew he has: 36 barrels made around mid-summer at Climax were sold in a week. Another 12 barrels will be ready the first week of October, kegged off and bottled in 64-ounce growlers. (By comparison, Dave brewed 28 barrels of Oktoberfest last year, and production at Climax Brewing is up 40 to 50 percent so far this year.)

"I could have sold another three tanks of Oktoberfest if I had them. For some reason this year, people are into Oktoberfest beers, and they're flying out the doors."

German beer is in Dave's DNA. The son of an immigrant father and mother born in the US to German parents, Dave (who's fluent in German himself – "If I spoke German to you, you'd never know I was American," he says) remembers his dad's stock of Spaten, Dinkelacker and Mönchshof. When Dave started homebrewing 20-something years ago, he mimicked those brews to help satisfy his dad's thirst for a taste of back home.

"Whatever seasonals those breweries made, that's what was in the fridge," he says. "That's what I got weaned on. That's what I drank. I know what the Oktoberfest tasted like 25 or 30 years ago because I drank 'em, because my dad had 'em all the time."

ELSEWHERE
Just for the f*cking hell of it.

Fall classic

Some scenes from High Point Brewing's 2010 Ramstein Oktoberfest debut on Saturday. Video was shot using an iPhone.

Port 44 and Hizzoner Corey Booker

Some video footage of Port 44 Brew Pub's grand opening about a month ago.

Nice to see Mayor Booker supports craft beer. (And FYI, the footage was shot by the city)

Now, respectfully speaking, do us a real favor, Mayor Booker, and patronize Port 44, become its friend. Here's why: Maybe someone else will think of Newark as good spot for a brewpub.

After all, Newark used to be home to lots of breweries.

Märzen chronicles

When you flipped the calendar page from August to September, you probably reset your palate from summer beers to something chewy and malty.

Never mind that there are pumpkin ales on the shelf right now. Märzens – Oktoberfests – are the beers that remind you that fall is the best season of the year.

And with this style, New Jersey interpretations aren't to be ignored. In fact, you'll find some exceptional ones made in the Garden State, in North and South Jersey. Over the next couple weeks, you'll see them highlighted here.

First up is High Point's draft-only Ramstein Oktoberfest. The Butler brewery's oldest lager brand has developed a substantial following over the past decade and earned a top rating on BeerAdvocate. The 2010 version debuts this Saturday at the brewery's September open house (from 2 p.m.-4 p.m.)

Like all but one (Revelation Golden Lager) of High Point's 11 beers, its Oktoberfest is the product of decoction mashing, an Old World brewing method whose origins predate thermometers and its goal aims to maximize efficiency in the conversion of grain starches to sugars. But the process also creates malty flavors that are rich and memorable.

"It's the difference between sauté and quick blanch," says High Point founder Greg Zaccardi.

The brewing process, in which a portion of the grain is pulled aside, boiled it, then returned to rest of the mash, takes longer than the infusion-mash methods other Jersey brewers use to make great beers of their own. Decoction also costs more in crew time and utilities.

"The finished product is worth it. We hope people get it, and I think they do," Greg says.

As a business, High Point was born a wheat beer company, and the decoction process was more suited to producing those styles. "Our brewhouse was custom designed for wheat beers," Greg says.

Over time, the brewery shifted its emphasis from wheat beers to embrace other styles, including pilsners and Vienna lagers. The brewery's Oktoberfest was originally tailor-made for a now-closed German restaurant in Atlantic Highlands in Monmouth County.

The Ramstein märzen quickly outgrew those beginnings, and the 140 barrels brewed this season – with an early start in June instead of July like past years – reflect a 30-plus percent increase in production from last year.

"It's draft-only, and it sells out draft-only," Greg says. "The way our brewery is set up, packaging draft beer is better for everybody, for the brewers, for the brewery, for the beer drinkers, for the distributors, for the retailers. We don’t at this point have a need to bottle it. It’s a short season … Fresh beer from a keg is great for Oktoberfest."

www.beerstainedletter.com

An update on the site housekeeping:

There are now three ways to find us in cyberspace: www.beerstainedletter.com, www.thinkjerseydrinkjersey.com and of couse, the URL that started it all, www.beerstainedletter.blogspot.com.

There are more changes coming down the pike as BSL heads toward its fourth year on the Web. The use of the new dot-com addresses, as simple as it seems, is important. And simplicity really is the key.

Thinkjerseydrinkjersey has a certain ring to it, a catch-phrase flavor (and a mantra if you ask us); beerstainedletter has always been the name of the blog, a word play upon tear-stained letter.

But blogspot has always seemed rife with incoherence, a foreign sound (ever try to tell someone over the phone that your Web address isn't simply www-dot-name-dotcom but rather www-dot-name-dot-blogspot-dotcom?). The change was way overdue.

But now done.

Cheers.

Nice cans

An event note: Brewerania collectors have encamped at the Valley Forge Convention Center in King of Prussia, Pa., to show off their latest discoveries and swap stories and mementos regarding all things beer.

Members of the Brewery Collectibles Club of America have been at it since Thursday, bringing with them about 1 million beer cans, plus coasters, openers and lighted signs.

You can join their gathering this Saturday for the general trade session, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. (There may be a small admission charge; the convention center is located on North Gulph Road, and of course there will be beer to drink.)

The BCCA has been holding these canventions going on nearly 40 years now – the first was held in St. Louis back in 1971 when a couple hundred members gathered at a Holiday Inn and showed off their wares from their cars.

This year's soiree coincides with the 75th anniversary of canned beer, which many a can collector knows hails from Newark and the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company. The BCCA has held a series of commemorations for its canonized container that culminate at this year's canvention.

Dot com'n soon

In the coming days, Beer-Stained Letter will be accessible as www.beerstainedletter.com.

Why the change? It just makes sense.

In the world of Worldwide Web indexing and getting noticed, dot-com does better than blogspot at marking the spot. After the change is made, you'll still be able to find the blog at www.beerstainedletter.blogspot.com.

To be sure, this is just some housekeeping. But down the road look for some more changes at how Beer-Stained Letter provides original, premium – written and video – content about New Jersey's craft brewing industry.

Cheers.