Update: Kane Brewing moving along

Interior work progresses at Kane Brewing's site in Monmouth County.

Owner/founder Michael Kane is busy getting his 7,000-square-foot facility in Ocean Township ready for delivery of the brewhouse next month from Diversified Metal Engineering of Canada.

Sitting in a conference room adorned with blueprints and brewing-gear schematics on Wednesday, Kane took some time to provide an update on the Belgian-style and American ales brewery he's bringing to the New Jersey craft beer scene.

His site is just a bottle cap's throw from where Tom Baker built a cult following with Heavyweight Brewing, before Baker opted to pull up stakes five years ago and open Earth-Bread + Brewery brewpub in Philadelphia.

"Best-case scenario, middle of April; worst-case scenario, end of May," Kane says of his eponymous brewery's projected launch. "Delivery of the brewhouse should be middle of February, and then depending on what phase we are in building out the facility here – plumbing, electrical and steam – it will take a couple of weeks to get that installed and up and running. (We) should be in a position to start brewing the beginning of March."

For those anticipating another Jersey brewery, here's what you need to know: Kane brews will, at least initially, be draft-only in half barrels and sixtels, with self-distribution in Monmouth County and northern Ocean County, then points northward. However, with the Belgian styles, some bottle-conditioned brews packaged in 750-milliliter bottles are likely. You can also expect tours and the accompanying allowed samples.

A homebrewer turning commercial, Kane's vision of going pro began picking up some momentum late last year, after a planned site in Manasquan fell through. Undaunted by the setback, Kane pressed on and ended up signing a lease last August on the Ocean Township site tucked in an industrial park just west of Route 35.

Nearly six months later, he finds himself with plenty to do, besides an expected February installation the brewhouse, three accompanying 40-barrel fermenters, 40-barrel bright beer tank and 40-barrel hot liquor tank. There's also bringing a brewer on board, and of course, getting the green light from state and federal regulators, as well as having local officials give their blessing to the brewery, too.

On that last point, walking a trail blazed by Heavyweight offers some advantages (the Manasquan site was hampered by some misgivings on the part of locals about what goes on at breweries).

"The town was familiar with the process a little bit – what it is we'll be doing over here – so that helped out a little bit," says Kane, who counts himself among those who enjoyed Heavyweight brews like Perkuno's Hammer and Lunacy Golden Ale.

So would Kane like for Tom Baker to help christen his brewery with the first mash?

"We were down at his place about six months ago. It's a great restaurant, great beer. He's a great brewer, would love to have him come up if he's interested. He's welcome to come up here any time he wants," Kane says.

New deadline for Tun homebrew challenge

There's a deadline extension for the homebrew contest sponsored by the Tun Tavern brewpub and The Press of Atlantic City's At The Shore entertainment guide.

Homebrewers now have until Monday, Feb. 14 to drop off their entries at the Tun in Atlantic City.

Remember, the winner's circle includes a chance to scale up your recipe and brew it on the Tun's 10-barrel system under the guidance of brewer Tim Kelly, plus admission to the Atlantic City beer festival, April 1-2, at the Atlantic City Convention Center. The finished beer will be served at the festival and will be on tap at the Tun.

More details:

• Entrants must submit six bottles of their homebrew (or the equivalent of 72 ounces).
• All bottles must be clearly labeled with the homebrewer's contact information (name, phone number and email) and the style of beer.
  
• Entries must be dropped off at the Tun Tavern by Feb. 14. (The Tun is located in same building as the Sheraton hotel, across from the convention center. The phone number is 609-347-7800)
• Judging will take place Thursday, Feb. 17.

Cans, new brew & marketing for Hometown

Hometown Beverages, the company behind New Jersey Lager, will look to retool its marketing approach in the Garden State in 2011, as it begins its third year in the region's beer industry.

The Manasquan-based contract brewer entered the beer scene in late 2008 with a trio of state-named lighter lagers – New Jersey Lager, New York Lager and Pennsylvania Lager. The latter two have outpaced the brew named for the state that founders Bob Selsky and Chris Curylo call home.

But nurturing growth for New Jersey Lager is only part of the picture for Hometown, Selsky says. Plans call for packaging the company's flagship lagers in cans this year and introducing another brew to their lineup.

Possibly launching at the Atlantic City beer festival April 1-2, the new Hometown Lager will become the fifth label brewed by the Wilkes-Barre, Pa.-based Lion Brewery for Hometown Beverage, which added Hometown Light to its flight of beers in 2009 and began canning that brew last fall for sale in 24-packs.

Hometown Lager will initially be available as a draft product and will keep to the company's business model of easy-drinking lagers that Selsky says are more defined by the shorthand session beer than any other modifier.

"We're not craft beer. We're not overbearing, with all the hops like some of those can be. There's a lot of flavor and you can drink a lot of ours," he says. "We're session beers."

Selsky expects the lagers that launched Hometown in '08 to go into cans this spring and sold in 24-packs like Hometown Light. The brews will still be available in bottle and draft. The attraction of cans, Selsky says, is they have a go-anywhere quality to them. They're lighter in weight, more portable by the case than bottles and easier to dispose of the empties.

With New Jersey Lager's distribution, the company ended its ties with its Garden State wholesalers over the last three months. Moving forward, Selsky says, Hometown wants to find a distributor more attuned to the company's marketing strategy of establishing a presence in package stores with smaller commitment of beer for the retailer, then Hometown following that up with sampling at those stores.

Selsky says he's sympathetic to wholesalers' inclination to throw more support behind core and top-selling brands. "That's what pays their salaries, their bonuses," he says. But that situation can come at the expense of smaller brands, he says.

Despite plans to retool New Jersey Lager's marketing, Hometown has had success getting its other labels out before the beer-drinking public, with company's brews, for example, being poured at the major sports venues in Philadelphia (Citizens Bank Park), Pittsburgh (Heinz Field, PNC Park) and New York (Citifield).

Getting into those places has come with a steady flow of consumer outreach, Selsky says. He and partner Curylo do a dozen or so events weekly and hit about 45 beer festivals in the tri-state region last year.

And there's plenty more to come this year, Selsky says.

Cape May County brewery in the works

New Jersey's craft beer industry entered 2011 with four applications* for production brewer licenses pending before state regulators, among them a venture picking up some steam in Cape May County.

Ryan Krill, his father Robert Krill, and Chris Henke, a friend from Ryan's college days at Villanova University, say they're in the process of leasing a site in Lower Township for their Cape May Brewing Company, an enterprise they want to become a beer supplier in the South Jersey shore market and beyond.

"Our bread and butter is going to be local draft distribution," says Ryan. (Pictured from left to right: Robert, Ryan and Chris.)

Cape May, as a part of the business name, represents more than just a potential market. The region is also the shore destination that the three, as Pennsylvania residents, have a long had an association with. Coincidentally enough, their Pennsylvania haunts – West Chester, where the Krills hail from, and North Wales, where Chris has an address – are home to two Iron Hill brewpub locations. And for the record, Ryan now calls Avalon home.

Aside from being craft beer enthusiasts, the trio's passion for better beer is buoyed by their seven combined years involved in homebrewing, a typical springboard into commercial beer-making (the majority of the Garden State's craft brewers entered the business via this path). But their entrepreneurial sense rests upon 30 years in the pharmaceutical business for Robert, 65; work in finance for Ryan, 28; and engineering for Chris, also 28.

There's a "keener interest in craft beers. The quality is definitely better, and people are asking for local beers," says Robert.

Right now, the three are focused on the lease for their site adjacent to the Cape May County Airport (the property is owned by the Delaware River and Bay Authority, which runs the Cape May-Lewes, Delaware, ferry and the airport). After that, they'll turn their attention to installing their brewing equipment and securing their federal and state licenses. (They hope to have an initial 10-gallon brewing set-up installed around April, and then a three-barrel system.)

The trio would like to see Cape May Brewing up and running by Memorial Day, but they're also realistic that much needs to happen beforehand. (An April opening is noted on their Web page, but they say that will most likely get pushed back.)

In the meantime, they're also pounding the pavement to establish accounts for Cape May Brewing Company, which could launch with an IPA (Jump the Jetty IPA is a working name), followed up with wheat beer that makes use of Jersey-grown cranberries, plus seasonal brews.

"We're taking our time. We're not running into the market. It's easy to talk about starting a brewery," Ryan says.

*More on the other three soon.

Mocha mash-up

Brewery neighbors Iron Hill and Flying Fish will pour a firkin of two blended stouts on Saturday (note the word firkin, limited quantity) in a union they've dubbed as a Jersey's Finest moment.

The collaboration finds IH's Luca Brasi Coffee Stout blended with FF's Exit 13 Chocolate Stout and parked on some whole vanilla beans and cocoa nibs for a month or so.

On his blog, IH brewer Chris LaPierre says the idea for a coffee-chocolate stout struck him during a swing over to Flying Fish in Cherry Hill to pick up some yeast in November.

While there, Chris sampled to the soon-to-be-released Exit 13, FF's most recent Exit Series brew, and immediately thought it would combine quite well with the coffee stout he shepherded through the brewing process with Scott Davi and Jim Carruthers, the winners of the homebrew contest IH sponsored last year.

The resulting mash-up brew first went public at an event Philadelphia in December, and now comes to Iron Hill's Maple Shade location for a noon tapping.

But, thanks to some fridge overstocking on our part – a leftover growler of Luca Brasi from Nov. 9 (the first day it went on tap at IH) and a bottle of Exit 13 – we can tell you what this brew will taste like, approximately anyway.

Made with cold press coffee and whole coffee beans kept in the serving tank, Luca Brasi (4-plus percent ABV) has a smooth, robust java signature, with a bouquet that's as inviting as fresh pot of joe on a Sunday morning.

Brewed with a boatload of Belgian chocolate, Exit 13 (7.5 percent ABV), in the words of FF brewer Casey Hughes, is like drinking a chocolate bar.

Taken together (in our case, blended in a pitcher*), you get a very pleasant nose of coffee, a stout flavor, a chocolate ganache and a sweet finish that answers the coffee taste that heartily peeks around the edges.

But you judge for yourself.

*Special thanks to Tim Kelly of the Tun Tavern in Atlantic City, Gretchen Schmidhausler of Basil T's in Red Bank and Mark Haynie of Mid-Atlantic Brewing News for helping out with the Luca-13 tasting last week. Speaking of the Tun and Basil's, stay tuned for their collaboration brew.

Small gets bigger in craft beer-speak

The definition of "small" just got bigger in the lexicon of craft brewing, a change that promises to keep Boston Beer Company in the family of beer-makers embraced by the Brewers Association industry trade group.

The Colorado-based BA, which represents most US craft brewers, announced last week it had retooled the craft brewer descriptor; specifically, for what defines "small," the BA tripled the brewing production ceiling of 2 million barrels annually to 6 million and accordingly changed its bylaws.

The 2 million figure dates to 1976 and relates to an excise tax differential afforded to small brewers. BA folks say the beer world is vastly different than it was 34 years ago, and the change was therefore due.

If it sounds like inside baseball, it is. But there is this to consider: Boston Beer, with its Samuel Adams brands, is forecast to be the first craft brewer (and Brewers Association member) to cross that old 2 million barrel threshold, and thus leave the gravitational pull of the craft beer moniker.

BA folks contend that if Boston Beer – and any other sizable BA member – outgrew the craft beer definition, it would have an effect on accurately sizing up the craft beer industry's market share, now at 5 percent of the US beer industry. Thus, they stretched the sweater, so to speak, so it would still fit the bigger, small brewers.

The BA hopes to top that 5 percent mark over the next two years and would prefer to embrace success, rather than bounce members because they managed to widen their following in the marketplace.

Tun Tavern homebrewer contest

The Tun Tavern in Atlantic City has details on the homebrewer contest it's sponsoring with The Press of Atlantic City's At The Shore entertainment publication.

The top prize is a chance to scale up your recipe and brew it on the Tun's 10-barrel system under the guidance of brewer Tim Kelly. The finished beer will be served at the Atlantic City beer festival, April 1-2 at the Atlantic City Convention Center. It will also be on tap at the Tun.

If you're interested in entering here's what you need to know:

• Entrants must submit six bottles of their homebrew (or the equivalent of 72 ounces).
• All bottles must be clearly labeled with the homebrewer's contact information (name, phone number and email) and the style of beer.
  
• Entries must be dropped off at the Tun Tavern by Monday, Feb. 7. (The Tun is located in same building as the Sheraton hotel, across from the convention center. The phone number there is 609-347-7800)
• Judging will take place Thursday, Feb. 10.

Meanwhile at Cricket Hill

The brewery says it's turning a homebrew recipe into a 2011 specialty brew (see beernews.org brief here). The Russian imperial stout is the creation of homebrewer Bill Kovach and will become one of the reserve beers the Fairfield brewer releases four times a year in bomber bottles.

Kovach's brew was crowned champ out of 33 entries in a homebrewer contest sponsored by Cricket Hill. His American pale ale also landed him in a three-way tie for second place.

A Russian imperial stout marks a step away from the beer philosophy and business model on which Cricket Hill was founded 10 years ago.

Although it has in the past included a maibock among its seasonal offerings and some whiskey barrel brews, the core of Cricket Hill's lineup has generally been session beers: its East Coast Lager, American Ale and an IPA that trends on the lower side of alcohol content, to name a few.

The brewery has even branded itself as making transition beers for people ready to step away from lighter beers, like Bud and Miller. So an imperial stout – which would be, generally speaking, twice as strong as some of Cricket Hill's year-round brews – could indicate a transition for Cricket Hill itself.

w w w Port 44 Brew Pub dot com

Port 44 Brew Pub in Newark now has a presence in cyberspace.

Folks at the restaurant-brewery, New Jersey's newest beer-maker, put out the word this week that the site was up.

It trumpets what's pouring from the Commerce Street establishment's taps, as wells as offering some background details about those house-brewed ales. That's a standard practice for any brewery's dot-com existence, of course. (The food menu is also on the Web site, another SOP item; the site does have one glitch right now. It's rejecting attempts to sign up with the brewpub's mailing list.)

New on that on-tap lineup is a rather hearty Newark Bay IPA (Amarillo hops, 7.9% ABV). The others you'll recognize as Port 44's flagship brews.

In an interview back in November, Port 44 brewer Chris Sheehan lamented the brewpub was still playing some catchup after opening in the spring without its Web presence having been worked out.

Chris also noted a second point with regard to getting up to full speed: growlers, or a lack there of.

Well, situations resolved: www.port44brewpub.com ... There's a Twitter and Facebook presence to boot. And Port 44 is filling growlers now.

Coffee stout nightcap

Time to close a chapter: This video is from the release party held back in November for the coffee stout brewed at Iron Hill by homebrewers Scott Davi and Jim Carruthers as part of the Maple Shade pub-brewery's Iron Brewer competition.

And in this installment of the saga, we get to the bottom of how Scott and Jim's IH-brewed beer came to be called Luca Brasi, after the outsized thug Don Vito Corleone would dispatch to convince someone the offer on the table was indeed one that couldn't be refused.

Looking beyond this moment, though, pro-am brewing ventures are widening in the craft beer world. Boston Beer and its Samuel Adams brand, of course, sponsor the well-known LongShot homebrewer contest in which two winners at-large nationally plus a company winner see their beers brewed for the annual LongShot six-pack. (Dave Pobutkiewicz of Morris County, at left with Boston Beer's Jim Koch, was a LongShot finalist three years ago.)

The Colorado-based Brewers Association and American Homebrewers Association have been at the pro-am thing going on four years now, tying it to the Great American Beer Festival.

Here in New Jersey, High Point Brewing has sponsored homebrewer competitions with the Office Beer Bar & Grill, with winners producing their scaled-up recipes at the Butler brewery, and the finished product going on tap at Office locations.

River Horse Brewing in Lambertville toyed with the idea of sponsoring a competition a couple of years ago, but opted against it. Meanwhile, the Tun Tavern in Atlantic City has something in the works for a pro-am beer to be served at the Atlantic City Beer Festival next spring. (Last winter, the Tun welcomed an editor from The Press of Atlantic City newspaper to help brew a dunkelweizen that was served at the Celebration of the Suds, as the AC fest is known.)

But in the Garden State, it has been the New Jersey State Fair and Krogh's brewpub in Sparta that are the old hands at homebrewer contests in which the winner brewers on the small, but still pro-level equipment at Krogh's to make a beer for the brewpub's taps. In fact, just such a State Fair championship launched the beer career of Brian Boak, whose Belgian brews and imperial stouts are contract-brewed by High Point.

Hordes of pro brewers got their start as homebrewers (nearly all of Jersey's craft brewers can make that claim). Homebrewer contests celebrate that lineage and make the bond tighter.

Perusing NJ's regulations

Food for thought:

As detailed in the state Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control's handbook, you only have to be 18 years old to buy beer (wine and liquor as well) for the purpose of reselling it.

But you have to wait three more years to legally taste it. Seems out of balance, no?

Exit 13 follow-up

So if Forrest Gump drank this beer, would he say, "Life's like a box of chocolate stout ..."

Anyway, FF folks put word out today that cases of Exit 13 have been hitting their exit, on their way to stores in New Jersey, and should be available soon.

Shout-outs to Dave Kovalchick (loading bottles) and Greg Genovese (loading the boxes) in the video.

Aggregator moment: Graft beer

This item out of Chicago by Crain's is rather interesting.

Maybe it's Star-Ledger + beer = boring

Guess what? Beer and food pairings are boring.

Don't take our word for it, just follow the link and the comments.

Guess the folks at Boston Beer who have championed enjoying food with beer have been wrong all along. Food and beer pairings are boring. Not to mention Garrett Oliver from Brooklyn Brewery, who seems to have wasted a lot of time on The Brewmaster's Table. Alas.

Guess the folks at the Brewers Association have been on a misguided mission for the past three years with SAVOR because food and beer pairings are boring. Ditto for CraftBeer.com. Sigh.

Guess White Dog Foundation and in Philadelphia and Victory Brewing in Downington, Pa., have been barking up the wrong tree with the Brewer's Plate for six years, uniting great regional cuisine with beers made within a 150-mile radius. Beer and food pairings are boring. Zounds! Flying Fish, River Horse, Triumph, Climax, Boaks and Iron Hill must have all got suckered on that one.

Speaking of Iron Hill they must have been led astray, coaching their staff to know about food and beer, and how they complement each other. Damn it all! Food and beer pairings are boring!

OK, enough sarcasm.

Craft beer enthusiasts, and not just the geeks, know food and beer go better together than wine and food, and let's hand it to wine, because it does an admirable job with food. It's just that beer, in its creation, welcomes more ingredients – hops for starters – into the fold than wine, resulting in a more expansive gamut of flavors that fit with more kinds of cuisine than its fermented cousin wine.

Beer and food pairings boring? Hardly. It's very much where beer, namely craft beer, belongs, especially right now, amid an era of wonderful beer choices. Otherwise, we might as well settle for Pringles and a Coors, or Bud and Doritos, instead of crab bisque made with a bourbon reduction complemented by a pint of Climax ESB; pork loin with a dunkel from Triumph; jambalaya with Flying Fish Farmhouse ale.

Yes, Virginia, better beer deserves better food.

Perhaps what the Star-Ledger thinks is, writing about beer and food together is boring, overdone. As if taking the days from Thanksgiving to Christmas and playing beer advent calendar is a fresh peach at the top of the tree, not easy, low-hanging fruit.

But that's not an entirely fair comment, because suggesting beers for the yule season has been done well many times in the past. Just like suggesting great beer for great food.

The fact is, beer and food always fit comfortably side by side, can seamlessly exist in the same breath. Because they can go in the same mouthful.

Sláinte. And bon appétit.

Exit 13: chocolate indulgence

Chocolate stout met glass at Flying Fish today, where the packaging crew at the Cherry Hill brewery began bottling Exit 13, the sixth installment in FF's limited-batch specialty brew series.

The labels that tell you it's a chocolate stout get added next week in the second step of the packaging process. (The lone labeled bottle of 13 at top right was pulling photo-op duty. The beer hits store shelves sometime in December.)

But the beer's chocolate cred is truly in its flavor. And waiting beneath a super-dense head of deep-tan foam is a big, fat chocolate taste that would make hedge fund manager/cocoa market mogul Anthony "Choc Finger" Ward take notice.

Exit 13 was made with 580 pounds of Belgian chocolate, 200 pounds of cocoa nibs and 1,200 Tahitian vanilla beans.

"You can definitely pull that chocolate right out," head brewer Casey Hughes says, after offering a taste of Exit 13 from the brewery's holding tank. "When a lot people think about chocolate, they don't think about the vanilla that's actually in it ... That's why we have vanilla beans in there, to bring out that chocolate flavor."

The folks at Flying Fish planned a total of 150 barrels of the chocolate stout. Today's bottling made a dent in a run of 1,250 cases of the 750 milliliter bottles that have been a signature of the Exit Series.

Chocolate lovers may want to consider the box of 12.

Another look at Newark's Port 44 Brew Pub

Port 44 Brew Pub continues to find its footing with the lineup of house ales it has been producing for three months now.

It can take a little while to find the sweet spot with the newly installed brewhouse, some time to nail down the efficiency of the equipment as far as mashing and hop utilization go.

But brewer Chris Sheehan (pictured at left) says he's getting comfortable with the results of his recipes for Port 44's flagship brews that include a golden ale, red ale, wheat beer and a stout named for New Jersey bootlegger Abner "Longy" Zwillman.

The wheat beer, Siren's Wheat, will help serve as a fundraiser for college scholarships for children of police, fire and EMS personnel. Chris says the inaugural batch had an unintended hop signature that overrode the wheat flavors, so some tweaking is order.

But he says his Goldfinch golden ale and Devil's Red have hit the mark. "I'm locked in on those recipes," he says. (A pomegranate wheat and a winter seasonal strong ale were among his brewing plans earlier this month.)

Port 44 opened back in the spring with guest beers on tap and began turning out house ales in August, figuring in the crowds that hit the nearby Prudential Center for concerts and New Jersey Devils and Nets games into its business model.

A few lingering things remain to get squared away, Chris says, such as setting up a Web site, purchasing an inventory of growler glassware, and acquiring a keg washer so serving tanks won't stay tied up too long by a single beer.

"It's still a work in progress," Chris says.

Chris plans to have the keg washer custom-made with the help of a metal fabricator from the city's Ironbound section. Then the brewpub's stock of 30 Hoff-Stevens kegs can stirred into the mix to get more house brews on tap. (Brews from Cricket Hill and New Jersey Beer Company are two of the guest brews that remain on tap for now.)

"We have eight taps here but I have five serving tanks," he says. "The other three taps I want to fill with my own beer instead of having guest beers."

In the meantime, Port 44's second-floor bar area has been pulling in private parties from the corporate crowd in Newark (Prudential and Verizon, for example), as well as students from Seton Hall law school.

"We've been doing a fair amount of business that way," Chris says.

Exit 13 release set

The next stop in Flying Fish's Exit Series gets bottled on Friday, with a release event set for 7 p.m. Dec. 7 at the Pub on Passyunk East in Philadelphia.

Folks at the Cherry Hill brewery say the release event for the chocolate import/export stout that is Exit 13 (Port Newark-Elizabeth) may be your only chance for a while to sample the beer on draft.

The chocolate stout – the sixth in series of limited-batch brews that kicked off in April 2009, was made with 580 pounds of Belcolade dark chocolate (the port at exit 13 of the New Jersey Turnpike is the ingredient's entry point into the US), then aged with 200 pounds of cocoa nibs and 12 pounds of of vanilla beans.

The exit brews have been a Garden State study for FF head brewer Casey Hughes, who has dug into the back pages of Jersey to research ingredients for the brews.

With Exit 1, a stout released a year ago that used Delaware bay oysters, the brewery messages on the bottle labels took on a somewhat historical tone regarding the regions the brews represented, and in turn offered craft beer enthusiasts an engaging glimpse into New Jersey culture.

But Casey thinks he's the one with the leg up on Jersey lore.

"I'm learning the most from this, because I probably know more about Jersey exits than anybody now. I can go up the highway and say, 'This happened at this exit, this happened at this exit ...' from just researching all the stuff."

Another shot of caffeine & NJ proposed ban

As forecast, federal regulators threw a flag on caffeine added to alcoholic beverages, taking aim at concoctions like Four Loko and Joose that feature a sort of Jekyll-Hyde combination of ethyl alcohol (12% ABV) and caffeine jolt (three cups of joe).

The Food and Drug Administration warned the makers of those beverages, in addition to Massachusetts-based New Century Brewing and its Moonshot beer (4% ABV and 69 milligrams of caffeine), that caffeine is an unsafe additive in their beverages and their beverages are being marketed contrary to federal regulations. The upshot: they risk seizure of their products and a halt to production.

But it gets doubly worse for the beer industry's Rhonda Kallman, founder of New Century (and a figure known for helping launch and establish Boston Beer and the Samuel Adams brand): the Commonwealth of Massachusetts is frowning harder on caffeine in alcoholic beverages than the US Food and Drug Administration is in its warning of last week. Her company apparently could end up getting knocked out of business. (Moonshot's Web site was inaccessible on Sunday.)

Here in New Jersey, there are bills in the state Legislature that would ban the sale of caffeinated alcoholic beverages, including beer (keep reading).

The two bills – an Assembly version and identical Senate version – were introduced by Assembly members Valerie Huttle and Ralph Caputo, and Senator Kevin O'Toole, toward the end of October. The Assembly version has been referred to that chamber's Consumer Affairs Committee.

The legislation casts a wide net and lumps in beer, while defining a caffeinated alcoholic beverage as "any prepackaged alcoholic beverage that has been supplemented by the manufacturer with caffeine or other stimulant that is metabolized by the body as caffeine."

What's not indisputably clear (think lawyers arguing fine points) in that wording is whether brewing with coffee, chocolate or other caffeine-bearing ingredients could amount to supplementing the beverage. Logic – and craft brewing practices, for that matter – would tell you no. So would the FDA.

But it's not specifically spelled out.

That's a reason the Colorado-based Brewers Association, the craft beer industry trade group, has asked federal regulators for some clarification (and rule-making), since states can pretty much make whatever rules that want to control alcoholic beverages manufactured and sold within their borders. While the FDA wags a finger, states can slam doors closed.

As we know, craft brewers sometimes use ingredients like coffee and chocolate – and their signature flavors – to shape the flavor profile of a beer, unlike Kallman's Moonshot. (Kallman conceived of the addition of caffeine as a boost.)

Jersey brewers are taking the view that any caffeine that winds up in a coffee porter or chocolate stout is an incidental byproduct of the brewing process, not a direct addition of caffeine to the beer.

And that's backed up by the FDA, which said its warning wasn't directed at those alcoholic beverages that only contain caffeine as a natural constituent of one or more of their ingredients, such as a coffee, but rather malt beverages to which caffeine has been added as a separate ingredient.

Still, for craft beer enthusiasts, it could be worth writing the sponsors of the New Jersey legislation (A3437, S2423), asking for delineation (assuming this measure picks up speed) and that the state not take bona fide ingredients away from Garden State brewers.

Valerie Huttle:
1 Engle St.
Suite 108
Englewood, NJ 07631
(201) 541-1118

545 Cedar Lane
Teaneck, NJ 07666
(201) 928-0100

Ralph Caputo
148-152 Franklin St.
Belleville, NJ 07109
(973) 450-0484

Kevin O'Toole
155 Route 46 West
Suite 108
Wayne, NJ 07470
(973) 237-1360

The buzz about caffeine in booze

US Senator Chuck Schumer, an opponent of caffeine in beverages containing ethyl alcohol, says on his Web site that federal regulators (the Food and Drug Administration) plan to declare caffeine an unsafe food additive to those beverages.

What's stuck in the New York Democrat's craw? Alcohol and caffeinated energy drinks like Four Loko and Joose. His Web post of today cites students getting into trouble (specifically, passing out and having to be hospitalized) after consuming Four Loko, and other concerns about alcohol abuse.

Schumer contends such beverages are jacked up with about half a pot of coffee and almost half a six-pack's worth of beer per serving (which is a big, fat can – 23 ounces), and are therefore unsafe. Meanwhile, Four Loko's maker says it will yank caffeine from the drink.

But that leads to this: The Brewers Association announced today that it will ask the federal Tax and Trade Bureau, the folks who have a say in approving beers that end up on the US market, to "conduct rulemaking on alcoholic energy drinks." (The BA's news release can be found here.)

Seeking to safeguard the use of coffee and chocolate in beer (think coffee porters and chocolate stouts etc.), the Brewers Association is petitioning the TTB to put the hammer down on synthetic and pure caffeine as an additive to alcoholic beverages (wonder if this could ground Moonshot, although that brew adds natural caffeine) while keeping coffee, chocolate, herbs, tea, spices and other caffeinated ingredients as options on the shelf for creative brewers.

The Brewers Association points out that many states are already walking point on this topic, and can easily do so because after Prohibition, they were granted wide latitude to regulate alcoholic beverages on their own. The result across the country is the familiar quilt of differing rules, and in this case, a developing patchwork of different rule-phrasing that pretty much adds up to saying the same thing.

The Colorado-based BA would rather see everyone on the same page and a consistent standard crafted that "would remove the products of concern from shelves without creating unintended damage to the hundreds of craft brewers."

Says Brewers Association President Charlie Papazian: "Responsible brewers have successfully used coffee, chocolate and tea to add interesting flavor and complexity to their beers for decades. In fact, the Aztecs brewed a corn, honey and chili-based beer that contained cocoa. Many craft brewers build on these traditions today using coffee, tea and chocolate. On the other hand, the addition of artificial caffeine not from a natural ingredient source has no heritage or tradition in brewing. We support a ban on the direct addition of caffeine."

How does it affect New Jersey brewers? Well, Jersey brewers have and still do brew with coffee and chocolate.

Consider this: Basil T's in Red Bank took home gold and bronze medals from the Great American Beer Festival for using coffee in a stout; Iron Hill in Maple Shade just this month released a coffee stout; and Flying Fish, which brought porter back to its flight of brews as a seasonal using espresso coffee, plans to release a Belgian chocolate stout in December as the next installment in its Exit Series.

And that's just an off-the-top accounting of such brews in the Garden State. There are certainly others.

Ultimately, it would be folly and unfair if the FDA painted in too broad of strokes and took bona fide ingredients, like coffee, out of brewers' hands because it was aiming at something else.

Man-up, Miller Lite, lose this ad campaign

On the heels of their preposterous triple-hopped campaign (can't even taste the hops, so why boast?), the vortex bottle that reminds you the beer, too, sucks just like a vortex, Miller Lite (tastes plain, less thrilling) imbues you to man-up and drink light beer.

It doesn't add up to man-up and pick up something that has no flavor. More like dumbing down.

And for the record, good beer isn't at all about machismo, and life's too short to short yourself on flavor.

Tun Tavern's Marine Corps birthday salute

If you've been inside the Tun Tavern for even half a second, then you know the Atlantic City brewpub's decor is US Marine Corps.

It's hard to miss the scarlet and gold Corps flag on the wall, life-size jarhead statue just off the bar and the World War II-era images on the doors to the head, among loads of other memorabilia.

But more to the point: If you know US military history, then you know the brewpub borrows its name from the Philadelphia tavern where the Marine Corps was founded in 1775, seven months after the skirmish that was the opening volley of the American Revolution.

Every Nov. 10th, Tun owner Monty Dahm, a former Marine, throws a birthday party for the Corps at his brewery-restaurant in the shadow of Atlantic City's convention center. (This year will be the brewpub's 13th tribute.) It's a generally well-attended affair, and attracts current and former Marines from far and wide.

(Incidentally, Nov. 10th is also famous as the date the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior in a storm in 1975. The doomed freighter is honored with a Cleveland-brewed porter that bears its name.)

Brewer Tim Kelly usually has something on cask for the night, in addition to the Tun's flagship brews, like Devil Dog Pale Ale and Leatherneck Stout.

Semper Fi.