To get there, you sometimes gotta grease the wheels by making some comparisons.
And therein lies the point of FindTheBest.com's search engine that compares beers across a range of factors, i.e. price, alcohol by volume, calories and of course beer styles. It's all to help you make a choice that leads you to actually tasting a brew, the ultimate decision-maker for repeat buys or the point of no return.
Right now, FindTheBest's beer page is stocked with 940 different beers from 50 different brewers from around the globe (sounds like the teaser to a beer festival, doesn't it?). Alas, you won't find any of the New Jersey brands in that cache. None of their data has been uploaded to the site. However, Garden State brewers are welcome to provide details about their brews and get listed.
The innards of FindTheBest's beer page is an algorithm that can combine expert ratings and reviews from several sources (think BeerAdvocate and RateBeer).
"It's highly unbiased. It doesn't use expert ratings from marketing companies," says Brandon Coakley, a business development associate for the Santa Barbara, California-based site. "We're just trying to give the user every piece of information."
FindTheBest launched the beer search engine toward the end of last year, recognizing the explosion of beer brands as craft beer gets more popular, as a it becomes a consumer passion with a galaxy of options. (Here's a tidbit about that explosion: The federal Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau, the agency that has a say in breweries and beers coming to market, notes it has seen a steady uptick in the required applications for beer label approvals in the past couple of years.)
"The Internet is cluttered. We're trying to structure data from places. We're trying to make it an even playing field for comparing anything," Brandon says. (He notes the folks there at FindTheBest are beer enthusiasts themselves.)
Other things for which FindTheBest has been a consumer-minded data cruncher include cigars, colleges, automobiles (and car insurance companies), laptop computers and smart phone, baby-sitters, even amusement parks.
But with beer, this may make you wonder just a bit. One the one hand, there's something to be said for being forearmed; you're forewarned, caveat emptor and all that. But there's also something serendipitous about going into the packaged good store scouting the latest oak barrel-aged Belgian that's on everyone's lips (or blog post) and taking a chance on an unknown porter that ends up becoming a constant in your fridge.
So to compare, or not to compare. You decide. Play with it below. (And yeah, we know, Jack Curtin covered this topic late last month.)
Go with one M this time. It's featured in the current issue of The Aquarian Weekly music newspaper.
High Point Brewing, which markets its German-style wheat beers and lagers under its Ramstein brand, made the publication's Beer Trails column, a feature that Aquarian started last year.
Ramstein (one M) just brewed an imperial pilsner that should be ready by mid-May. Guitarist Richard Kruspe of Rammstein (two M's), by the way, was featured in Aquarian back in December.
Aquarian has been a backbeat for the New Jersey-New York region for just over four decades (the publication's based in Little Falls now but once operated out of Fairfield, home of Cricket Hill Brewing).
Over the years, a wide sampling of rock 'n' roll royalty from near and far (The Who and Springsteen, for instance) has graced its cover. The publication has also been a voice on up-and-coming local acts (think Skid Row breaking out back in the '80s).
For something that by definition means very small, they've become big in craft beer.
And the Garden State.
Nano-breweries, sized 2 barrels and smaller, if you need a general definition, have been popping up across the country like dandelions in spring. The unofficial coast-to-coast count is nearly 60 now making beer and 40-plus in development.
In New Jersey, they're a big part of those itching to enter the brewing industry. Half of the 10 craft brewing projects to emerge over the past 12 months have been nanos. Of those, one has started brewing; another is on the cusp of striking a mash.
Great Blue Brewing at Suydam Farms in Somerset County, licensed on Feb. 28, christened its 2-barrel setup with a red ale. Deep in South Jersey, down the shore, is where Cape May Brewing installed a one-third barrel rig that federal regulators signed off on April 1. Cape May Brewing's state approval is expected soon.
But wait, there's more.
Flounder Brewing is settling into leased space in an industrial park building in Hillsborough to become a 1.5-barrel brewery; in Ocean County, homebrewers calling themselves the Jersey Shore Brewing Experience are shopping to bar owners the idea of installing a 2-barrel brewery. The intended result: a brewpub via the nano track.
Meanwhile, Pinelands Brewing, the handle taken by a homebrewing duo in Atlantic County, has set its sights on a building in Egg Harbor City, the former host town of Cedar Creek, a now-defunct brewpub that made beer in the mid-1990s. Its 2-barrel system is now used at Great Blue.
The buzz about über-small, commercial brewing isn't lost on the trade group that represents most of New Jersey's craft brewers. "We'll welcome anybody that makes craft beer in New Jersey into the guild. That's always been the case," says Trap Rock brewpub's Charlie Schroeder, vice president of the Garden State Craft Brewers Guild.
By all accounts, the nano wave is the result of ambitious brewers – many of them rather accomplished homebrewers – looking to put their beers in front of someone besides their friends. They want to go pro, and they see nanos as an affordable foot in the door of the burgeoning craft beer industry. It's an entry point that steers around taking on the steeper expense of 10-, 15- or 20-barrel brewhouses and accompanying tank space.
With nanos, you can hang onto a day job that you're not financially ready to leave; yet you can still brew commercially and try to carve out local markets for beers that range from session strength to imperial. Nanos may be baby steps, but for some of the folks behind them, the vision includes going big someday.
"It's an effective way to enter the business, enter a market and build a brand," says Flounder Brewing's Jeremy Lees, a senior sales manager for a North Jersey manufacturer. Flounder (yes, the name's an Animal House reference) is a family affair that includes Jeremy's brothers, Mike and Dan; his brother-in-law, Greg Banacki Jr.; and cousin William Jordan V. "A nano lets us do this while dealing with responsibilities we now have. I do hope one day my full-time job is to be brewing beer. But you can't have a full-time job brewing beer as a nano brewery."
Paul Gatza, director of the Colorado-based Brewers Association, the craft beer industry's trade group, says nanos started showing up on the association's radar around 2008. "I think the movement of homebrewers into more sophisticated brewing systems and the availability of those systems are definite factors in pushing nanos forward," he says.
Those more sophisticated systems are what companies like Sabco, Blichmann and Psycho Brew are all about. They're the bridge between homebrewers and craft brew start-ups that jumped into the game on the larger scale.
Chris Breimayer and his brother, Pat, are the people behind the year-old Psycho Brew in Belding, Mich. Breimayer, an architect/engineer and homebrewer, turned to making custom brewing rigs after the slowdown in the housing industry.
Psycho Brew has sold a dozen systems – nearly all of them to nanos in development – since the fall, when Breimayer placed an ad on ProBrewer. Psycho Brew's biggest system runs about $13,300 and can produce 3 or 4 barrels. Breimayer spends a couple of hours each morning working out price quotes for prospective buyers.
"A lot of poeple don't have the money for the bigger systems. They can buy ours and prove their prowess and then step up," he says. Nanos that eventually outgrow their Psycho Brew rig can still use them as pilot systems for recipe formulation. (Psycho Brew is putting together a pilot brewing system for Brewery Ommegang, by the way.)
Keeping tabs on nano-brewers across the country is a side interest of Mike Hess, whose eponymous 1.6-barrel nano-brewery in San Diego started making beer last July. One of San Diego's 37 licensed breweries, Hess Brewing was expected to hit a total production mark of 70 barrels by the end of last month. (Hess features among its brews an 11% ABV pale ale and a rye imperial stout that's just under 10% ABV.)
Mike's blog, the Hess Brewing Odyssey, chronicles the nano niche and has become the de facto guide on starting a nano-brewery. The Brewers Association even steers folks interested in nanos to the Odyssey. Under the heading The Great Nanobrewery List: From CA to MA, Mike keeps a running coast-to-coast count on nanos that are operating or are in planning stages.
"I get email twice a week with something to add to the list. It gets updated as often as we get new information. We've done our best to keep it as thorough as possible," says Mike, who also owns a financial services business and has homebrewed since 1995.
The current count: 57 brewing, 42 on the drawing boards.
Andy Crouch, author of Great American Craft Beer and keeper of BeerScribe.com, finds a contrast between nanos and some brewing enterprises tripped up by a past industry shakeout. The people behind nanos have more beer savvy and are driven by something more pure of heart than those past entrepreneurs who envisioned a payday in microbrewing.
"They didn't really know about beer, know about distribution. They were just in it because they thought it was a good fad or a trend, and they just wanted to make some money. A lot of them lost a lot of money," he says. "These days a lot of the growth we're seeing is, oddly enough, in the opposite direction, people who aren't necessarily in it for money; they're in it to make very small batches, these nanobreweries. Here in New England, where I live, there are probably at least 10 that have opened up in the last two or three years, making 1- to 2-barrel batches."
These days the Garden State is witnessing the biggest surge in brewery or beer company development in more than a decade.
In 2009, the well-established Iron Hill brewpub chain opened its eighth location – but its first in New Jersey (Maple Shade). Last year, production brewer New Jersey Beer Company (North Bergen) launched, as did Port 44 Brew Pub (Newark) and East Coast Beer Company (Point Pleasant in Ocean County), a contract-brewed label. Turtle Stone Brewing (Vineland, Cumberland County), an enterprise in development from late 2009 and through last year, was still looking for a site while warehousing brewing equipment (a brewhouse from a shuttered Rock Bottom brewpub and some 15-barrel fermenters).
By the start of 2011, seven more projects were in development: production brewers Kane Brewing and Carton Brewing (both are located in Monmouth County and have licensing paperwork pending with the state) and nanos Great Blue; Cape May; Flounder; Pinelands and Jersey Shore Brewing.
Great Blue entered the state's craft beer scene with a concept to use hops grown at Suydam Farms in its beers targeted for bars and restaurants near the farm. The owners say they still have some bugs to work out on their brewing system, but they plan to put it in service a second time later this month.
Cape May Brewing hopes to be making beer in time to hit the summer season and build a following throughout the shore region. A tiny one-third-barrel system was installed in their building in Lower Township to secure approvals from federal and state regulators. Plans call for upgrading as quickly as the brewery's market will allow. Flounder Brewing hopes to be making test batches of beer by summer and launch the brand with a bottled Hill Street Honey, an American amber ale made with honey from a New Jersey farm. "My grandfather was a beekeeper, he was the original artisan in the family," Jeremy says.
The guys at Flounder hope the market lets them grow to 2 barrels quickly. "To start we would be doing 20 gallons at a time, two cycles being 40 gallons a brew session, so about 1.5 barrels per brew day," Jeremy says.
Bottling will be handled on a counter-pressure filler like some brewpubs use to fill growlers (his model is an older version of the kind in use at Iron Hill). If their market takes off, he says, they may contract out some brewing and offer draft beer.
For now, Jeremy says, the brewery's tour/tasting room has been finished; an architect was hired recently to do utility work design for the brewery buildout.
Farther south, in Ocean County, Wayne Hendrickson and three homebrewing colleagues in Bayville have been pitching nano-brewing to bar owners, hoping one will take them up on the idea to invest in a restricted brewers license and let them install a 2-barrel system to turn the tavern into a brewpub.
Their sales kit consists of a white four-pack carton of sample beers: Screamin' Demon English Red, Gütesbier German Alt, Trouble Maker American Ale and XPA Extra Pale Ale.
Their company name comes partly from the sense of community that craft beer creates.
"We're all Jersey Shore guys," Wayne says. "We wanted it to say a little more. It's more than the beer; it's about the (beer) experience."
After months of making their pitch, Wayne says they may have a bite, someone who's interested in buying a bar and adding a small brewery.
Jason Chapman of Hammonton (Atlantic County) says he unsuccessfully made similar pitches to bar owners before coming up with Pinelands Brewing, a nano he and his homebrewing partner, Luke McCooley, want to get rolling with a German-style wheat brew spiced with coriander and dried lemon peel, a smoked English special bitter and an imperial stout.
The brewery's name is an ode to the Pine Barrens and those things associated with it. "I'm from this area. I grew up camping, fishing and canoeing, all the activities that are typical of the Pinelands area," Jason says. "Cranberries are in the plans for brewing. I've brewed some tasty cranberry beers, and being from Hammonton you have to brew with blueberries."
Last winter the two put money down on a building in Egg Harbor City.
"It was built for a soda company some years back. It has the high ceilings, a floor drain system already built in, which is a big sticking point for breweries," says Jason, whose day job is a heating and air conditioning technician.
"I have the equipment and the experience and recipes to brew 1- to 2-barrel batches. It's just a matter of getting the capital together to get the kegs, the advertising, the intricacies of starting an actual microbrewery."
FOLKS IN THE PHOTOS ... Top to bottom: Jeremy Lees (photo supplied to BSL); (from left) Robert Krill, Chris Henke and Ryan Krill; (from left) Luke McCooley and Jason Chapman.
What's got a dozen heads and can go through 1,440 beers an hour?
The bottling line acquired by Climax Brewing.
The new addition will put the Roselle Park brewery's ales and lagers in six-packs for the first time and will likely double brewing volume over the course of a year.
Six-packs will also give Climax a wider reach across the state, says owner Dave Hoffmann. He's already been talking to a South Jersey distributor.
The 12-head Criveller bottler, bought from Fegley Brew Works in Allentown, Pa., and recently moved into the brewery, can handle 12-, 16- and 22-ounce bottles, Dave says, and run at speeds of 60 to 80 cases per hour.
"I'm pretty stoked about this," he says. Climax did 1,000 barrels last year, and Dave thinks six-packs will enable him to double that.
Bottling could begin around July. Between now and then, new labels need to be made, as well as six-pack holders.
The next step is to sit down with Gregg Hinlicky, the Toms River commercial artist who has done all of Climax's brewery artwork, and work out revising the labels that have adorned the half-gallon growlers that Climax has plied the bottled beer market with for years.
Those jugs of ESB, IPA, Nut Brown Ale and German-style lagers assigned the family name (i.e. Hoffmann Oktoberfest, Helles, Doppelbock etc.) were filled using a counter-pressure filler that Dave, a machinist in a past career, built himself.
Climax's jugs were nearly unique on the store shelves (often the only other beer in that kind of packaging was Rogue's Dead Guy Ale). But sometimes the growler size gave buyers a moment of pause, thus turning six-packs (and even four-packs) of 12-ounce bottles into a critical market to hit.
So what happens to that six-head, counter-pressure filler that drove Climax's bottle lineup?
"I'm gonna keep it and use it to fill jugs when I start making root beer," Dave says.
Don't stop us if you've heard this one before. It's about a former speakeasy.
Those places really never were well-kept secrets, except from the law, and then only when bribes didn't work. Word gets around. And around.
So, with the 78th anniversary of beer becoming legal again, April 7th is a fitting time to spread word about Murphy's Suds & Sawdust, a pint-sized bar (if you'll pardon the pun) that began as an oasis for the thirsty yoked into a dry world by the 18th Amendment – and still exists to celebrate that heritage.
The Prohibition Era gives Murphy's a certain cachet. But what makes the bar modern-day unique is its location: the basement of a Victorian Colonial-style house in a quiet residential neighborhood in Rumson, a 5.2-square-mile upscale town situated between the Shrewsbury and Navesink rivers in Monmouth County.
After Prohibition, the tavern stayed put as the town grew around it and town hall wrote rules for where you could and couldn't put such establishments (i.e. not in basements of homes). A retired postal worker now lives above the bar that's fire code rated at a 50-person capacity, and parking at Murphy's means you're probably pulling up in front of a neighboring house. One of the town's business avenues is just a 200-yard walk west of the bar.
What makes Murphy's a cozy, welcoming haunt is not just its size, but its proprietors.
Heather Vena, 36, and Robb McMahon, 47, are two veterans of the area's bar and service industry who were handpicked to become custodians of the Murphy's story and tend to the locals who make the tavern their go-to place.
"Their grandfathers drank here. They'd come in after work and drink here; now their kids are drinking here," Robb says. "There's a lineage to it."
A lineage that comes with responsibilities. "Nobody wants to be the one who screws up Murphy's," Robb says.
Murphy's began its run as a tavern on the down-low when booze was given an unpopular 13-year timeout under the Volstead Act. The congressional measure passed in 1919 set the rules for the 18th Amendment's ban on the once-legitimate liquor, beer and wine industries.
Taking its shorthand title from Andrew Volstead, the Minnesota congressman with a push-broom mustache who served as the legislative front for the temperance crew that actually authored the anti-booze rules, the Volstead Act took effect in January 1920, outlawing the manufacture and transportation of intoxicating alcoholic beverages.
It didn't, however, prohibit drinking a cocktail or two. Provided you could find it.
That's where Fred André's family comes in. The Andrés started the basement tavern, looking to slake Rumson's thirst without being too obvious.
"That's why it's located where it is, in the cellar," says Fred, 68, a lifelong Rumson resident who retired from AT&T/ Lucent Technology and now works for the town's zoning office. "It would never be permitted today where it is."
Fred was just a babe of 2 when his dad died. So, much of the lore about the speakeasy was passed onto him by his now-deceased mom.
She told him stories about liquor and beer being made in a garage behind the house on the 4,300-square foot property. The stuff didn't exactly taste good, Fred recalls his mom telling him. A carpenter who helped make the tavern's beer was always trying to drink it before it was ready, he says. Boat owners from nearby towns would meet up with rum-runners offshore to bring booze back to town.
"Oldtimers here were runners and took their boats out. But a lot of that went out of Highlands and Sea Bright," Fred says. "That's where a lot of the risk was, and the money."
In as much as the cellar was intended to be the bar's cover, the tavern wasn't exactly a secret.
"It was known to the people in town. The authorities knew it. My mother told me you didn't get into trouble so long as you sold it on premises," Fred says. "Another tavern in town got busted for selling off premises."
The tavern went legitimate after Prohibition's repeal in 1933. Beer became legal April 7 that year as an initial step toward washing away the failure of legislating morality. By Dec. 5 that year, with ratification of the 21st Amendment, Prohibition was beginning its existence as a constitutional footnote.
In the 1940s, the Andrés' once-furtive enterprise changed hands, winding up with the Murphy family (hence the bar's name), which ran the place successfully for quite some time, until the family matriarch, Mary Murphy, died several years ago and the business was sold.
"She was an old woman by the time I met her," Robb says. The bar was "very much a neighbor's basement back then. She'd walk downstairs, turn a light on outside the door. The light goes on, she was open, and you'd come in. And if she got tired, she'd say, 'Well, fellas it's time for me to go to bed,' and everybody would clean up and leave and she'd go back upstairs."
When the place changed hands again, it ended up with the owners of Val's Tavern, another bar in town. Dave Ciambrone and Gerald Goodman bought Murphy's largely as a real estate deal.
Ciambrone and Goodman refurbished the place with new cabinets, a new bar and floor. Robb, who knew Heather from when they both worked at separate establishments (Dublin House and Downtown Café) in nearby Red Bank, tended bar at Val's and took some shifts in Murphy's at the owners' behest. He invited Heather, recently returned from a summer working in Italy, to come guest-bartend on Mondays for service industry night.
The duo drew good crowds, and the owners approached them with the idea of taking over the bar.
"I didn't take him all that seriously," Robb says. "But then he (Dave Ciambrone) got us together and said, 'We can make this work.' So we worked out a lease agreement, and they gave us some time to get some capital together, and we all sat down with the lawyers."
That was in mid-2006.
"It was a passing of the baton," Robb continues. "Everybody wants to do right by Murphy's. One of the reasons we were handpicked is because there were other people involved ... doing like a cigar club or taking it over as a private thing for a sporting group or something like that."
Protecting a legacy like Murphy's is almost as unique as a basement tavern in a tony shore town. "In this business that's very rare," Robb says. "They could have made more money than they did off of us."
Under Heather and Robb (he grew up in Rumson, she in Asbury Park), Murphy's is as modern as as a tiny tavern can be – a widescreen TV over the bar, a digital TouchTunes jukebox near the entrance.
Yet the ambiance speaks to bygone eras as well: a shuffle board game (circa 1955) stands along a wall opposite the bar, while pictures of classic New York Yankees days (Ruth, Gehrig, Mantle, DiMaggio) and Marilyn Monroe hang above it. The decor reflects Heather and Robb's personalities.
"Ever since I was a little girl, I have been fascinated by her," Heather says. "Gentlemen Prefer Blondes would be on regular TV, and I'd just be glued to the set."
Murphy's opens at 4 p.m., and a typical flow of patrons is usually three different crowds: blue collars and retirees come in early, drinking Pabst and Bud, followed by couples out for the evening and looking for a nightcap; late night is the younger crowd and service industry crews just off work.
"We never close early; we're here until 2 (a.m.) seven days a week," Heather says. "All the other bars in town, if they're not busy, they close. Everyone knows they can come here for one last pop."
In warm weather, it's not usual to see dogs hitched to fixtures outside, waiting on owners to finish their drinks. "You should see what good husbands live in this area, taking their dogs for walks. If we put a swingset in back ..." Heather jokes.
Bottled beers at Murphy's run the familiar gamut of Coors, Yuengling, Samuel Adams, PBR, Corona and Ballantine. On their four taps (they'd love to have at least two more, Heather says) you'll find Guinness (it replaced, you can guess, Murphy's stout), Miller Lite (a domestic light is a necessity, Robb says), Pilsner Urquell and a rotating craft beer.
"We've had Blue Point, the Toasted Lager, and then we had Hoptical Illusion ... (Dogfish Head) the 90 Minute. I was surprised when we put it on. You learn about your clientele. The kids, the 25 to 30s and just out of college, they knew it right away. They're on their phones going 'They got Dogfish Head!' "
Baseball's opening day is celebrated with a big bash, and Robb and Heather still make a point to send some love the way of their fellow service industry colleagues. The bar's Prohibition past has been given only mild attention (it's highlighted on their Facebook page and in an image on their menu). But doing a Prohibition-theme night is a distinct possibility.
"Now that we're getting a little more savvy, getting a Web page, we're going to try to do a Prohibition night, dress for it, have the right music, the '20s," Robb says. "Heather would make a good flapper. I could wax up the 'stache, put on a butcher's apron."
This one is the hot link flying around, from The Wall Street Journal, via boatloads of Facebooking and blogging: Samuel Adams – brewer, patriot, lender.
It's a sip of financial aid for start-up craft breweries, from the well of Boston Beer Company. On the face, it seems quite cool, and given the stirrings of beer-minded folks trying to break into the ranks of New Jersey craft brewers lately, it's worth highlighting.
It also conjures up this flashback: When The Beatles started Apple Corps, and John Lennon explained their motives, "It's a company we're setting up, involving records, films, and electronics, and – as a sideline – manufacturing or whatever. We want to set up a system where people who just want to make a film about anything, don't have to go on their knees in somebody's office. Probably yours."
Hope Jim Koch's beneficence proves sustainable and no one gets burned. And a lot of great beer gets made.
You've heard of farm to fork, locally produced foods delivered to local consumers.
Well, New Jersey's newest craft brewery wants to be a farm-to-glass operation, using its own Somerset County-grown hops to add a unique Garden State signature to beers targeted for local restaurants and bars.
Granted a production brewery license on Feb. 28, Suydam Farms in Franklin Township made a scarlet red ale as its inaugural batch of beer last Saturday, using a 2-barrel system installed in a milk processing building spared an arsonist's flame in the late 1970s that claimed a dairy barn and some other structures on the nearly three-centuries-old, family-owned farm.
Ryck Suydam (pronounced RIKE soo-DAM), one of the people behind Great Blue Brewing (as the farm's brewing entity is called), says the brewery is still working out some snags with its system and will make some tweaks before brewing for a second time in about two weeks.
"It's not a perfect system," he said during a phone interview Monday, noting that Great Blue's brewing set-up was cobbled together by collecting brewing equipment over the past few years.
A nano operation by today's craft brewery size descriptions, the nucleus of Great Blue is a brewhouse that once made beer at Cedar Creek, a now-defunct brewpub in Egg Harbor City (Atlantic County) that longtime Jersey brewing industry followers will remember from the mid-1990s.
Once the brewing process is ironed out, Great Blue will brew twice a month. "We're going to crawl before we walk, walk before we run," Ryck says.
Initial plans call for distributing to a trio of select restaurants – Steakhouse 85 and Stage Left in New Brunswick and Sophie's Bistro in the Somerset section of Franklin. The three restaurants already buy produce and other commodities from Suydam Farms.
"Steakhouse 85 uses a lot of our tomatoes, okra and honey, Stage Left our eggs. Sophie's uses a lot of our squash," Ryck says.
On the heels of their beer hitting taps, Great Blue will follow up with some marketing research. "We'll see what the market thinks of the product," he says.
Suydam Farms, with its sprawling 300 acres, dates back to 1713, when the Suydam family, Dutch settlers who came first to New York (Brooklyn), then, after a half century, pulled up stakes for Colonial New Jersey. (One of the farm's buildings dates to the 1760s; two arson fires during the summer of 1978 claimed a lot of the other old structures, Ryck says.)
Well diversified in its commodities, the farm is known for its locally grown/locally used philosophy: hay for New Jersey horse farms; a variety of vegetables and pumpkins; melons, blackberries and raspberries; honey; firewood; flowers; as wells as eggs, pork, poultry, and lamb. It's also well known for its greenhouses and Christmas trees, with 800 planted just last week.
Ryck says the berries will figure into the brewing picture at some point down the road.
In the late 1990s, after some prodding by Paul Corkery, Ryck's homebrewer brother-in-law, the farm began growing hops: Cascade, Northern Brewer and Willamette to name a few varieties. (Paul also helps with the farm's hosting of the annual Big Brew/National Homebrew Day event held in early May.) With just under an acre in production, the farm has seen its Cascades do the best in the New Jersey soil.
This year's crop has already begun to poke through the soil and next month will be twined on trellises that soar 17 feet skyward. Harvesting has been done via the help of homebrewers and friends, sometimes at picking parties.
To dry the hops, Ryck says the farm fashioned an oast by forcing hot air through a closet (the drying process takes about four hours, depending on humidity); the dried hops have generally been crushed into bricks and vacuum-packed. Lately, Ryck says, the cones have been pressed flat then vacuum-packed.
Homebrewers have been the primary users of the farm's hops, but Triumph brewpub in Princeton also has made use of them. With the brewery in development, the much of the 2010 crop was set aside for the farm's use, Ryck says.
ABOUT THE NAME: Great Blue Brewing is an homage to one of the farm's patriarchs, Abram Suydam (Ryck's grandfather), and his appreciation of nature, especially the great blue herons that feed at a pond on the farm. "He was a bit of a naturalist; they (the herons) were a favorite of his," Ryck says of his grandfather.
(In photo above, from left that's Chris and Ryan sharing a toast with Flying Fish sales director Andy Newell at the Atlantic City beer festival last Friday night.)
Barring any hitches, the state Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control could grant a license by mid-April, enabling Cape May Brewing to fire up the one-third-barrel system Chris assembled and get the brewery up and running at their location in Lower Township, adjacent to the Cape May County Airport.
"We got the TTB license today. The only thing the ABC needs is our TTB license," Ryan said Friday night. "They've already given us comments, and we've responded."
Chris notes the brewing system was designed to achieve short-term goals. "We're calling it our pilot system," he says. "Hopefully that all it is, a one-third barrel system. We built it to get our license. We're going to use it to get our license, we're going to brew on it. But as soon as possible, we're going to upgrade to something bigger."
So close, yet still so far away.
Ryan and Chris say they'll be tending to details big and small before they're striking a mash, meaning there's a lot to do before trying to stand up beers in front of the bar crowds that are part of the state's southern shore population surge in summertime. Cape May Brewing is a business, they say, not a race, so rushing to market is something to be avoided.
"We're a local brewery, serving Cape May and the South Jersey crowd," Ryan says. "The peak is in the summer and we would like to be able to hit that. It would be good for us. But if we're unable to do that, then we're going to have to pass because we're not going to get in over our heads."
The Atlantic City beer festival opens on Friday, and amid the tide of beers from 75 breweries at the sixth edition of the Celebration of the Suds, this beer should stand out: the Belgian tripel brewed at the Tun Tavern by homebrewers Vince Masciandaro and Evan Fritz, under the guidance of the Tun's brewer, Tim Kelly.
Vince and Evan's beer paced ahead of 19 other brews to claim victory in the Tun's first homebrewer contest. Top prize was the opportunity to scale up their recipe and brew a commercial batch for the Tun's taps and for the Friday and Saturday crowds at the AC beer fest. (The beer will be taphandled At The Shore Belgian Ale because of a tie-in with The Press of Atlantic City newspaper and its entertainment guide, At The Shore.)
The pleasure Vince and Evan got from playing pro brewer for a day should be all yours. The beer they brewed will have no equal at the festival. It's imminently fresh – brewed in early March, racked over this week for serving. It exists because of the festival – brewed specifically for the event. And Vince and Evan rose to the challenge of brewing on an exponential scale.
Talk to Vince about his beers and he'll tell you that he's his own toughest critic. A minor errant flavor you forgive because you've tasted it in store-bought brews is a rough spot that Vince wishes he had or plans to file down. A flaw is still a flaw to this Marlton guy, and that's that. And that's why his beers have that certain above-and-beyond effort that gives them a fine finish.
For Evan, homebrewing isn't about shaving some pennies off the cost keeping the fridge stocked. Hardly. Brewing's an intriguing science to him, a challenge, and re-creating the best beers he finds on the store shelves is equal parts holy grail and the proverbial practice that makes perfect.
He brews practically every Friday afternoon at his home in Williamstown (he'd love to do it daily as a professional), with the same goal Vince has: to make a great beer.
And Suydam Farms LLC just may be the Garden State's first licensed nano-brewery (depending on whether Cape May Brewing has been granted its license, and fleshing out details about the actual size of Suydam's operations).
The folks with Suydam (a Dutch name pronounced SOO'-dam) acknowledged they had received a limited brewery license – the license under state regulations that allows production brewing – and that brewing was supposed to commence Wednesday. They didn't, however, have time to provide further details during the phone call last week. (The state Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control says the license was granted on Feb. 28. We left phone and Facebook messages with Suydam hoping to find out what kinds of beer they'll brew and what their target market is.)
Suydam Farms raises the number of New Jersey brewery license-holders to 21 and becomes the fourth brewery licensee since 2009, the year that broke a 10-year drought on brewery start-ups. Last year, Port 44 Brewpub in Newark and New Jersey Beer Company in North Bergen began brewing; Iron Hill brewpub opened its doors in Maple Shade the year before.
Suydam Farms is located in Franklin Township in Somerset County. Although it's unconfirmed, we've been told Suydam picked up the 2-barrel system once used at the Cedar Creek brewpub, a short-lived oasis for craft beer fans in South Jersey in the mid- to late-1990s.
Given that small size – and prevailing brewery industry descriptions – Suydam would fall into the nano class, a size distinction that no one was making back when Cedar Creek was brewing in Egg Harbor City in Atlantic County. (At 2 barrels, Cedar Creek had half the brewing capacity of Dave Hoffmann's Climax Brewing, which became New Jersey's first production craft beer-maker with a 4-barrel brewhouse that fed into an array of larger fermenters, thereby giving Dave production volume beyond his brewhouse capacity.)
Cape May Brewing, which had a license application pending earlier this year, is planning a 3-barrel nano (with a one-third barrel start-up phase), while Flounder Brewing is a nano-brewery in development in Hillsborough.
Part of the Garden State agricultural landscape for nearly three centuries, Suydam Farms is known for its U-pick pumpkin patches and promoting farming and conservation (the property falls under the state's farmland preservation). Beer enthusiasts may know Suydam Farms for growing hops – such as Cascade, Centennial and Chinook. The Jersey-grown cones have made their way into beers produced at Triumph brewpub in Princeton and those made by Princeton-area homebrewers.
Joe Bair, whose Princeton Homebrew shop (located on Route 29 in Trenton) has carried Suydam's hops on its shelves, knows the farm for its generosity and beer scene camaraderie.
Joe used to host Big Brew/National Homebrew Day gatherings at his shop until it was hit by a flood several years ago. Suydam Farms stepped and offered their property for the event held annually on the first Saturday in May. The farm also has hosted meetings of PALE ALES, the homebrew club Joe founded 16 years ago.
"They've been very nice to me and very nice to the club," he says.
It's important to note – since there's a proposal pending in the Legislature to create a farm brewery license in New Jersey – that Suydam's license was granted before any action on that legislation. The farm brewery bill, introduced last summer, remains in committee.
When there are big beer festivals happening all around, this one, Pizzeria Uno Chicago Grill and Brewery's cask event, has always proved to be a nice oasis, a retreat from the crush of the crowds.
It happens at noon on Saturday at the brewpub in Metuchen. PubScout Kurt Epps has the beer lineup.
New Jersey added two craft breweries last year, a period in which the total number of US breweries jumped 8 percent and the percentage of production volume and sales dollars both rose by double digits for craft brewers, according to the craft beer industry's trade group.
Three months into 2011, one thing is certain: There's plenty of beer to slake any kind of thirst, a veritable cornucopia of styles, brands and flavors that for some has begun to raise the question of whether consumers are becoming overwhelmed by the Great Wall of Choice.
The short answer is sort of; the long answer is nope with a because. In fact, the abundance of choice, says Swarthmore College psychologist Barry Schwartz, could buttress brand loyalty.
In a statement issued ahead of the Craft Brewers Conference, which kicked off Wednesday in San Francisco, the Colorado-based Brewers Association, says small and independent brewers produced 11 percent more volume last year over 2009 and saw retail sales dollars increase by 12 percent over 2009. That translates to growth of more than 1 million barrels of beer.
The number of craft brewers also rose from 1,587 in 2009 to 1,716 last year, reflecting the largest number of breweries in the US since the turn of the 20th century. (There were 1,759 breweries operating last year, when you include the non-craft ones.)
"Prohibition caused a dramatic decline in the number of breweries in the United States, but the number of breweries is now at an all-time high," says BA director Paul Gatza. "With well over 100 new brewery openings in 2010, plus 618 breweries in planning stages, all signs point to continued growth for the industry."
In the Garden State, production brewer New Jersey Beer Company (North Bergen) and Port 44 Brew Pub (Newark) launched their brands last year, raising the state's craft brewery count to 20. Meanwhile, four applications for production brewery licenses were pending before state regulators at the end of last year.
That's good news to anyone who thinks the more choices, the better. Like Pat Vaccaro, a Rutgers University student from Long Branch, who talked craft beer recently while browsing a reasonably well-stocked (but not a chart-topper of selection) cold case at a Wegmans in Monmouth County.
Overwhelming? "Not at all," Pat says. "I've had 90 percent of what they have here. So long as it doesn't have fruit in it, I'll drink it."
Still there's this item in Beer Business Daily that wonders if the price paid for aisles and cold boxes teeming with craft brands is an exercise in diminished return.
Schwartz, the Swarthmore psych professor and author of The Paradox of Choice: Why More Is Less (2004), by and large gives the beer industry a pass from his premise that a plethora of choices turns consumers off, makes them unable to chose, and when they manage to do so, they're nagged by the thought that they perhaps didn't actually make the best choice after all.
The reason beer gets an exemption: choosing a brew – sixpack or single bottle – from the wall of eye-popping labels, and picking one you're ultimately unhappy with, is an error that's easy to correct, easy to move beyond given the lower price than a car, computer or clothes. Plus, with those latter items there's the expectation of keeping them for a while.
However, Schwartz, who discussed the topic during a phone interview last week, says the hyper array of beer choices could end up favoring well-known or familiar brands (or beers that have the most engaging packaging or labels for that matter). Opting for the familiar is a way of dealing with a problem that seemingly can't be solved, steering away from a random choice.
"Nothing will bring brand loyalty back faster than a proliferation of options," he says.
This item takes a lead from a Charlie Papazian Facebook post:
Sunday would have been Beer Hunter Michael Jackson's 69th birthday. The Briton known for traversing the world in pursuit of beers of all stripes died in August 2007, leaving a void in the discourse about great beer.
His impact on folks who enjoy beer, like his beer travels, was far-reaching. Here in the Garden State, Jackson formed some tight bonds, including friendships with Mark Haynie of Mid-Atlantic Brewing News and Gary Monterosso, a onetime columnist for Mid-Atlantic and the host of Still Crazy After All These Beers web shows.
Jackson also featured Dave Hoffmann's Climax brews in his published beer guides and suggested River Horse brew a Belgian tripel and call it Tripel Horse. He gave Flying Fish's ESB an endorsement in the brewery's guestbook when FF was just a half-year into its brewing operations.
So, as Charlie suggests in his Facebook note, Sunday is MJ's birthday: raise a glass of your favorite brew to toast and remember a champion of all things beer.
Hudson County's only craft brewer is closing in on its first anniversary.
And with that, there's certainly cause to celebrate. New Jersey Beer Company began brewing April 28 last year, then launched the brand in May at the Copper Mine Pub (North Arlington) and The Iron Monkey (Jersey City), two craft beer bars that have shown the brewery some love.
Since then, the North Bergen beer-maker has worked to carve out a regional market and build a local fan base as it navigates the sometimes-stormy straits (i.e. the brewery's crippled bottler) of being a start-up business.
On the first day of this spring, a foursome doing a beer-circuit tour of North Jersey stopped by the brewery's tasting room; moments before, a fan from Jersey City restocked with two growlers of 1787 Abbey Single. Outside, a truck driver who spied a guy leaving the brewery with a freshly filled growler took advantage of the red light at Tonnelle Avenue and 43rd Street to strike up a conversation about his favorite NJBC brews.
Heartwarming moments indeed, but founder Matt Steinberg (above) is keeping a practical focus as he looks forward to toasting the first anniversary. Between brewery tours, Matt took some time to talk about the first year, some of the rough spots and some of what lies ahead.
BSL: How are you marking the occasion, the first anniversary? MS: I haven't got so far as to plan anything yet. But I think I'm definitely going to talk to Vito (Forte) about doing something at the Copper Mine. That was the first event, the first time our beer was served. It went on that weekend at the Iron Monkey as well. They were our first two customers at the same time. We did a second launch party at the Monkey. There's a decent chance we'll look both of them up and talk about doing an anniversary celebration, a typical (meet the) brewers night kind of thing.
BSL: You opened with a flight of three flagship beers, the 1787 Abbey Single, Garden State Stout and Hudson Pale Ale. What else did you stir into the mix, what seasonals? MS: We added two. We had the Wee Heavy, which, I guess, is our winter seasonal. Then we did a second running of Sixty Shilling Mild out of that, a Scottish style pub ale, real mild, like a 3.2, 3.5 (ABV) kind of ale. We didn't sell that outside the brewery; we had it here, basically sold growlers of it. We used it for some events, too.
Ideally our spring seasonal would be out by now but it hasn't happened that way. The next thing coming out will be an IPA; in theory it could be in our next run of brewing. We may try to squeeze something out in the summer, too ... It might be awhile before we add something into the full-time rotation.
BSL: Let's talk about being a start-up. There's some choppy water that comes along with that. What are some of the hurdles you've encountered? MS: It's politics; it always comes down to money. It's all the things you didn't think you were gonna have to pay for, and kegs that don't come back and you have to go repurchase ... the taxation at all those various levels you try to anticipate; things like insurance cost an absolute fortune, a lot more than they probably should. Things like that have definitely played a part.
BSL: And getting on sound footing with your brewing system? MS: I definitely think we've ironed out a couple little issues we had with the brewing. In the first few batches, there were some glitches in the system, things we had to figure out workarounds for, figure out how we were going to do things, and equipment breaking down ... stuff like that here and there, just the typical kind of stuff you would run into in a brewery and a lot of other manufacturing kinds of business.
BSL: The equipment breakdowns ... the unhappy thing there is your bottler isn't in use anymore. MS: Yeah, you'd think you'd get more than six weeks out of a brand-new piece of equipment. BSL: What happened with it? MS: The thing was breaking from day one. It took us about six weeks to get the thing to properly fill bottles. We had parts falling off, breaking off. We literally broke almost every damn piece just in the normal operation. The manufacturer put some wrong parts in, which ultimately ruined the fill head. So it got to the point where we were getting maybe one out of every six or eight bottles that would actually have 12 ounces of beer and a cap on it. It got to the point where we couldn't properly fill bottles with that thing. You could fill them faster with a hand bottler, but you can't send stuff out to market with a hand filler.
BSL: So what's going to happen with the bottler? Are you going to be able to sell? MS: I may throw it on ProBrewer – see if somebody else wants to take a crack at it – for a horrible loss, considering it's a 6-week-old piece of equipment. Worst case, we'll sell it for scrap, see what we can get out of it.
BSL: And you're committed to being back in bottles? MS: I think we have to. That's just what the market is around here; we have to be able to supply it. I sit there and see whole lot of untapped market. It's got to be dealt with ... I don't know if I'd add another year-round beer until we have the bottling situation fixed. That's really what kind of determines a year-round beer, something you're going to put in bottles and have out on the shelves all the time.
And frankly, that's the higher priority right now. I'd rather fix that and get our three flagships back out in bottles rather than worry about bringing a fourth beer out into the rotation. Seasonals are a way we can get something out there in a small run and at least be doing some new stuff.
BSL: Let's talk about something more positive, where you've solidly made inroads, where people like you the most right now, your fan base. MS: Up north, in Hudson County and Jersey City in particular. More beer has moved in that town than anywhere else. Last summer, we definitely had some good runs down the shore, in particular the Abbey I know seemed to do really well in the beach kind of towns. The Philly area has done all right for us. After that, it's really kind of spotty, it's a couple here, a couple there. But, you know, we're trying to bring them up where we can.
BSL: In terms of getting your message out, how many events have you done in the past year? MS: Seems like back in October we were doing two a week at least. Our typical meet-the-brewers nights at bars, I would say we did at least 20 or so of those and then we probably had another half dozen in festivals. Then there's some random stuff here and there, more like charity sponsorships where our beer ended up getting served.
BSL: Are you glad you go into this business? MS: Yeah, absolutely. No regrets at all. I certainly wish we had done some things differently, but hindsight is good like that. I certainly didn't do everything perfectly, a few things I wish we could have back, but never once did I go "I can't believe I did this."
BSL: You can take pride in that you brought a local craft brand back to Hudson County (Mile Square Golden Ale and Amber Ale were mid-1990s craft brands of the now-defunct Hoboken Brewery.) MS: I'm trying to. Right now, we're still in the weeds enough that we've got to get over the hump. So I'm going to save the celebrating for another day. I think we're well on our way. I'm happy with the way we've grown the brand. I think the beer's steadily gotten better and better throughout. More and more people are having it now than had it before. I'm really looking forward to the summer when people start flooding New Jersey to head down to the beaches. I'm really hoping we can make sure they're drinking our beer when they're doing it.
ABOUT THE PHOTOS: Tara Bossert of Jersey City (middle picture) holds growlers of 1787 Abbey Single. She discovered NJBC through Dorrian's. "I prefer to support entrepreneurs and local businesses because I really think it helps form a community. It's always great when you have local businesses around. It connects a company with an actual person, versus a big conglomerate like Bud," Tara says.
Foursome (from left in third photo) Jim and Jeanne Woodhouse and Judy and Frank Sharkey sample some Garden State Stout.
That big, pro-am Belgian tripel brewed at the Tun Tavern for the Atlantic City beer festival is coming along.
Tun brewer Tim Kelly (shown at left taking a sample on Thursday) projects the beer will come in around 9 percent ABV or a little higher when it finishes out fermentation.
Come Monday, Tim says he'll begin to step the fermenter temperature down, with filtration of the beer set for March 30.
The beer, brewed with Tim's guidance by homebrewers Vince Masciandaro and Evan Fritz earlier this month, will be served at the AC beer fest on April 1-2, as well as at the Tun Tavern itself.
Vince and Evan took first place in the homebrew contest sponsored by the Tun, winning the opportunity to re-create their tripel on the Tun's 10-barrel Newlands brewing system.
Two South Jersey lawmakers are pitching the idea of letting Garden State production brewers retail directly to the public from the confines of their breweries.
For a long time now, those brewers have been allowed to sell a maximum of two six-packs or two growlers directly to individuals who stop by their breweries for tours.
But it looks like bill A3520, apparently eases that two six-pack/growler limit and forgoes requirements that retail sales occur during brewery tours. That is to say, there isn't language specifying maximums or occasions in the measure sponsored by Democratic Assemblywomen Celeste Riley (Cumberland County) and Pamela Lampitt (Camden County).
If that is the case, then the legislation addresses a concern among several Garden State production brewers who have long wished they could sell a case of beer (or more) to people who stop by their breweries.
What wouldn't change under the bill is where you can drink the beer you've just bought: you can't crack open a cold one at the brewery. The measure doesn't turn the breweries' sampling/tasting rooms into bars.
(The bill was introduced in late November and referred to the Assembly Law and Public Safety Committee; Assemblywoman Riley is also the sponsor of a bill to create a farm brewery license.)
The components arrived just over two weeks ago, and now they await being slotted into place to become the brewery that will produce ales under the Kane Brewing brand.
But before that can happen, founder Michael Kane says officials in his host town, Ocean Township in Monmouth County, must green-light the site plans for the 7,000-square-foot industrial park space that Kane leased last August.
The brewhouse, trio of fermenters, bright beer tank and hot liquor tank were delivered Feb. 28. That's a little later that Kane had forecast back in January, but establishing a brewery is, no pun intended, a fluid process.
Beatles references aside, the big announcement from the owners of the Iron Hill brewpub chain today is word of a ninth location, this one planned for Chestnut Hill, Pa., toward the end of this year.
But the more interesting news nugget for New Jersey beer drinkers was found toward the bottom of the news release: Iron Hill intends to open a North Jersey location by 2015 as one of five new brewpubs in locations from the Washington, D.C., area to the Garden State's northern half.
Iron Hill's Maple Shade location, which opened in July 2009, was the brewpub chain's eighth and a homecoming for the trio of Jersey guys (Mark Edelson, Kevin Finn and Kevin Davies) who founded the company in Delaware and built it up there and in Pennsylvania before making a go of things on this side of the river.
The Maple Shade site has become wildly popular among South Jersey beer enthusiasts. The tidbit about North Jersey was something of back-channel discussion among Iron Hill faithful and insiders.
Now it's in the news release. So stay tuned for a specific location.
Iron Hill assistant brewer Jeff Ramirez will get to hone his brewing skills in Germany this spring.
Jeff heads to Munich March 26th for a five-week study gig that comes as the back end of his training with the Seibel Institute of Technology.
"This is their 12-week international brewing diploma," says Jeff, who's been with Iron Hill's Maple Shade location since it opened in 2009.
"Basically there's seven weeks in Chicago, different modules (of study). They'll go over the wort production, raw materials, fermentation biology, cellar stuff, packaging, the business of brewing. Then you go out to Germany, in Munich, and work at Doemens, which has the World Brewing Academy. There you do applied techniques."
The training abroad wraps up with a brewery tour of Europe. "You go to Belgium, London ... go to different places like maltsters and different breweries," Jeff says.
Jeff enrolled at Seibel while awaiting word on a job at Iron Hill. The folks who run the show there have supported his endeavors, letting him take time away from work with head brewer Chris LaPierre for the course work in Chicago.
And now Germany.
Before Iron Hill, Jeff worked briefly at Trap Rock brewpub in Berkeley Heights, helping out brewer Charlie Schroeder (in the photo above, that's Jeff on the left, with Charlie). But it was at Kenyon College in Ohio that Jeff decided he wanted to be in the beverage industry.
It was either tea or beer.
"Tea is more research and travel. Beer is more labor and science, hard work," he says.
Fans of Iron Hill's beers, no doubt, are glad Jeff chose beer.
How do you make a big imperial beer when your business model is dedicated to making accessible beers that invite Bud, Miller and Coors Light drinkers to step up to craft brews, but also promise not to overwhelm?
That's the challenge for Cricket Hill Brewing, as it works to replicate a brew the Fairfield beer-maker crowned the winner in a homebrew contest it sponsored last year. CH has pulled off big-yet-accessible brews in the past with some beers made to celebrate brewery milestones.
Founder Rick Reed (pictured applying an instant Cricket tattoo on festival-goer) says the brewery will do that again with homebrewer Bill Kovach's recipe for a Russian imperial stout. The specialty brew isn't due until January 2012, but test batches are already being produced. Rick took some time at the Philly Craft Beer Festival this past weekend to talk about the stout and how the beer landscape in New Jersey has changed since Cricket Hill opened its doors 10 years ago.
BSL: You've done bourbon barrel and cask beers, a barley wine ... they were higher-alcohol beers.
RR: Only 8 percent, even the barley wine was only 8 percent. We did it as a signature for our 500th brew, and we kept it at 8 percent, low-balled the alcohol because we're trying to do gateway beers.
BSL: So even though you're doing an imperial stout, you're going to keep to your traditional approach? RR: We going to try to keep the alcohol as low as we can, as long as we get the full flavor. If that means the alcohol goes up, then it has to. The homebrewer (who had) the winning recipe, we've altered it to his satisfaction. We've done two different pilot brews with the modifications – he used some (malt) extract, and we won't do that. We're having some preliminary tastings ... it's very, very good, and it looks like the alcohol is going to be held down.
BSL: What kind of range, 8 percent like the barley wine? RR: Eight percent, yeah. We're also doing some small-batch stuff with the second, third and fourth-place winners. One is an imperial IPA; one's an American pale ale, and the other's a dubbel.
BSL: And again you're dialing it down in that Cricket Hill style of making an accessible beer that still has craft qualities? RR: We consider it the gateway philosophy. We're trying to get the Coors, Miller and Bud drinkers of New Jersey – and there's still plenty of them, only the lord knows why – to come over to an all-malt without getting scared off. In a perfect world, if you're a beer geek, and somebody says, "I want to try a new style," you say, "Try Cricket Hill first, they'll show you what it can taste like without overwhelming you." And from there, you can go hog wild.
BSL: You guys have been at it for 10 years now. Do you feel like you've carved out a niche? RR: We're comfortable now. If things continue the way they have over the last year and half, we're going to be very comfortable. New Jersey's accepting craft beer now with open arms. Our (brewery) tours, we're averaging 100-plus people every Friday. Our sales are up over 50 percent from the year before and the last two years.
BSL: What about your volume? RR: This year we think were going to hit just over 2,000 barrels. For a brewery our size, that's really amazing. We lend ourselves to draft; for a small brewery, 50 percent of our beer is draft, 50 percent is bottles. Usually it's 80-20, bottles to draft.
BSL: Is your East Coast Lager still your top beer? RR: Yep.
BSL: What's No. 2? RR: I would bet No. 2 is the IPA (Hopnotic IPA). It's amazing, because no matter where you go and do these shows, they either love IPA or don't drink it. In Pennsylvania, they're IPA freaks, and Stockertown (Beverage, a CH distributor) sells a lot of it for us. We're the official beer of the Philly Roller Girls (roller derby team) and they take the lager and the IPA, until the Summer (Breakfast Ale) comes one, and then they take the Summer. The lager's also in some minor league baseball clubs.
BSL: You've also been a friend, lent support to the newcomers on the Jersey beer scene, New Jersey Beer Company in North Bergen and Port 44 Brew Pub in Newark ... RR: It's a tight community. The more the merrier.
BSL: Beer in New Jersey is dramatically different than it was, even just four years ago. Talk about that. RR: When I first got in this business, New Jersey really had nothing. It had microbreweries that were selling their beer anywhere but New Jersey. Flying Fish was selling their beers in Philadelphia; you had River Horse selling in Pennsylvania and New York; you had Ramstein selling in upstate New York, because New Jersey's a fickle marketplace.
We've been banging our heads against the wall, all of us breweries, and now New Jersey is coming around. New Jersey is a very hot marketplace; you can tell because all the little breweries from across the country are trying to get into New Jersey because they see it perking up and coming alive.
From the NJ brewers themselves: Think Jersey, drink Jersey
AHA Big Brew YouTube contest
BSL has won this three times, with "Brewers Make Wort, Yeast Makes Beer" (2008, 1st place); "The Whole Thing, Worts and All" (2010, 2nd place, featuring Barley Legal Homebrewers); and "NJ Worthsmiths" (2011, Most Watched Video, also featuring Barley Legal Homebrewers).
Beer-Stained Letter
Premium, original content about New Jersey's craft beer industry.
Unless otherwise credited to sources, either written or through graphic representation (i.e., logos), all reporting, photography, videography and graphics that appear on Beer-Stained Letter are copyright 2013 by the site owner.
BeerPulse? BeerNews? What's in a name so long as the link is valid
Beer-Stained Friends
Jim Koch of Boston Beer Company says you should take pride in your beer. That also goes for the state where your beer is made Jersey fresh. So click on the link.
I'm a freelance editor, writer, video producer, photographer, graphic artist and, obviously, a beer fan (homebrewer, too) ... I've even lent a hand at a commercial brewery in NJ (where else?!!??) and created some ads for a brewery that were published in Ale Street News and All About Beer.
My first taste of beer was a few sips of Falstaff at age 5 in 1965 (yes, I was drinking underage – in a simpler period of time, too). I continued to develop a taste for beer, but alas, poor Yorick, I left Shakespeare (and Falstaff) behind (but I did write about beer for my college composition 101 class, got an A on it, too).
