Philly Beer Week kicks off tonight with an opening-tap shindig at the Independence Visitors Center.
For folks in South Jersey, and even for beer fans north of I-195, PBW is a big attraction. Be that as it may, let's still think there's no place like home.
Yes, it's at the Camden waterfront, aboard the USS New Jersey battleship museum again, and, yes, that has been a thorn for some North Jersey beer drinkers. (We've always supported the idea of having two festivals – spring/summer and fall, one in South Jersey, the other in North Jersey).
But there is something in the air this year that makes showing support for the home-state brewers all the more important: legislation in Trenton to level the playing field for New Jersey brewers and modernize the rules under which they make and sell beer.
Senate bill S2870, and its Assembly counterpart, A3969, would put the state's 15-year-old craft beer industry on par with that of Delaware, New York and Pennsylvania, not to mention pretty much the rest of the country.
Imagine being able to buy your favorite beer from your favorite brewpub at a Canal's, Liquor Outlet or Total Wine. Imagine a BYOB restaurant selling you a six-pack of your favorite locally made beer, instead of you having to bring it in tow.
That's some of what the legislation would allow. (The Assembly version, by the way, has picked up two new sponsors: Jon M. Bramnick, a Republican from Westfield, and Patrick J. Diegnan Jr., a Democrat from South Plainfield.)
So let this video of last year's Garden State Craft Brewers festival, together with this year's upcoming festival, be a rallying point and a reminder that change is in the air.
New Jersey homebrewers found the winners circle for a second-straight year in the American Homebrewers Association's video contest, but a crew from Oregon took the prize for capturing what National Homebrew Day is all about.
On Thursday, the AHA announced this year's winners of the annual contest staged in conjunction with Big Brew, held every first Saturday in May.
Portland, Oregon's FH Steinbart won the Spirit of Big Brew Award, while the Barley Legal Homebrewers club, teamed with Beer-Stained Letter, won for the video that drew the most views during the 10-day judging period.
This year, apparently, the AHA has done away with the second-place finish that it had awarded over the past three contest years.
Rounding out the field for 2011: Philadelphia's ALEiens picked up an honorable mention, as did California's Humboldt Homebrewers, who, for a while, gave the Barley Legal brewers a strong run for their money in the most-watched category.
Last year, the WHALES homebrew crew from Woodbridge won the most-watched award, while Barley Legal and BSL came in second place. (BSL won the Spirit of Big Brew Award in 2008, the first year of the contest.) The Society of Oshkosh Brewers won the 2010 Spirit of Big Brew Award.
Congrats to FH Steinbart, ALEiens, Humboldt Hombrewers, and of course, to the Barley Legal clan.
Just as Cape May Brewing scores its state license to begin making beer, another Cape May County nanobrewery is emerging, hoping to fire up a kettle in the fall and launch with an American pale ale in New Jersey's southern shore draft beer market.
Tuckahoe Brewing Company is a foursome of homebrewers from Atlantic and Cape May counties who have been brewing together since 2006. They established their company back in January and earlier this month leased a 1,000-square-foot building at 369 Woodbine-Oceanview Road in Dennis Township, about a 20-mile ride up Route 9 from Cape May Brewing, which just became New Jersey's newest brewery and the state's second nanobrewery (behind Great Blue Brewing in Somerset County).
State regulators gave Cape May the green light to strike a mash following an inspection of their facility on Thursday. (Federal regulators signed off on the brewery in early April.) Ryan Krill, one of the three owners, says they expect to begin brewing sometime next week.
Matt McDevitt, one of the guys behind Tuckahoe Brewing, says he and his partners – Tim Hanna, Chris Konicki and Jim McAfee – have filed paperwork for a brewers notice with the federal government and for a limited brewery license with the state.
"Our goal is to get started around October/November, depending on how that gets processed," says McDevitt, whose day job is teaching at Mainlaind Regional High School in Linwood. Hanna and Konicki are also teachers at Mainland Regional; McAfee is an architect in Cape May County.
Ahead of them now is the task of getting a floor plan together and turning that into brewing space.
"We all get out of school in mid-June, and at that point we'll do some work on it, make it brewery-ready," McDevitt says. "We looked around for about two months for different places down in Cape May County and found a place that has pretty much everything we need, as far as a new-enough building that we don't have to do that much work to it."
The four plan to brew two to three times a week on a 3-barrel set-up to feed an inventory of sixtels and possibly half kegs. If all their recent outreach to Cape May County bars and restaurants to generate interest leads fortune to smile upon them, they'll look to boost their brewing capacity.
"Once things start to move in the right direction, the next step will be a 10-barrel system," McDevitt says.
The partners have been looking at brewing systems from a couple of fabricators who have become central to the burgeoning nano sector of craft brewing.
"Psycho (Brew) is one of the systems we're looking at. Obviously money is a factor, and that's one of the more affordable systems," McDevitt says. "The other is, we've looked at a system from Premier Stainless, which makes another 3-barrel model and will custom-fabricate a system."
Long-time followers of New Jersey's craft beer scene may remember the planned Tuckahoe Malt Brewing Company, which failed to get off the ground back in the mid-1990s. McDevitt says he and his partners approached the owners of that name about opening a brewpub under that banner, but opted for a nanobrewery instead and formed their business as Tuckahoe Brewing Company.
On their blog site, the four say they intend to launch with four styles: pale ale, wit, porter and another ale or pilsner made exclusively with agricultural products grown in New Jersey.
The pale ale, hopped with Cascade, possibly Centennial, and finished with Mount Hood, will likely be the company's flagship brew, McDevitt says.
"That will be what we start with. It's going to be high production with that," he says. "The plan is, right now, to make two seasonals, like a Belgian wit in the spring-summer and a smoked porter for the fall-winter.
Locally made, locally served is a guiding light for Tuckahoe Brewing's business model. McDevitt believes that's something the buying public is keen on these days.
"This area for the longest time hasn't had any local beers besides Flying Fish (from Cherry Hill), but even that is, a little bit, a ways away," he says. "So hopefully, we can do some good for the Cape May and Atlantic County areas, hopefully get some people excited about drinking some locally made beer."
Oh what rapture it would be to spend this Saturday in Southern California.
Specifically San Marcos, where the folks at The Lost Abbey, makers of some big, tasty Belgian-style beers, plan to throw a swinging End of Days party, complete with space for saints, sinners, the four horsemen of the Apocalypse and avenging angels.
"It's the end of Craft Beer Week and the world as we know it at the same time," says Sage Osterfeld, one of those Lost Abbey folks. "Can you think of a better way to go, after you've just had a great beer?"
If you haven't heard – if you've been spending more time re-pinting than repenting – for quite some time a Christian radio evangelist has been preaching that May 21, 2011, is Judgment Day – the Rapture, Jesus' return and the run-up to the annihilation of the Earth that's supposed to happen five months later. (Better get your winter seasonals brewed now.)
"It's been Judgment Day here for five years," says Osterfeld.
Known for taking an ale-infused satirical turn on religion (Devotion, Inferno Ale), Lost Abbey, part of Port Brewing, just marked its fifth anniversary, and incidentally, is looking to expand into the New Jersey market, beyond Belgian brew-loving Philadelphia, this fall.
Unless, of course, the Earth is destroyed.
On Saturday, the brewery will make its Belgian quad, Judgment Day, the centerpiece of a daylong party in the brewery's tasting room, serving the 10.5% ABV ale and other beers that use it as a base. The brewery is reserving one side of its 50-foot bar for saints, the other for sinners. A costume competition invites you to attend dressed as your favorite character from Revelations.
"We've gotten a lot of calls about it," Osterfeld says, referring to the intersection of Judgment Day (the beer) and Judgment Day (the end-of-the-world proselytizing). "The local news in San Diego did a story about it."
Those calls started back in January. At first, the Lost Abbey folks were a little leery about making light of the End of Days pronouncement by Harold Camping, leader of the Family Radio Worldwide ministry. The apprehension was less about the appearance of sacrilege and more about the possibility of doomsday cults, a legitimate concern since the group that followed the Comet Hale-Bopp into the afterlife with a mass suicide in 1997 was located only 15 miles from San Marcos.
But in this case, things are quite different.
In hordes of interviews, Camping says he zeroed in on May 21, 2011, as the date for Judgment Day through close examination of the Bible. He calculated (seems more like extruded) the moment based on the date of Jesus' crucifixion (April 1, 33 A.D.), the 1,978 years hence, the number of days in a solar year (365.2422) and the 51 days from the start of April to May 21st. The product of all that mathematical contortion was then matched to some numerology representing atonement, completeness and heaven. The result: May 21, 2011.
Camping's revelation has drawn plenty of believers, including some who have trumpeted the end-is-coming message via billboards (like ones in Morris County in North Jersey and Cumberland County in South Jersey) that also, coincidentally, promote the ministry's radio show and website. (Wonder if Camping will do a big finale show like Oprah?)
But the bold pronouncement that Saturday is the Big One also has an ample share of doubters and critics. Ample, as in probably most of us.
So, who's to say some satirical, irreverent, or even gallows, humor isn't in order? After all, the doomsday prognosticator made a similar calculated forecast for 1994 (wonder if Camping forgot to carry the 1?) and yet, we're all still here.
For now, at least.
But in case you still need some reassurance about things, Osterfeld offers this comment: "I don't think anyone actually thinks the world is coming to an end."
NOTE: The image above comes from Lost Abbey's website. And, yeah this site is nearly always about New Jersey beers, but this story was too good to leave behind.
Carton Brewing is moving along with renovations to their building at the Monmouth County bayshore. The crew there expects delivery of the brewhouse, fermenters and bright and hot liquor tanks from Newlands Systems in Canada in a little over a week.
"Looks like there's some flooding in Manitoba. The train our tanks are on is stuck. We're not getting it this weekend, looks like it will be the following weekend," brewer Jesse Ferguson explained on Wednesday.
"But they're in there pouring conrete tomorrow. They busted out that front door already, where we're going to put in that roll-up (door). So, things are moving."
Last Saturday, with newly installed floor drains and other plumbing in the background, Jesse, with founders Augie and Chris Carton, discussed the interior work going on at the soon-to-be brewery in Atlantic Highlands.
They also offered some samples of pilot brews produced on a homebrew rig: a hoppy kölsch at 5% ABV and an almost 8% West Coast-slanted IPA.
The IPA, the first test take on that style, was hopped exclusively with Falconers Flight, the Hop Union mash-up of Citra, Simcoe and Sorachi Ace. The Citra-hopped kölsch, much farther along in development than the IPA, is being called Boat and was finished with Nugget and Cascade.
"It's a kölsch yeast in an American pale that we've hopped within an inch of its life," Augie says. "This one is a little higher (in alcohol) than we want; we want it to be closer to 4%."
There's a touch of wheat in it to give it some body, plus some flaked barley. "I'm doing everything I can to get the mouth feel up because it's low gravity, and it's finishing low," Jesse says. "We had a problem where it was coming off too dry and the hops were just off-the-map accentuated. The wheat and the flaked barley are there to try to counteract that."
Among the next steps is possibly another tweak to the grain bill and to produce six more test batches of Boat using various hop varities, since they're having some trouble with the availability of Citra, their preferred hop for the beer, and may need to select an alternative. Four of those Boat R&D batches have been brewed, Jesse said Wednesday.
With Boat, Augie says, the goal is to make a beer whose flavor doesn't collapse, while its alcohol content overwhelm.
"Image you're fishing, imagine you're playing softball, imagine you're commuting on the ferry (from Manhattan), you want to have three or four beers, but you don't want to be crippled. But you also want it to be tasty," he says. "We want it to be a friendly, sessionable beer for guys who like the beers we like – Nugget Nectar, Dogfish 60, Double Simcoe from Weyerbacher. We love all those crazy beers, (but) they're all just so boozy."
The Carton business model is to make brews below 5% ABV or at 7.5% and over. "It's either going to be sub-5 and sessionable and fun to drink, or it's going to be contemplative, thinking, big bottle 8%," Augie says.
A guy with a food blogger background and penchant for exploring flavors, Augie acknowledges the time-is-money critical nature of getting the brewery built. But he confesses to finding pleasures in the R&D side.
"Jesse and I bought ourselves a (MoreBeer) Tippy ... It's our pilot system; we got that just to have our mad scientist days with. It's coming in about another six weeks," he says.
The pilot brewing rig's arrival could be about the time their actual 15-barrel brewhouse is ready. "We'd like it to be late June," Augie says, referring to the brewery buildout. "But I think it's going to be July."
ABOUT THE PHOTO: It's a mug of one of the incarnations of Boat, provided by Jesse.
The talking points are up and the action alert has been made.
The Garden State Craft Brewers Guild is asking New Jersey beer enthusiasts to reach out to their representatives in Trenton to support Senate bill 2870 and Assembly bill A3969.
The companion legislation would bring the rules under which the state's craft breweries operate more in line with marketplace conditions in the mid-Atlantic region and elsewhere nationally.
The guild posted the upshot of the legislation on its website on Tuesday, along with a blueprint for contacting state lawmakers to express support for the bills.
Meanwhile, the Senate version picked up a new sponsor, Sen. Donald Norcross, a Democrat from Camden County. Norcross joins Sen. Tom Kean Jr., the Union County Republican who introduced the measure at the beginning of the month. The Assembly version is sponsored by Craig Coughlin, a Democrat from Middlesex County.
Coughlin, by the way, also has homebrewers' interests in mind. He just introduced an unrelated bill, A4012, which would throw out the state's requirement that homebrewers get a permit to make their beer. (Text of that measure hasn't gone up on the Legislature's website yet.)
But back to the commercial brewing legislation.
Here's what the guild says is the aim of S2870 and A3969, which were referred to law and public safety committees in their respective chambers:
Remove the arbitrary cap (2 brew pubs) on the amount of brewpubs a company can open in the state. (Taking away this cap means brewpub businesses wishing to expand and create jobs in the state could without any unnecessary restrictions.)
Allow small breweries to sell beer directly to consumers from their brewery locations. (New Jersey wineries already have this privilege. Additionally, this element mirrors A3520, which was introduced back in November.)
Allow small brewers to sell their product at 10 locations across the state directly to consumers. (New Jersey wineries have this privilege already, bringing their product directly to consumers without any harmful impact on other wine or alcohol interests. Think BYOB restaurants with this one.)
Allow small breweries and brewpubs to offer samples to consumers both at their brewery or offsite at such things as charity events and festivals.
Allow brewpubs to sell their beer at other bars and restaurants that they own but do not brew beer onsite, yet have a retail consumption license.
Allow brewpubs to sell their beer off-premise in the same manner as small breweries through the wholesale distribution chain. (This would allow consumers to buy their favorite brewpub beer at other locations in the state.)
Increase the amount of craft beer both New Jersey’s small breweries and brewpubs could produce annually.
The current regulations were enacted in the early 1990s, a time when craft brewing in New Jersey seemed faddish, more likely to remain a niche interest and not grow into a part of the state's manufacturing base.
For the state's breweries, the rules now feel like size medium T-shirt on a XL body – they don't fit.
And for any New Jerseyan who's been to Sly Fox in Phoenixville, Pa., for instance, had lunch and a draft beer, then came home, stopped at a package goods store to pick up a six-pack of Royal Weisse, the existing rules can be confusing.
"This legislation removes some of the roadblocks that craft brewers in the state currently have to take their success to the next level," says Mark Edelson, one of the owners of Iron Hill brewpub in Maple Shade. "The current legislation has been in place for about 20 years and was negotiated at a time when states were just starting to craft legislation to launch our industry.
"This helped incubate our industry in New Jersey, but as our industry has grown, we are seeking two things: a more level playing field with some of the privileges currently enjoyed by New Jersey wineries (and) a more level playing field with small breweries in neighboring states."
But this is about more than beer. There's a spinoff benefit for the state by encouraging growth, and it's not all about excise taxes, either. It's jobs, Mark says, and not just brewery jobs, but also ones like pipe fitters, truck drivers and engineers.
"The economic impact is clear. This will allow us to promote and expand our sales, which leads to more revenue for the state and more jobs in the state," he says.
It's American Craft Beer Week, and that's a good moment to take stock of what's emerged on the Garden State beer landscape over the past year.
For starters, 2011 finds in business two new breweries, Great Blue Brewing (Franklin Township, Somerset County) and Port 44 Brew Pub (Newark) that weren't here a year ago this time. A new contract-made brand, East Coast Beer Company (Point Pleasant), also landed on the store shelves with a pilsner (Beach Haus) and is ramping up plans for another label.
Two production breweries are in development in Monmouth County – Kane Brewing (Ocean Township) and Carton Brewing (Atlantic Highlands), while nanobrewing has gained a foothold in the state. One such brewery is already licensed (Great Blue), while another (Cape May Brewing) is on pace to get the green light soon from state regulators, and further still, a handful of nanos are on the drawing boards (Flounder Brewing, Pinelands Brewing and Jersey Shore Brewing Experience, to name three.)
The hits keep coming.
The state's oldest production craft brewer, Climax in Roselle Park, bought a bottling line to put its ales and lagers in six-packs for the first time in its 15-year history. To the south, the state's largest craft brewer, Flying Fish, has designs on a new building in Somerdale (about five miles from its current home base of Cherry Hill) that will triple the brewery's size.
But Flying Fish isn't alone with the serious need to expand. In fact, right now, nearly all Garden State brewers can't make beer fast enough for demand, and for many, limited capacity is the reason.
Meanwhile, in Trenton, lawmakers are being asked to update the rules for microbrewing to catch New Jersey's industry up with neighboring states, if not the rest of the country.
"The current legislation has been in place for about 20 years and was negotiated at a time when states were just starting to craft legislation to launch our industry," says Mark Edelson, one of the owners of the Iron Hill brewpub in Maple Shade.
Looking east, the phrase down the shore now translates as being able to find good beer selections on tap on the sandy side of the state, something that, excluding oases like Firewaters in Atlantic City or brewpubs Tun Tavern, Basil T's and Artisans, has lagged behind North Jersey and the Delaware side of the state.
"I'm usually a little shocked about this area because of its proximity to New York City and people's exposure to cuisine, culture and travel," says Mark Danzeisen, owner of the well-stocked Twin Light Taphouse in Highlands, which just celebrated its first anniversary May 1 and will turn over its taps to Long Island's Bluepoint Brewing this Wednesday for a American Craft Beer Week soiree.
"Beer has always been something – I won't say shunned – but it's never been fully explored or delved into like the rest of the state. People are opening their eyes now."
Danzeisen, 30, comes from a place where the beer pedigree is solid. He opened Twin Light, on Monmouth County's bayshore, because the beers he was used to drinking were, for the most part, still back home. Although back home – Philly – wasn't a world away, it did seem so through the prism of a flavor-starved pint glass.
"I grew up down in Philadelphia and worked in beer bars down there. In college, my local bar was Monk's, Bridgid's, North Third, Standard Tap," he says.
All of New Jersey is picking up its game, he finds.
Thank a vibrant craft brewing industry, changing palates and a food movement that embraces beer. Roll into that the gravitational pull of beer-craving Pennsylvania and New York state. Or anywhere else that takes a wider view of food and drink.
"You go to Europe, you go to other places, and food and alcohol is first before other business is taken care of ... Or the home is based around the kitchen. We've lost that because of our time investment into work and other things," he says. "We're seeing this culture swing back toward food and appreciation of food, a return to grandmom's recipes and mom's old recipes. Beer is being pulled into that; there's that seeking out of flavors."
But, as much as it seems like our own backyard is suddenly a fun place to play, this week is also a reason to remember and support the home team – the Jersey brewers who have been plying these waters for 16 years, the folks who chose to go into business back in the 1990s because they wanted to bring to New Jersey what they were enjoying from their own beer travels or homebrewing experiences.
And it's a moment for the new entrepreneurs, who see a brighter beer future in the Garden State and a chance to bring to market the brews they envision.
Because, yes, it is a good time to hang out in our own backyard.
This year's video from National Homebrew Day/AHA Big Brew, shot May 7th in the back lot at Iron Hill brewpub in Maple Shade, where the year-old Barley Legal Homebrewers club pretty much calls headquarters.
Special thanks to Chris LaPierre at Iron Hill and Tim Kelly from the Tun Tavern.
Garden State craft brewers pick up another sponsor for legislation to ease regulations regarding their industry.
Bill A3969 was introduced in the Assembly on Friday by Craig J. Coughlin, a Democrat from Middlesex County, giving the measure bipartisan support.
Assemblyman Coughlin's 19th legislative district includes J.J. Bitting brewpub in Woodbridge, one of Middlesex County's three brewery-restaurants.
The Assembly bill is identical to the version introduced in the state Senate on Tuesday by Tom Kean Jr., a Republican from Union County. Sen. Kean's 21st District includes Trap Rock brewpub in Berkeley Heights and production brewery Climax Brewing in Roselle Park.
The text of the bills remains to be posted on the Legislature's website. But the brief description of the legislation says it "increases production limitations and revises privileges of limited and restricted breweries." (In New Jersey, limited brewery licenses are held by production breweries; restricted brewery licenses are held by brewpubs.)
The measures introduced this week were shaped by the Garden State Craft Brewers Guild.
But there are other craft brewing bills pending in the Legislature. S2040 and A3063 (identical to each other) propose to create a farm brewery/winery brewery license, while A3520 would allow craft brewers to directly retail to people who stop by their breweries.
Behind every beer you'll find people – those who made it, those who drink it.
Quite often, you'll find a song, too. That's because music and beer are sensory pleasures – sound and taste – and share a potent power to unite people.
But that's just for starters (and when's the last time you went to a beer festival that didn't have a soundtrack?).
The parallels between music and beer roll on, like a jam band in a great groove, connecting with an audience that's dancing in the aisles.
Think styles – jazz, rock, R&B, blues, hip-hop, country, alt country, folk, bluegrass, classical, opera, big band ... bock, pils, dunkel, stout, pale ales, black ales, singles, doubles, triples, quads, reds, session ales, strong ales, old ales, wheat beers.
Think business approaches – big breweries and big record labels vs. small craft brewers and indie labels. Think shared experiences – Woodstock and the Great American Beer Festival. Think indigenous brews (kvass) and indigenous tunes (parang).
You get the picture.
With all that going on, it's no surprise to find pro brewers who are musicians away from the mash tun, and pro musicians who are brewers off stage.
Kyle Hollingsworth, keyboard player with The String Cheese Incident and his own Kyle Hollingsworth Band, is the music world's biggest ambassador to craft beer, brewing and homebrewing. String Cheese has nearly a dozen albums to its credit, while Kyle has a couple of solo albums under his belt, and now a nationally distributed craft pale ale, Hoopla, to his name. Not to mention a freshly made homebrew bubbling away in the basement of his Colorado home.
Both brews figure into Kyle's summer tour plans.
New Jersey's craft beer industry has two brewer-musicians: Bryan Baxter, a solo artist whose day job is turning out hefe and dunkel weizens and imperial pilsner for High Point Brewing in Butler and its Ramstein brand; and Chris Rakow, who's the guitarist for jam band Ludlow Station when he's not brewing tanks of Tripel Horse, Hop Hazard or Hop-A-Lot-Amus Double IPA for River Horse Brewing in Lambertville.
Bryan, 27, who just took Best in Show judging (for the Double Platinum Blonde hefe) at the Tap New York festival last weekend, sees loads of similarities between brewing and making music. (That's Bryan on the left in the photo.)
"Look at it side by side, the major beer (companies) are like the record companies. If you really want to get your record out there you have to go through the big guys," says Bryan, who homebrewed before landing a job with High Point and finished the first half of the Seibel brewing course. "Small craft beers are like the indie labels. The cool bands are the ones under ground; it's the same thing with craft beer."
Bryan's first disc, Simple Is Beautiful (available on iTunes), came out last summer; it's 10 compositions in the singer-songwriter/folk genre. On the album, Bryan sang and played acoustic guitar, banjo, lap steel guitar, mandolin and harmonica, and was backed by friends on keyboards and drums. (As a musician, he cites as influences Willie Nelson, Bob Dylan, Tom Petty, Avett Brothers and Ryan Adams.)
"I've been in bands all my life. I never put out a full-length album because the bands would break up before we could do it," Bryan says.
His best chance at making an album was by going solo. "I got sick and tired of losing songs because the band broke up. I'm never gonna break up with myself," he says.
When he was gigging around (he's taking a break for a while), you could find him at the Court Tavern in New Brunswick, or at some basement shows in Brooklyn. Bryan has also played at Maxwell's in Hoboken, trodding a stage that has seen its share of big names (David Byrne, John Cale, The Pogues, Nirvana, Smashing Pumpkins and Sonic Youth, to name a few).
Chris Rakow has been playing guitar for 16 of his 28 years; he homebrewed during his college days at Rutgers University, and has been running the brewing operations at River Horse for a year and a half. (An American Brewers Guild alum, he also put in some time working for Harpoon at its Vermont brewery).
With Ludlow Station, Chris continues to play with two friends from his middle school years, a time when he "learned every single Led Zepplin tune." The band released an album of eight original tunes last year, titling it simply Ludlow Station.
Brewing and music keep Chris busy.
"On our schedule coming up, we've got a gig every other week up until like July ... Old Bay in New Brunswick, it's a good beer bar, good music; Triumph in New Hope; there's this place, BBQ's, in Annandale; and Pearly Baker's, a nice beer bar in Easton, Pennsylvania," Chris says.
As for Ludlow Station's style, Chris notes, "We cover some Dead tunes, but I wouldn't say we're too much like the Dead. It's much more like jazz, funk, blues rock. Our instrumentals are more intricate because there's no singing. When we have a singer, we have a couple of originals, and when he's there we play some covers, like some Dead covers, Stevie Wonder covers."
Chris' influences are more expansive, however.
"I like John Scolfield a lot, his later stuff, his jazz stuff he played way back is good," Chris says. "I like mostly key players; I like Medeski, Martin and Wood a whole lot. They're kinda like my biggest influence. They're a jazz trio; they're just keyboard, bass and drum."
Speaking of keyboards, you'd probably have to scour the planet to find a musician other than Kyle Hollingsworth who has pondered brewing beer while performing.
"The music I play is very improvisational," Kyle begins, "start the set, get the boil started, then do first hop drop, run and do a jam for 45 minutes, do the second addition and then quickly play a five-minute song and do the third addition," he says.
Kyle laughs when he mentions the idea, but there's no question beer is a huge part of his life, brewing it and hosting festivals (Kyle's Brew Fest, done last year with breweries Great Divide and Deschutes, to name a couple).
"I've definitely spent a lot more energy on crafting my musicianship, and less spent on my beer. But it's always been there, and it's something I enjoy when I come home after a tour," he says.
"Part of my crusade over the last couple of years is I've been touring the country with my band and String Cheese, and I've been doing meet-and-greets and lots of other stuff at select breweries on the way ... from like down in San Diego, it was Stone. Then I went up to San Francisco, then I went up to Deschutes in Oregon, then down to Dogfish," Kyle says. "The vision was, for me, to connect the dots between music and beer."
Kyle's been a homebrewer for 24 of his 42 years, drawn to the craft by the chance to experiment and create something sensory, much like music. While on the road this summer, he'll be doing homebrewing seminars at festivals (like Summer Camp), bringing in tow an India pale ale he brewed just 10 or so days ago.
"I'm going to be like a 'brewru' ... we'll kinda explain the process and do some tastings, and hopefully get some people into brewing," Kyle, a professed hophead, says by phone from his home in Boulder.
That IPA he just made is the opposite of Hoopla, the brew he did with Boulder Beer that gets distributed nationally this month. "It's totally dry-hopped to the max. It's looking and tasting real good," he says, referring to the IPA.
"Over the last two years I've done a lot of different beers – mainly pilot type systems – in a lot of bigger breweries in the country. There's a great place called Avery here in Boulder; a local place called Mountain Sun (which did his Hoppingsworth IPA in 2009), there's a place called Upslope; Odell, I've done a pilot batch ...
"But this is the first time I've done a national, canned or bottled beer. So I'm very excited about that," he says.
With Hoopla, Kyle was thinking of Tennessee's Bonnaroo music festival.
"I went to Boulder Beer and sat down with their brewers and said, 'I want to make a beer that's a festival drinking beer.' Specifically, String Cheese is playing Bonnaroo this year, so I was thinking, 'What would you want to drink at Bonnaroo when it's 85 degrees, or 110 degrees, and 100 percent humidity?' I'm a huge hophead, so I wanted it to have some hops in it, but I wasn't quite ready to do the hop bomb at Bonnaroo," he says.
"So my vibe was to make it a pale that was a little hoppier than people expect – we were calling it a pale ale, but in my mind it's more of an IPA that's of a lower bitterness; it's not quite over the top. So it's an easy-drinking 5.7 (ABV), lightly hopped pale. The whole idea was to have something you can grab in your hand and go see 12 hours of music with, and keep drinking them, instead of one really strong beer for an hour."
And thus was born, Kyle jokes, a new style: FPA, Festival Pale Ale.
But in a pure sense, for Kyle, brewing and performing on stage are moments of creation, born in the alignment of intuition, impulse and passion that demand you make a decision.
Do you play a solo the way fans are used to hearing it, or follow the energy of the moment, the ongoing jam and the crowd's vibe, and take a chance by spicing that solo with something new? With brewing, do you follow your tried-and-true recipe and make the great brew you know, or take that recipe and play it a another way, adding some new ingredients that the moment at hand suggests?
"For me, it's all about taking a chance, all about taking that risk. That's the connection I'm seeing personally," Kyle says.
A new front has opened in the campaign to make New Jersey a friendlier place for the craft brewing industry.
Bill S2870, which "increases production limitations and revises privileges of limited and restricted breweries," was introduced in Trenton on Tuesday by state Sen. Tom Kean Jr. of Union County.
The Garden State Craft Brewers Guild, which has been working on the legislation for the past year, is now lining up sponsorship in the Assembly and expects a version to be introduced in that chamber by week's end.
Just exactly what the legislation seeks isn't immediately clear. The bill was just published, but the text hasn't been posted yet on the Legislature's website.
However, as it worked with a lobbyist to shape the bill, the guild's wish list has touched on raising the maximum amount of beer that could be brewed annually for both brewpubs and production breweries.
Additionally, the guild has wanted to let brewpub owners hold more than two licenses, let them brew for the taps at other establishments (i.e. restaurant-bars) that they may own, and in a bid to become more competitive with neighboring states, allow brewpubs to hold production brewery licenses for their locations, so they may sell beer off premises through distributors.
For production brewers, the guild has wanted to let them individually set up a clutch of salesrooms across the state for sampling and retailing to the public.
Remember, those items represent what has been a working wish list. Stay tuned for what the bill actually does propose.
Fans of Sly Fox Brewing look forward to the first Sunday in May and the annual Bock Fest's running of the goats in the parking lot of the brewery-restaurant.
This year, the 12th running of the ruminants, South Jersey's Barley Legal Homebrewers club ponied up an entry, hoping to land naming rights to the brewery's 2011 maibock. (The maibock is named after the victor.)
Alas, Toilet – the moniker the club's entry ran under – finished second in his heat, not good enough to make the finals.
That race turned out to be quite the David-and-Goliath tale: a three-legged goat named Peggy vanquished two-time champ Dax, winning the hearts of the crowd and naming rights to the bock. (That's Peggy's preliminary race pictured below.)
As for Toilet, it was a long ride home, but there's always next year. Maybe some Toilet Bock, too.
Saisons figure big in the South and Central Jersey beer picture this weekend, with River Horse Brewing pouring one at ShadFest 2011, and Iron Hill Maple Shade releasing its saison to mark a brewing collaboration and fete women beer enthusiasts.
River Horse will pour its Brewer's Reserve No. 7 saison (7% ABV) at the annual, two-day townwide event in Lambertville along with seven of its other brews, the most RH has ever put on tap for the festival. (Here's the lineup: Lager, Hop Hazard, Tripel Horse, Special, Double IPA, Double Wit, Summer Blonde and the saison. As in the past, the back lot of the brewery is blocked off for festival crowds and bands. Beers are sold and poured via a ticket system, and commemorative glasses are available for sale.)
RH's head brewer, Chris Rakow, says the Belgian farmhouse ale is a choice style of the brewery, yet one that had not made it into the production pipeline.
"It's one we always wanted to do, kind of a favorite style of the brewery, and we finally got a chance to do it," Chris says. "It has nice citrus notes, earthy notes, a little bit of tartness to it. But we wanted to accentuate the citrus notes in it, so we used lemongrass. To accentuate some of the earthy notes to it, we did white peppercorns. The white peppercorns give a little bit of funk to it, not much."
The saison gave RH a chance to bring its Brewer's Reserve series back around and settle an issue with the brewery's 12-bottle variety pack. Past Brewer's Reserve beers have ended up becoming either year-round brews (like Hop-A-Lot-Amus Double IPA) or seasonals (Oatmeal Milk Stout, Belgian Double Wit).
"In our variety pack, we always kinda struggle on a fourth beer to put in there. Usually it was Tripel. But Tripel's so popular, it's hard to steal that away from (distribution) orders," Chris says. "Then we were putting Double IPA in there, and then same thing, that was taking off. So we were like, 'Hey we could do a Brewer's reserve, get it out there again, and then we'll have a fourth beer to put in the variety pack along with Special, Hazard and Lager, and then have it draft, too.' "
Four bands are on the ShadFest music bill for the brewery back lot. Look for Chris' band, Ludlow Station, to hit the stage on Saturday. (Chris plays guitar in the group; more on that in a future post.)
Meanwhile, down in Maple Shade, Iron Hill brewer Chris LaPierre's fifth turn at a saison is probably his most endearing. Maybe that's because he made the peppercorn-spiced brew, dubbed Saizanne, with his girlfriend, Suzanne Woods (pictured at left), a Sly Fox Brewing representative.
The beer is an informal collaboration aimed squarely at the pleasure of beer, not trying to break new ground. Besides, saisons are a fav of Suzanne's. (Note: The ale isn't an actual Sly Fox-Iron Hill brewery collaboration. However, a round of Sly Fox's saison yeast was used to make it. "Which is pretty much what we always use for this beer," Chris says.) The brewpub will tap the beer (7% ABV, with a golden hue) at noon on Saturday.
Collaboration beers have been a craft beer industry trend lately. Despite that, Chris thinks they're less about fusion than beer enthusiasts may be led to believe.
"They're more about having fun than exploring," he says. "A lot of the collaboration beers I've seen out there, I kinda have to wonder did they really do anything that they wouldn't have on their own?
"With Suzanne and me, it's a little bit different because she's not a professional brewer. So it's more about her influence in brewing something that she likes, that she really enjoys. She loves saisons, and peppercorns are her favorite spice, so it was kinda more about that."
As part of the beer's release, members of In Pursuit of Ales (yes, its acronym is IPA), the Philadelphia-area women's beer club that Suzanne founded about four or five years ago, will gather at the brewpub. As will Beer for Babes, a South Jersey women's beer club founded by beer and food writer Tara Nurin, with the help of Kate Burns of Haddon Township.
Women's beer groups, Tara says, are a way to nudge perceptions of beer away from old conventions. That is, beer is not exclusively your dad's or granddad's drink. It's for everyone, and the visibility of women who enjoy craft beers for the flavor of the beverage, for their power to pair with food and for the camaraderie is growing.
There's a tailwind for Turtle Stone Brewing that's giving the planned South Jersey brewery some new momentum.
Ben Battiata, who's developing the enterprise with his girlfriend, Becky Pedersen, says they've worked out a deal to buy a 9,000-square-foot building in Cumberland County. They've already moved into the site the fermenter and bright beer tanks they bought a couple years ago.
Their 15-barrel brewhouse, picked up from a closed Rock Bottom brewpub, remains in storage in Oregon. The brewhouse will be shipped to New Jersey once he and Becky close on the building, located on the Boulevard in Vineland. Their site is a couple of miles south of where Blue Collar Brewing made pale, blonde and Scotch ales, in addition to a porter and Bavarian lager, before closing shop around 2004.
Finding a viable building was a long time in coming for Turtle Stone, and Ben expressed some relief Monday night at landing a site that will fit current needs and those down the road.
"That was the biggest thing holding us up, finding a place that allows us to grow, because I do anticipate some growth," he says.
The brewery will most likely make use of just over half of the building's space, with the remaining 4,000 square feet to be leased out.
Aside from closing on the building, there's other work to tackle, Ben says, namely paperwork: squaring away Turtle Stone's brewer's notice with federal regulators and getting licensed by the state. Wrap into that securing the blessing of Vineland officials, who Ben says support the project.
"Everybody's pretty into it. Originally, they were hoping we'd do something downtown, be part of their revitalization," he says.
Ben envisions getting the brewing equipment installed over the next couple of months. Turning out the first batch of beer depends on how quickly regulators can give the green light. But striking that first mash could happen in the fall, or perhaps a little sooner.
A stout (think American-style at 6% ABV with a hop presence) and a honey blonde ale (accentuated with green tea and jasmine flowers) are still part of the game plan, but Ben says "I've got couple other recipes I'm working on."
He plans for the beers to be available in draft, then bottle and says the to-do list includes scouting for packaging equipment.
The recent growth in the craft beer industry isn't making that easy, though. "The market for used equipment has kind of dried up. I definitely got my (brewing) system at the right time. I'd probably be paying twice as much for it now," he says.
Turtle Stone has been a pursuit of Ben and Becky for five years now (Becky will handle the business side and marketing, while Ben will deal with brewing). Ben took the brewing course at the Seibel Institute of Technology in Chicago in 2007, spent subsequent years networking and last year hit the Craft Brewers Conference when it was held in Chicago.
He passed on last month's 2011 conference held in San Francisco. "It was right in middle of getting this deal down for this building," he says.
At the intersection of collegiate youth and beer is where you'll find a short-form documentary destined for the Worldwide Web.
And it has nothing to do with beer pong.
Just a year past being of age to drink, Rider University senior Dennis Quartarolo, of Wall Township in Monmouth County, thought New Jersey's 16-year-old run of micro and pub brewing to be worthy of examination in a video, for which he and four other students just wrapped up interviews and shooting.
The students (Dennis is a radio-television major at the Lawrenceville school) chose Princeton brewpub Triumph, Cherry Hill production brewer Flying Fish and East Coast Beer Company, the nearly year-old purveyor of contract-brewed Beach Haus pilsner, to shape the perspective for their 15-minute production. They also turned to a Jersey beer industry-watcher for some additional observations.
At a shoot in Jack's bar in Long Branch on Wednesday, Dennis discussed the origins of the project, titled Jersey Brewed, his flirtations with the big brewers' offerings and his embracing of craft-brewed beers. The docu project, Dennis says, was a class assignment and will also be uploaded to YouTube some time in May.
"Every single one of us in the class had to pitch a documentary idea, and I pitched the idea of a documentary about New Jersey breweries," Dennis says. "I figured it was a cool story to tell, to focus on this state, go to these guys and find out their stories about why they do it.
"They all had jobs before they decided to start brewing. They all come from different walks of life. I think that's interesting, all of them have the one common bond of craft brewing. It's almost like kind of a language that only a few people speak. All three of them have different ways of doing it; all three of them have different stories to tell."
At 22 years old, Dennis falls into a demographic cohort that became legal drinkers at time of incredible choice, a veritable wall of brands and styles, a situation that's increasingly making the Big Three – Bud, Miller and Coors – less and less the entry point for new beer drinkers.
Dennis' own backstory with craft beer begins with Flying Dog's Old Scratch Amber Lager, a brew he embraced after moving quickly beyond the Bud Light from a friend's party and the Pabst he had been buying.
"I was like, 'Whoa, this is completely different than what I usually have,' because up to that point I was buying PBR or Yuengling," he says. "From there, I started going out and buying more: I got Rogue Dead Guy, Elysian the Wise, Arrogant Bastard ..."
It didn't hurt, either, that Dennis got a job at Wine King, a packaged goods store in Sea Girt where a friend was working. Dennis started to think Jersey and drink Jersey after that.
"We actually have a section for New Jersey beers. That's when I started trying out Flying Fish, River Horse, Cricket Hill ... When Beach Haus came in, we tried that," he says. "I've just been going from there, getting more and more into them."
Among his favorite beers: Dead Guy; his favorite Exit brew, No. 13. ""I really enjoyed the chocolate. That was really good."
ABOUT THE PHOTO:Dennis (right) is joined by Rider seniors Tom Mellaci and Caroline Downing at video shoot at Jack's in Long Branch. It's worth noting that despite the Miller Lite memorabilia, Jacks has some great craft beers on its taps: Lagunitas, Blue Point and Dogfish Head to name a few.
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).
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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).
