Oktober sky

If you’re a fan of Oktoberfest beers … we’ll let’s just say, if you aren’t then you’re missing one of the best beers on Earth.

That’s worth repeating: If you aren’t then you’re missing one of the best beers on Earth. But anyway, the best news for the lazy, hazy days of July is that the Oktober sky is in sight, the Märzens are coming; they're being brewed this month.

And in the Garden State, the go-to Oktoberfest beers come from the brewers with strong connections to Germany: High Point and Climax.

In Butler, the logo on the exterior brickwork may give a nod to the 220-foot obelisk in Montague Township at New Jersey’s highest elevation (1,803 feet), but just off the brewhouse, the thick, Blackletter text, “Ramstein,” above the bottling line says Germany. So does the beer: Malts, hops and yeast from Bavaria. (FYI: High Point's beer brand itself is a nod to the U.S. Ramstein airbase and is symbolic of German-American cultural unity).

Owner Greg Zaccardi says High Point’s brewing of their annual Oktoberfest (alas, it’s available draft only, but well worth the trek to find) commences next week. Release date is Sept. 1, with an annual barrel tapping/open house set for the second Saturday in September.

Greg learned to brew in southern Germany; his wife is German, and as you could imagine, he frequently travels there (in fact, he just got back from a June trip).

Zip across Route 78 to Roselle Park, where Climax Brewing has its Oktoberfest already in the lagering tank. Brewer/owner Dave Hoffmann says he got an early start this year (the beer's available draft and in half-gallon containers) and is targeting it for the beginning of August. He plans another batch on the heels of the initial release.

Dave is of direct German extract. Chat with his dad, Kurt, and you’ll enjoy a rich, German accent, unspoiled by years of living in the U.S.

Oktoberfest is Sept. 20-Oct. 5. So why rave about beers that are a month away from your stein, while we're still in the farming saison? Because these two Oktoberfest beers go fast. Best to keep 'em on the radar.

OF NOTE:
Check out the results from this year’s North American Brewers’ Association competition. The Tun Tavern won a silver medal for brewer Tim Kelly’s Belgian brown ale and a bronze for Tun Dark, a dunkel-like interpretation lagered for a month and a half, with a hint of hop bitterness and maltiness that's not too sweet. Congrats, Tim.

MEANWHILE:
We’ve been getting into the hops horticulture lately, and here we go again, this time with our own Centennial hops. We found the first well-defined cones on one bine on Sunday, and noticed on Monday more cones were taking shape.

Like The Beatles sang, it won't be long. Yeah, it won't be long.

LongShot Addendum

The results are up. Unfortunately, ESB Dave was shut out. Sigh. But that doesn't change the fact that Dave makes great beer.

Here's to your beers, Dave. Salut.

LongShot winners coming up

Quick note: Finalists in the Samuel Adams LongShot homebrew contest are due to be announced this week, a Boston Beer contact tells us. Seems like the folks up in Boston are running a little late this year, compared to last year when finalists were announced mid-June.

But nonetheless, we’re pulling for friend of the blog Dave Pobutkiewicz of Morris County, who entered again this year, after finishing as a runner-up last October, when the winners were announced at the Great American Beer Festival. (Grand prize, aside from the Samuel Adams swag that goes to the finalists, is having your beer brewed for the SA LongShot sixpack.)

Dave got a trip to Denver out of the deal in 2007. But this guy’s such a perfectionist when it comes to beer – the detailed records he keeps on each brew and his methods are impressive – he pretty much decided, right there in the slipstream of coming up short last year, that he would hurl himself against the SA ramparts in 2008. (Dave shared his beers with us and Tun Tavern brewer Tim Kelly back in March in Atlantic City. It’s really, really good.)

This year, Dave entered his helles bock (6.9% ABV), the same beer that made him a finalist in 2007. He also entered a double helles bock (8% ABV) in the specialty category, and his Fuller’s-like ESB (6% ABV), a holy grail for a guy who’s known in his homebrewer club (Defiant Hombrewers) as ESB Dave.

The Hop Project (Update)

Over the weekend we checked in with the folks at Weyerbacher Brewing in Easton, Pa., just over the Delaware River from Phillipsburg.

If you recall, Dan Weirback and his wife, Suzanne, undertook the daunting project of growing hops to perhaps offset some of the cost at the brewery Dan founded in 1995. You may also recall hops on the commercial market now cost about four times as much as they did a year ago.

So back in April, after some cajoling by Sue (the project was her idea, Dan admits to harboring a few reservations), some Web research and some outreach to folks versed in hops, the Weirbacks put 1,500 rhizomes in the ground on an acre surrounded by wheat fields in the rolling hills of Lehigh County, Pa. They hired a fencing company to seat rows of poles 9 feet high, upon which they strung trellises for the hop bines to climb. Along the rows, at the base of the hops, they ran hoses for a drip irrigation system.

The Jersey angle – after all, this is a Jersey beer blog – is that they’ve relied on research Rutgers agronomists conducted on hops in the 1990s at a demonstrator hopyard at the Snyder Research Farm in Hunterdon County. The Weirbacks continue to stay in touch with their Rutgers contact, John Grande.

Cost for their project: $8,000 and a lot of physical labor – weeding, mulching and training the bines to climb, more weeding, more training, checking for pests etc. It’s quite a bit of work for two people who otherwise have plenty to do in the course of running a brewery and, in Sue’s case, her own career.

There are no shortcuts to the work. And there’s a fair amount of having to make do with limited resources, such as the poles supporting the trellis lines. At 9 feet, they could easily be twice that height, since hop bines are prodigious climbers. But 9 feet was the tallest the fence company could handle; plus there’s the need to reach the bines, most likely from the bed of a pickup truck.

The payoff thus far? Part of the hopyard is going strong, while the other portion has some catch-up to do. But the Weirbacks’ mix of Cascade and Nugget plants are starting to bud. Barring calamity of bad weather, Japanese beetles or some other hop-hungry insect, the Weirbacks expect to harvest plenty of cones later this summer.

It's worth mentioning that Dan and Sue are under no illusions with the project. After all they’re living it, and even confess to some moments of doubt about the merits of the endeavor. But as they say, they haven’t had those misgivings at the same time, so they’ve been able to soldier on.

And while they haven’t really talked up the project, the Weirbacks have drawn some curiosity from other Pennsylvania brewers interested in seeing what the couple comes up with at harvest.

From all sides, this is a rather bold experiment, commendable, too, when you consider it’s risky, and the Weirbacks are willing to try to cut a trail in the wilderness, so to speak.

Good luck, see you at harvest time.

In the glass

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

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

Tim’s Peculiar Porter, from the Ship Inn.

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

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

Some buying advice on the beer box:

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

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

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

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

Also in our glass …

Hoffmann Hefeweizen, from Climax Brewing.

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

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

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

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

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

Guild's got game

Where can you find practically all of what New Jersey brews on one stage? At the Garden State Craft Brewers Guild's annual festival, of course.

Yeah, that’s just a way of bringing up the fact that the 12th incarnation of the festival is scheduled for this Saturday (June 21st), once again at the Camden waterfront aboard the floating military maritime museum that is the USS New Jersey.

If you’re a newbie to the festival here are the quick facts:

• Breweries: Basil T’s of Red Bank, Cricket Hill, Flying Fish, Gaslight, Harvest Moon, High Point, JJ Bitting, Krogh’s, Long Valley, Pizzeria Uno, River Horse, Ship Inn, Triumph and Tun Tavern. (FYI: Krogh's, the brewpub in bucolic Sparta, NJ, is listed on the marquee, and they're a Guild member. But generally speaking, they have not ventured this far south to the festival, meaning it's possible they will be a no-show. We hope not.)

• It’s a rain-or-shine event from noon to 4 p.m. at the fantail of the battleship. Admission is 40 bucks and you get the customary souvenir taster glass and a self-guided tour of the ship, and it looks like online ticket sales have closed. The USS New Jersey’s website says tickets are still available at the box office, but it’s best to call ahead at this point. Here's the number: 856-966-1652 ext. 108.

• Music by the Cabin Dogs, who have sort of a residency with this event. The Dogs are pretty good, so give ’em a listen.

• Parking: Public parking (for a fee) is available over by Adventure Aquarium, with shuttle buses running from the garage to the battleship.

• Yes, there will be food vendors. Last year the food was a marked improvement from the year before. Ditto for the access to it. We’re expecting it to be at least the same this year.

•Weather: Nice for a festival, upper 80s. Let's hope the humidity stays reasonable.

NJ beer world, one year later

Some highlights of the New Jersey beer landscape since last year’s festival:

• Flying Fish in Cherry Hill topped 10,000 barrels in production, 10,511, according to figures we obtained from the Brewers Association in Colorado. (The top 5 NJ brewers are: Flying Fish, River Horse, Triumph, High Point and Cricket Hill.)
• High Point Brewing in Butler earned a spot at No. 7 in Beer Advocate’s rating of the top 25 breweries in the USA. High Point also picked up a top-10 accolade for its Oktoberfest beer from Draft Magazine. (Take it from us, High Point makes a killer Oktoberfest, and that beer will be coming around again very soon.)
• River Horse Brewing in Lambertville is closing in on the first anniversary of new owners. Chris Walsh and Glenn Bernabeo scored a hit with a new Belgian Double Wit a few months back that was part of a brewmasters reserve series they started. RH is promising to roll out more new beers and has struck a deal with Lion Brewery in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., to contract brew RH’s Penn Brook Lager (more on this soon).
• J.J. Bitting in Woodbridge successfully launched the Central Jersey Beer Festival last September and is planning a repeat event this year. That festival has room to grow, and we hope it does.

Jay Misson

Very, very sad news, indeed, coming out of Triumph Brewing this week ...

Jay Misson, the director of brewing operations for Triumph and one of the pillars behind the great beers that Triumph always makes, died suddenly on Monday. He was 45.

Lew Bryson has an eloquent and fitting tribute over at Seen Through A Glass. Jay's brewing roots run deep in New Jersey and place him at the forefront of the Garden State waking up to craft beer.

Our interaction with Jay was fleeting. But in March, at the Philadelphia Real Ale Festival, he was kind enough to participate in the video we produced from that event. It may sound like a small thing to bring up, but not exactly when you consider it was a very busy festival, the sign-off point for Philly Beer Week, and Jay played no minor part in seeing the day’s happenings meet with success.

We greatly appreciate anyone who takes the time for an interview. It's tough for the person when things are so busy. But Jay (that's him on the right in the picture) graciously gave his time, joining Tom Kehoe of Yards to talk about the pleasures of cask-conditioned ale (although you’ll note Jay was a true lager champion, notably German-style beers).

Thanks, Jay. Rest in peace, brother.

Catching up

Word from Beertown (the Brewers Association) is that SAVOR, that craft beer plus fine food event, was a hit, a sellout over its two-day (May 16-17) run in the nation’s capital.

That’s 2,100 beer enthusiasts over three sessions. Friend of the blog John Holl, a brethren from our journalism days, filed this for The Star-Ledger of Newark.

SAVOR isn’t really breaking new ground here, as far as beer being a dinner guest goes. But it does keep a porch light on for the wider realization that beer and food, à la fine cuisine, aren’t just a winning combination, but a natural one.

That’s another way of saying if you haven’t noticed beer shedding its plebeian image, you’ve probably been watching Beerfest over and over.

It almost makes you wonder why beer has that image to shed in the first place. Well, maybe not when you remember Coors created a bottle label that turns blue to signal the beer’s cold and ready to drink. Then you recall how dumbed-down gimmickry imposed upon the public can steer the car into a ditch.

But make no mistake, beer’s roots include the supper table. Historically speaking, in the days before folks got a good handle on bacteria, beer was relied upon as a potable beverage, while drinking water was a gamble. So talk of beer at the dinner table is just beer reclaiming what belongs to it.

Speaking of beer and food, here’s one fans of organic foods and locally grown/locally served community sustainable farming will be interested in: The Ship Inn (Milford, Hunterdon County) is committed to that philosophy in a big way.

We caught up with brewer Tim Hall on an unrelated topic, but the subject came up in our discussion. Tim says the pub composts discarded vegetable matter, while spent grain from its brewery, which now goes to a local farmer, likely will wind up in the compost, too. The pub’s thinking is to avail that compost to local produce growers who supply the Ship Inn.

The Ship, known for its British-slant on atmosphere and ales, has organic foods on its menu and takes a novel approach toward beer-to-go with its beer a box (think of it as a cardboard growler, although the Ship still offers the glass version, too.) But here’s something else about the pub that commands attention – session beers.

That’s hardly going to get Wolf Blitzer Situation Room treatment, a brewpub standing session beers on the bar. But when you consider the unyielding grip of the big beer trend – heavy on hops, high in alcohol – the Ship’s session ales are a welcome step back in time.

Nearly all their ales are under 5% ABV, with three in the range of 3.5-4% ABV. Their IPA – which puts more emphasis on India pale ales’ tradition for hop aromatics and less on bitterness – is the highest at 5.5%. But even that’s fairly light in the face of the 7% beers that are as nearly ubiquitous as iPods now.

The Ship's beers invite drinking and conversation, and prove flavor is not sacrificed when the ABV is comes back down to earth.

Happy landing.

Big Brew, Part 2 (We won!!!)

First and foremost: A shout out to fellow Jerseyans, WHALES, the Woodbridge Homebrewers Ale & Lager Enthusiast Society, for their second-place showing in the American Homebrewers Association’s YouTube video contest.

WHALES’ efforts on Big Brew 2008 (May 3rd) were chronicled by BobbyFromNJ (that's his YouTube handle), and claimed second place in the most-viewed category (more than 1,750 hits as of this writing).

It’s worth mentioning here that some WHALES members are first-round winners in the AHA’s national homebrew competition. Good luck, and we're behind you all the way.

And now for the big moment, for us anyway ...

We won first place in the YouTube contest in the category of "Best Represents AHA Big Brew."

Winning is fun, but we're not going to crow about this too much or let it go to our heads.

But we will say (and underscore) that we’re flattered, immensely so, and honored in an equal measure. And we can’t overlook the other 17 folks whose entries qualified for judging and made it a competition. It was a fun contest, capturing one of the things central to beer: It brings people together. And nothing does that like homebrewing.

Big Brew 2007 was among the first videos we shot and posted online. A year later, we were back at BeerCrafters, doing it again. So it goes without saying that we owe the the folks there in Turnersville a huge round of thanks for availing themselves for an interview, or for just letting us taste their brews.

But it’s not just BeerCrafters and the Gloucester County Home Brewers Club.

It’s everyone – most of the craft brewers in New Jersey, easily – who has put up with our camera over the past year (or longer in some cases, like Flying Fish).

We like to think that we’ve learned something each time out that we've shot in the news-gathering style we rely on, which has hopefully (and we hope, artfully) kept us out of the picture and put the emphasis on the beer and the people making it, celebrating or otherwise just enjoying it.

Because that’s what it’s all about, the beer.

Hopping on hops, Part 3

An update on our hops.

It’s been a wet season, and that late-spring nor’easter that whacked the shore with a drenching and powerful gusts gave the Centennials we planted a rough time last week.

Fifty mph winds were hard on the young vines, kind of stunned them a little bit and the bines that were just starting to wind around the trellis lines were blown off course somewhat.

It’s a good thing the foliage wasn’t as dense as it can get. The gusts could have ripped them up like the oaks and other trees that lost a lot of just-sprouted leaves when the storm was peaking.

But nonetheless, the hops are doing fine, and eight days after the storm have bounced back rather hardily. The largest is passing 3 feet, maybe higher, while the other three hills are playing catch-up.

By the by, our trellis is wholly unconventional, not much more than a simple frame fashioned from 1 by 4s and braced with some 1 by 1s, spreading about 6 1/2 feet, over a plot about 5 feet wide.

It’s probably about 5 feet (at least) too short in height – it's about 7 feet – but hopefully that won’t matter. There’s room for the hardier bines to branch out if they run out of vertical room as they climb up the lines.

With some luck, the weather will start to cooperate, dry out a little and the hops will really take off, lush and vibrant.

Lunar observations

For a poetic image, it’s hard to top a full moon.

Even though it puts in a monthly appearance, it still has the hypnotic power to make you stop and gaze skyward, more so when it’s low on the horizon looming large in a buttery yellow.

It’s no wonder something so mystical has woven itself so pervasively into the fabric of folklore and culture.

So why not have a beer and toast and old friend’s return visit?

That’s sort of the idea with the Fullmooner beer tastings sponsored by Beerheads and TotalBru. The next one is Tuesday in Manayunk, Pa., and this being May, it’s aptly dubbed Fullmooner V. (By the by, May's full moon is called the milk moon in English-speaking cultures and corn-planting moon in Native American cultures.)

So what’s the Jersey connection? Well for starters, River Horse’s Belgian ale Tripel Horse (10% ABV) is among the flight of beers to be poured (see the flier below for other beers on the menu). Plus, Philly and its near and far environs are rich in beer prospects, even for us on this side of the Delaware.

So by the light of a full moon, have a brew.

Big Brew ... The poetry of worts' worth

Here’s our entry to the Big Brew 2008 YouTube video contest sponsored by the American Homebrewers Association.

Where were they last year when we did this? Just kidding ...

But seriously, we did shoot Homebrew Day last year in our run-and-gun electronic news gathering style, with an eye toward posting on YouTube and Current TV, the website and digital cable television channel that airs user-created videos. (We even trumpeted our efforts in email to the AHA last year and got a nice reply.)

The AHA told us the contest idea came from the granddaddy of homebrewing himself, Charlie Papazian. So a nod to Charlie for seizing the day of user-created videos and inspiring the Cecil Beer DeMille (yeah, we know: bad pun, dated reference) in all of us.

About Big Brew
If you’re not a homebrewer, you may not know Big Brew is the annual AHA-promoted event in which homebrewers worldwide strike mashes and brew their tried and true recipes, all the while celebrating the conviviality of and finer things about beer, notably good food and the exploration of exotic or amped-up beer styles.

Last year, the AHA says, more than 9,000 gallons – 72,000 pints! – of homebrew were brewed by more than 4,000 participants at 242 sites on four continents. That breaks down to sites in 42 US states, and kettles fired up at celebrating locations in Israel, Australia, Argentina, and Russia. AHA stats show the volume has been rising annually for the past four years.

The folks at BeerCrafters in Turnersville (one of two places we relied on to stock up on malt and hops when we actively homebrew our Cross-Eyed Mary Pale Ale and Black Satin Dancer Stout) says they’ve been doing Big Brew for 15 years. BeerCrafters was the location for our video shoot on May 3rd, and you’ll notice in the video their commemorative mugs with a big blue 15 on the side.

But BeerCrafters and their affiliated club, Gloucester County Home Brewers, aren’t alone in their celebration of Big Brew. PALE ALES, a Princeton-area homebrew club, and WHALES, the Woodbridge-area homebrewers group, also get into the game. By the by, some members of WHALES – Woodbridge Homebrewers Ale & Lager Enthusiast Society – were first-round Northeast regional winners in the national homebrew competition that the AHA conducts each year. (The annual AHA national conference is June 19-21 in Cincinnati; we went in ’95 in Baltimore and again in ’97 in Cleveland.)

About the video
The AHA’s rules for the YT contest pretty much limited the length of videos to three minutes. So if you paused for an interview with us and didn’t make the cut, it’s because of the time limit. You still have our enduring gratitude, and we still have the footage, which could wind up in a end-of-year piece in December. (For the record, the video doesn’t have our signature logo/image at the end, either – again to meet the time limit.)

A last word about the video: Winning that AHA contest doesn’t matter an iota; it’s all about the beer, not us.

Onward
Monday kicks of American Craft Beer Week. The name is self-explanatory. A quick check of their website didn’t show any Garden State brewers with registered events. However, Cherry Hill’s Flying Fish Brewing is participating in the food-and-beer event, SAVOR, which is the coda to craft beer week.

We’re going to take this moment to note what’s been our glass this past week or so: Cricket Hill’s Col. Blides Bitter, FF’s Hopfish IPA, River Horse’s Double Belgian Wit, Triumph’s German Pilsner and Basil T’s (Toms River) Double Bock. Don't see your beer on that list? Don't worry, it will be.

Cheers.

The Don of beers

If you already have a copy of Don Russell’s road map to Philadelphia’s beer scene, then you know that this Philly guy spends some time on our side of the Delaware, too.

(To be sure, as a man worthy of his beer hunter-chronicler occupation, Don gets around: He once returned a call to us while he was in Austria, if memory serves us correctly.)

Don’s new book, “Joe Sixpack’s Philly Beer Guide,” spotlights eastern Pennsylvania neighbors Flying Fish Brewing (Cherry Hill, pp 44-45) and River Horse Brewing (Lambertville, pp 46-47). Besides its obvious quick-read, utilitarian design, the book is seasoned with interesting tidbits.

Don will be signing copies from 5-7 p.m. Friday (May 9th) at Flying Fish. FF plans to have a well-aged barley wine and a sixtel of Espresso Porter on tap for the occasion. Like to talk beer? See this guy.

We caught up with Don at the Philly Craft Beer Fest back in March and asked him about the genesis of his book. Check out the video.

Don’s been keeping up with beer under his working-class nom de plume for a dozen years as a Philly Daily News and Web columnist. So sandwiching his expertise and wisdom between book covers was a natural beer-writer arc.

It’s not on the video, but we also asked Don for beer-consumer advice, some how to buy, not so much what to buy. He threw in a little of what to drink.

Don’s advice: Buy fresh, buy local. Fresh beer is always a goal, and what brewers save on transport costs trickles down to store shelves and tap handles. One more word: Step off your beaten path; don’t just drink your favorites from your favorite brewers. Explore their other styles, too.

Elsewhere:
To us anymore the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry is as shopworn as the Mac-PC feud or Canon-Nikon debate. So our pulses didn’t quicken over that Sox jersey jinx attempt that had to be retrieved from concrete poured at the under-construction Yankee stadium.

But this one is mildly funny: A Cricket Hill fan apparently emblazoned a tribute to the Fairfield brewer’s brews on a girder at the stadium in the Bronx. Check out CH’s blog for the picture.

The Dance Card
Jersey brewers are busy this month. Check out this from the Garden State Craft Brewer's Guild calendar:

• German wheat beer specialist High Point Brewing is hosting an open house from 2-4 p.m. on Saturday (May 10) at the brewery and will be featuring their maibock. (It’s billed as a last chance for that seasonal.) High Point will also have its Ramstein beers at Spuyten Duyvil in Brooklyn May 8 for a niche brand night. (Check out Spuyten’s jukebox listing. XTC’s “Big Express” is currently in the mix; “All You Pretty Girls” is a great tune. King Crimson’s hypnotic disc “Discipline” is on the juke, too.)

Also look for High Point/Ramstein on May 25 at Old Bay Restaurant in New Brunswick for OB’s annual Maifest.

• More Fish: Flying Fish is on the card of 48 U.S. breweries at the Brewers Association's inaugural food-beer matchup, "SAVOR: An American Craft Beer and Food Experience," May 16-17. FF is among only eight mid-Atlantic brewers on the Washington, D.C., happening's lineup, and this is one of those events that (happily) breaks from oversold chug festivals and marries beer to great food in a more intimate setting. It's also rounded out with educational discussions on brew and food.
Website: www.savorcraftbeer.com

Don’t forget:
• Tuesdays are cool at Triumph Brewing in Princeton, meaning it’s a jazz house on Nassau Street. Have a pint and get Mingus eyes (that one’s for Richard Thompson fans).

• Double up at JJ Bittings in Woodbrige with two for one on Tuesdays, a good deal now that a gallon of gas rivals happy hour prices and will probably pass them before summer's done. Live entertainment on Thursdays.

• Cask of the Amarillo … OK we’re taking some wordplay license with E.A. Poe works, but cask ale is featured at the Gaslight in South Orange on Thursdays and on Fridays at Harvest Moon in New Brunswick.

Cheers.

Down by the river, Part 2

It’s getting to the tail end of the double Belgian wit seasonal that River Horse Brewing introduced in March in draft and bottles.

Co-owner Glenn Bernabeo says they have one more tank to run through, but the beer has exceeded expectations, doing well enough to earn a place in the Lambertville brewery’s year-round lineup.

That’s not official, Glenn says, but the brew has cleared a crucial hurdle toward life as a year-round beer. Stay tuned.

RH's wit (7% ABV) debuted around March 1 as the first of a brewmaster's reserve series, and was a centerpiece of what RH poured at ShadFest April 26-27. (Check out the stills from the video shot at RH’s back lot on the Saturday of the weekend event in Lambertville. The video is for a larger piece we have in the works on RH.)

All of RH’s beers were on tap for the event, and Glenn says the brewery went through nearly 30 half barrels over ShadFest. The brewery sold 1,200 pint glasses as well. And the overall attendance at the brewery? Well, it’s just a guess, but somewhere between 1,500-2,000 people.

FYI: Glenn and Chris Walsh are closing in on their first anniversary of taking over as owners of RH and, as you would expect, are busy making plans for the next year.

Speaking of anniversaries, Tim Kelly notches his first year at the Tun Tavern this month. Tim is an alumnus of Flying Fish in Cherry Hill, and FF’s loss has clearly been the Tun’s gain.

When he took over, Tim noted he wanted to put more pub-brewed lagers on tap in Atlantic City. That’s not always an easy task, since the longer cold conditioning required for lagers ties up tank space, compared to ales, which by nature have faster turn-around times.

But Tim has managed to keep his word, and not just with seasonal lagers, like bocks. Last fall the Tun put on a Vienna lager, although its decoction-mashed Oktoberfest was fermented with an ale yeast.

Right now, the Tun’s winding down its doublebock and pouring a dark lager that’s a response to bar patrons looking for a Yuengling-like beer. But the real treat is on the horizon, a Czech pilsner that’s due on tap some time in June.

Hopping on hops, Part 2

Here’s an update on Weyerbacher’s hop-growing efforts in Easton, Pa.

Owner Dan Weirback says the 500 Nugget and 1,000 Cascade rhizomes they set out on an acre of land are indeed part of the brewery’s long-range thinking to address the current hop shortage. By the by, the pictured hop cone was cribbed from Wikipedia's entry.

Weyerbacher is one of those breweries that works in hops (and malts) like painters work in oils, achieving textures, tones and overall complexity. Some examples: Simcoe Double IPA, Eleven Triple IPA, Hops Infusion IPA. When you pump up beers like they do, hops gain some added importance.

Planted two weeks ago, Weyerbacher’s hops so far are taking root, and the brewery is using a drip irrigation method recommended by Rutgers University. The Nuggets (a bittering hop) are leading the way over the Cascades (all-purpose hop), and Dan estimates a combined yield this fall of about 100 to 500 pounds for use in a new, special pale ale or IPA.

The brewery will have to settle for a harvest by hand, something agriculture folks see as less than ideal. But enough volunteers and friends have committed to help, and Dan’s confident the job can get tackled over perhaps a weekend.

These first-season hops will get used “wet,” meaning the traditional drying process will be skipped. Some brewpubs and breweries, Dan says, have been experimenting with hops right off the vine, and have noted a fresher flavor in the brews.

In two or three years however, Dans says, the brewery will probably look to get its hands on some drying equipment. (The Rutgers research farm that grew hops in its demonstrations used an old tobacco dryer.) By then, Weyerbacher’s crop yield could be 2,000 pounds. That may sound like a big number, but Dan thinks it's quite manageable for the brewery.

So how far can Weyerbacher take this idea? Well, they have 15 acres available for planting, and Dan estimates five acres could supply the brewery.

But they may just be content at having the flexibility to help offset hop-supply needs, especially in unfavorable market times.

Exactly how long the current shortage and ensuing price spike will last is anyone’s guess. “It could be a two-year blip, but it could also be five years,” Dan says.

China, Russia and India are all now producing more beer than ever before, he says. Stir that in with the recent bad harvest, acreage taken out of production and trend for hoppier beers and you get an idea of the ripples affecting the supply picture.

The good news for brewers is that Pacific Northwest growers increased acreage this spring by 25 percent.

Still, though we like Weyerbacher's ounce of prevention, and hope they can reap many pounds of cure.

Hopping on the hop bandwagon

Hops are growing in Ocean County. Even at this very moment.

In fact that’s them to the left, getting a good start after their early-April planting. Probably in another week, since hops grow rapidly, it may be time to get a trellis going and start coaching the bines to climb it.

This set is the more robust of four plantings we did of Centennial, a bittering hop that takes quite well to most growing areas, including the flowerbed on the side of our house. It’s good for American pale ales and American renditions of IPA (like Stone IPA), and is similar to Cascade, Chinook and Columbus.

With hop growing on our minds and the worldwide hop shortage – and the subsequent price spike – we surmised that New Jersey would be fertile ground for commercially growing hops.

After all, New Jersey falls within a hop-friendly latitude and still lays some claim to the title “Garden State.” Never mind that subdivision coming soon to fallow land near you. (For the record, we are told that hops were once widely grown in New York state, around the early 1900s, but apparently not in New Jersey.)

So we put the hop-prospects question to the agriculture folks at Rutgers University. What we got was an answer that was part recent history and part economics, something that was not entirely yes or no.

First, hops, as a farm commodity, do look attractive right now, as any crop does when it’s fetching top dollar in the marketplace.

And if you recall, hop prices have shot up lately (so has the price of your beer), thanks to some recent bad harvests and lost acreage. Meanwhile, the popular-of-late extreme beer category has further boosted demand for hops. That super-duper, triple-double IPA ultra hop bomb you told your buddy is the best beer you ever poured probably used more hops to make than all the homebrewed beers in New Jersey combined.

But hyperbole aside, higher demand plus tighter supply equals sharply higher prices, something that puts smiles on farmers’ faces. So, yeah, hops are kind of lucrative at the moment. And New Jersey still has farmers, and RU did some hop growing demonstrations in the mid- to late-1990s at a research farm in Hunterdon County, planting Willamette, Nugget, Cascade, Perle and Chinook varieties.

RU sent some of their hops to a Pacific Northwest lab for testing to determine the alpha acid/bittering strengths, critical information any brewer needs.

What RU learned was that the bittering potential of the Jersey hops generally fell within the preferred range of hops from Washington State’s Yakima Valley, where over three-fourths of U.S. hops are grown. (Some of the high alpha hops, like Chinook and Nugget were slightly below their Yakima cousins, but not much. Chinook, by the way, used to be the bitttering hop in Flying Fish’s brews but has since been replaced.) Also, the Jersey hops didn't fall victim to pests that couldn't be handled.

RU’s efforts came just after New Jersey finally entered the craft brewing era. The Ship Inn brewpub, the British ales specialists in Milford in Hunterdon County and a front-runner in the Jersey pub brewing movement, served beer it made with the Garden State hops at dinner for folks involved in the project and a local legislator, Assemblywoman Connie Myers.

(FYI: Myers sponsored legislation that would have provided incentives for producing hops, so long as they were used by microbreweries in New Jersey. The bill never cleared committee, another reason to frown about craft beer's status in this state. Myers, by the way, gave up her Assembly seat in 2005.)

To underscore that growing hops around here isn’t a far-flung idea, RU folks mentioned that Weyerbacher Brewing in Easton, Pa., just across the Delaware River from Phillipsburg, planted an acre of hops a couple of weeks ago. Dan Weirback, the man behind such Weyerbacher brews as Double Simcoe IPA, Blithering Idiot (barley wine) and Black Hole (porter-stout) wasn’t immediately available to elaborate on the scope of their efforts. (We still hope to find out from him.)

So given RU's past work and current market conditions, things look favorable for Jersey fresh hops, right?

Sort of. But here’s where things become the bitter truth, so to speak.

While easy to grow, RU folks say, hops are expensive to harvest. Unlike some kinds of produce, they’re a crop you can’t efficiently harvest by hand. As RU’s John Grande, a fellow with PhD in horticulture tells us, it would be like trying to harvest corn one kernel at a time.

The vines are easy to cut down, but getting all the lupulin-packed cones is another matter, and for that farmers would need to mechanize. But the equipment needed for that job is pricey enough to cut deeply into profit potential, if not sour the deal outright.

Sigh.

But, remember RU’s answer wasn’t an outright "no," either.

There’s always the farmer’s old standby, the co-op, like-minded agriculturalists pooling resources so the overhead gets spread around and the price of that expensive harvesting and drying equipment (hops are generally dried somewhat before they’re used in brewing) isn’t coming out of one pocket. So there's some hope, if you're championing the idea of New Jersey becoming a player in the hop field.

But realistically, what’s the wind-up for Jersey hops? It’s like any new business venture: develop a sound game plan front to back and hope you’re in the right market at the right time.

Who knows, though, maybe Weyerbacher is smart to hop on hops. Maybe now is the right time.

Down by the river

New Jersey's ShadFest is this Saturday and Sunday in, where else, Lambertville, that quaint southern Hunterdon County town situated along the banks of the Delaware River and Delaware-Raritan Canal that has held this annual spring event since 1981.

The festival salutes the return of shad to the river, and features plenty of food, crafts and entertainment, i.e. live music.

There's also locally brewed beer, which is one of the things that distinguishes this event. Set up in the old Original Trenton Cracker factory building, River Horse Brewing has been part of the Lambertville landscape for a dozen years now. So it's as much a flavor of the festival as the myriad ways you can prepare shad.

If you made it to River Horse's Oktoberfest event last fall, then you'll know what to expect at the brewery's back loading area come this weekend. RH co-owner Glenn Bernabeo says the brewery will have its flight of beers on tap, including its new Belgian wit and its summer blond ale. There's no cover charge; it's pay as you drink. There will also be music and food from nearby vendors.

With a lot of events like this – Long Beach Island's annual Chowderfest comes to mind – it can be nearly impossible to find a beer in which you can taste the malt and hops. That's because distributors for the big national brewers usually infiltrate with some sponsorship, and next thing you know, the only thing on tap is fizzy yellow beers that are the portrait of boredom and undermine the unique flavors that are the host town or region's specialty.

We're not picking on Chowderfest, mind you, but we do think that folks on LBI could stand to turn things up a notch and marry some better beer flavors to the locally made chowders.

But this isn't about clams and ocean waves; it's about shad and the river. So yes, it's very cool, and even special, that there's a craft brewer in town serving locally brewed beer at ShadFest.

So by all means, support the local brewer. Your palate will be glad you did.

The Cricket in Chime Square

What’s the hottest beer video featuring a Jersey brewer?

It continues to be Cricket Hill’s Rick Reed teeing off on the big brewers’ bland beers and brainwash marketing tactics.

Rick’s screed from the mash tun rostrum at his Fairfield brewery (in the shadow of Anheuser-Busch just 20 miles down the road in Newark) has drawn 9,000 YouTube hits and counting since it was posted just over three months ago.

If you remember, the video was shot by a Cricket Hill friend on one of the brewery’s Friday evening tours. It drew bloggers like ants to sugar (including us) and spawned a parade of links and embeds from the YouTube hosting. And that was after plenty of CH fans had seen it and spread word themselves.

These days, beer fans bellying up to Cricket Hill’s station on the festival circuit mention seeing it (and a Coors distributor that Rick ran into squawked about it, so there's also a Bud version, with 1,048 hits). There’s even a link to the initial video at the Cricket Hill’s Wikipedia entry, but that tidbit shouldn't be too surprising, given the user-contribution nature of the online encyclopedia.

In a world of short attention spans and a plethora of Web viewing choices, and this being a niche topic, we'd argue that the 8,700 number is practically viral, and a testament to Rick’s humorous delivery and, dare we say, a groundswell of shared sentiment. (The clip’s onward pace was a pleasant surprise to Rick, who says he doesn’t surf YouTube’s site.)

Meanwhile, those of you who flocked to Cricket Hill’s Belgian-style summer beer (trappist yeast and some wheat malt) will be happy to know it will soon be available in bottles as a seasonal. The beer was a new offering last year and popular enough to earn the in-glass treatment this year.

Rick says there’s still some wrangling with federal regulators over the labeling for Jersey Summer Breakfast Ale.

For the uninitiated, federal folks have a say in labeling, among other things, for alcoholic beverages produced and introduced into the marketplace.

In this case, it seems that Uncle Sam is tripping over and raising a bushy eyebrow at the word “breakfast” in the beer’s name – never mind that they wouldn’t bat an eye at “lunch” or “dinner” used similarly – and even wanted to know what was in the beer (maybe they thought it had Scrapple or Taylor ham in it) and demanded an accounting of the ingredients.

Whatever happened to free speech? Even in marketing. (The savvy among you will recall a stink a decade ago when some state regulators – New York among them – thumbed down Michigan brewer Bad Frog's label of the frog giving the finger.) Rick is undaunted and laughed that he can always fall back and call it "brunch."

Meanwhile, CH still expects to have the summer ale available next month and at the shore (CH beers, notably for now their lager, are going on tap at the Clam Hut in Highlands in Monmouth County). Look for the summer ale – and eventually other CH seasonals – in plain white 12-pack cartons adorned with identifying stickers (a budget-conscious move since packaging doesn't come cheap).

CH's ESB-ish ale, Colonel Blides Bitter, is also getting the same bottle treatment, initially anyway, but will eventually be in printed cartons like Cricket Hill’s flagships, East Coast Lager, Hopnotic IPA and American Ale, as it becomes CH's fourth year-round bottled beer. (FYI: The Colonel is on cask at the 700 Club in Philly, according to Kevin Rowe’s site.)

Say you saw it on Roller Derby:
Also: Cricket Hill was chosen as the official beer of the Philly Roller Girls teams. The Broad Street Butchers, Heavy Metal Hookers and Philthy Britches tasted lots of beers but felt CH’s East Coast Lager and Hopnotic IPA were what got fans rolling. Feisty women on wheels, skating for bragging rights, and great beer. Beat that WWE.

Cricket Hill site: crickethillbrewery.com
Official Cricket Hill blog: crickethillbrewery.blogspot.com

Keeping it real

New Jersey’s brewpubs landed on The New York Times’ radar. We snagged our 15 minutes of celebrity in the process, but never mind that … Check out the Times’ story; it’s a nice read.

Here’s the video from the March 16th real ale festival at Triumph, the coda to Philly Beer Week.

Quick recap: Twenty area brewers (seemed like more) brought in their best – and tasty – efforts at cask-conditioned ale; but let’s put our palate where our hearts are – is there really any other way to have ale? Really now?

(A couple of tech notes … it was a real challenge shooting in Triumph’s Old City pub. Mostly because of the lighting, three different sources to account for, including a sun that poured in the windows, then ducked behind clouds, only to come back out after we had opened up a few f/stops for an interview. Maddening.)

Nonetheless, here are the moving images from It’s Alive: The Real Ale Festival. (Too bad copyright exists on the old Universal Frankstein film; otherwise we would have cribbed that line.) A word of thanks to Jay Misson, director of brewing operations at Triumph, and Tom Kehoe, owner of Yards Brewing.

It was a classy event, one distinguished from the big festivals by virtue of it being about tasting beer, not merely drinking as much of it as you could inside four hours.

Meanwhile, we’re still working on the video from the Atlantic City festival (March 8-9). We opted to table that one to get the Philly piece done. Speaking of AC, and we’re not out to throw cold water on it, but that festival this year just seemed to devolve into a fairly big drunkfest.

And we're not trying to jab a finger in the eye of the promoters, either, but a lot of people languished in line trying to get through the turnstiles, and cash and merchandise were stolen from one brewery's table. Not cool.

Beer festivals have the potential to bring out busloads of bacchanal hedonists to begin with, but AC this year … well, a few people were probably skating home in their own sick.

Enough said.

Meanwhile, the longest day of the year welcomes the Garden State’s craft brewers for their annual festival aboard the USS New Jersey: June 21st, the summer solstice. Tickets are 40 bucks, that’s another $5 jump on the bar tab for the event. But in case you haven’t noticed, everything’s been going up. Tickets are available through Ticket Web.

And 750 is the magic number. That’s what attendance is limited to. (Festival hours: noon to 4 p.m.)

Also on the calendar:

• High Point Brewing Company is hosting an open house on this coming Saturday (April 12th), and it’s your last chance to sample Ramstein maibock fresh at the brewery.
• The Tun Tavern is holding another brewmaster dinner (April 25th). The food was excellent at the anniversary dinner in January, so keep this one in mind.

Those are the weekend gigs. As usual, weekday offerings can be found on the craft brewers guild website calendar.

The envelope, please ...

Atlantic City ... there are winners and losers. But if you recall your John Mellencamp, "that ain't no big deal."

Still some folks like to have their names up in lights on glory row. So we have the list of who got what in judging at the AC beer fest last weekend. The category headings in bold are ours; contest ones are in parentheses. And, just in case, the Belgian one, well that's our joking referenece to Brussels, not editorial comment on beer flavor. (It just kills a one-liner when you have to explain it ...)

Oh, and if we may, how about a congratulatory round of applause to River Horse, the Tun Tavern and Flying Fish.

However, we take exception to that show finish for FF's IPA and think it was miscategorized. (We also think Sly Fox's Phoenix Pale Ale was miscategorized.)

FF makes one of the most drinkable IPAs around. Emphasis on drinkable. Some of the IPAs these days are about as enjoyable as lighting matches and putting them out on your tongue. (Though we like and drink a number of the imperial beers out there, we're just getting wary and weary of them.)

Anyway ... what Mellencamp said ... no big deal. But like Buffalo Springfield said, for what it's worth ... Here's the list:

Bringing in the sheaves
(Wheat)

1. Blanche de Bruxelles
2. Black Dog Crystal Weiss
3. Baltika #8

Gossamer beer
(Light lager)

1. Obolon Lager
2. River Horse PennBrook
3. Baltika #7

Brownie you're doing a heck of a job
(Brown ale)

1. Ipswich Dark Ale
2. Abita Turbo Dog
3. Tun Tavern Brown

Not dark yet
(Pale Ale)

1. Lancaster Hop Hog
2. Boulder Mojo
3. Flying Fish Hopfish India Pale Ale

Isn't that special?
(Specialty beer)

1. Lancaster Strawberry Wheat
2. Tun Tavern Gruit
3. Black Dog Honey Raspberry Ale

Amber alert
(Amber ale)

1. Boulder Hazed & Infused
2. Red Seal Ale
3. Sly Fox Phoenix Pale Ale

Amber alert, reprise
(Amber/dark lager)

1. Baltika #4
2. Samuel Adams Black Lager

Sturdy enough to carry
(Porter/stout)

1. Lancaster Milk Stout
2. Young's Double Chocolate Stout
3. North Coast Old Rasputin

Manneken Pis
(Belgian style ale)

1. Allagash Tripel
2. Allagash Dubbel
3. Flying Fish Abbey Dubbel

Mighty brew
(Strong beer)

1. Malheur 12
2. North Coast Brother Thelonious
3. Saranac Imperial Stout

Yawn
(People's choice)

1. Long Trail Blackbeary Wheat

March of the beer fans

It’s been a week since the Philly Craft Beer Festival, and here’s our look back on it in moving images and sound.

A word of thanks to a lot people: Greg Zaccardi and everyone at High Point Brewing for some really key support; festival organizers Starfish Junction Productions and TotalBru for letting us shoot; Glenn Bernabeo of River Horse for taking the time to do an interview; Joe Sixpack himself, Don Russell, for likewise sitting for an interview (we’ve got some more footage of Don taking about the origins of his Philly Beer Guide book that we’ll be posting soon); and Gregg Bevan of VideoLink in Philly, who, by chance, noticed our work online, and gave us a shout-out and a compliment, and lent some technical advice and even a helping hand. It was greatly appreciated.

So now here we are, a week into March … Philly Beer Week has already notched one day done (the official Friday, March 7th, start), with nine more bottles of beer events left on the wall. (Pitty about the crappy weather on Friday; hope the turnouts for those first-day events didn’t suffer.)

And down the shore, beer enthusiasts will be trolling the aisles at the Atlantic City festival (tickets are still available) today and tomorrow, so get out your funky hats, T-shirts and beer goggles and enjoy the show that is uniquely Atlantic City.

Remember when talking beer, if you describe a brew as having hints of licorice, chocolate, nuttiness, citrus notes ... well you could very well be on the mark.

Or navel-gazing.

We prefer the less Socratic Homer J. Simpson way to discuss beer:

• "Here's to alcohol, the cause of — and solution to — all life's problems.
• "Homer no function beer well without."
• "Son, when you participate in sporting events, it's not whether you win or lose: it's how drunk you get."
• "Son, a woman is like a beer. They smell good, they look good, you'd step over your own mother just to get one! But you can't stop at one. You wanna drink another woman!"

Homer: Got any of that beer that has candy floating in it? You know, Skittlebrau?
Apu: Such a beer does not exist, sir. I think you must have dreamed it.
Homer: Oh. Well, then just give me a sixpack and a couple of bags of Skittles.

Of course we jest.

So after AC, we’re hitting tomorrow’s Brewer’s Plate in Philly. Beyond that, we may check out the Tippler’s Tour at Once Upon A Nation on the 12th in the Philly Beer Week lineup. Why not embrace those long-lost days when beer was a go-to potable beverage because water was, often enough, teeming with more microbes than a funked up petri dish?

Then it's on to the Real Ale Festival at Triumph Brewing in Old City on the 16th, the period at the end of the sentence that is Philly Beer Week.

Beer. Live it.

Here a beer, there a beer

And this weekend, everywhere a beer. It’s busy in just about every direction of the compass

Westward ho!
Philly Beer Week officially starts Friday evening. Don Russell whose new book, “Philly Beer Guide” was just released, leads a sampling of 22 locally produced craft beers at The Markeplace at East Falls in, of course, Philadelphia.

But wait there’s more: Flying Fish’s head brewer, Casey Hughes, is packing a firkin of ESB for a meet-and-greet at the Good Dog Bar.

Check the Philly Beer Week site for more events. And trust us, there’s plenty more for the next nine days.

Meanwhile on this side of the Delaware, you have a couple of options to sate your beer wanderlust: maibock and lottabock, er uh, lots of beer.

North by northwest
Friends of the blog High Point Brewing (Butler) debut their maibock (draft only) on Saturday with a ceremonial Austrian oak barrel tapping at 2 p.m. We were at their Oktoberfest barrel tapping, so we can tell you for certain it’s great beer served up with good fun. Bring a growler. Also look for High Point's winter wheat beer at Dawson Street Pub in Manayunk, Pa., on Monday (March 10th) for the doublebock bonanza, a Philly Beer Week event, and at the Long Island Spring Beer Fest March 29 at Nassau Coliseum. (From left: Tina, Greg and Capt. Mike)

Goin’ South
Want some action? Head to Atlantic City, the Celebration of the Suds for 2008. AC’s two-day beerfest has grown year to year, pulling in crowds from all around (last year, we ran into a lot of people who came down from New York). Flying Fish and River Horse this year join the Tun Tavern as Jersey-based brewers pouring at the festival. Speaking of River Horse, the Lambertville brewery debuted a Belgian Double White wheat beer (7% ABV, spiced with orange, corriander and lemon) at the Philly Craft Beer Festival last weekend. From what we saw, it was the pick of those in the crowd who stopped by River Horse's station.

There’s plenty of entertainment and, of course, beer. We didn’t see Hi Point Pub (an Absecon bar/eatery tucked just off Route 30) listed as one of the vendors, but if they are there, stop by their booth and sample their crab bisque. You’ll be glad you did.

And finally, video of the Philly Craft Beer Festival is being distilled, er uh, edited and should be up by Friday. Here’s a fast-grab teaser.



Cheers …

Cash, flow

We’ve kept some distance from weighing in on the hop shortage (bad harvest, less acreage in production) and that sharp spike in malt prices (farmers growing corn for ethanol).

No one likes wallowing in bad news. Maybe we were just hoping the whole thing would go away or sort itself out before too long.

Wishful thinking.

And then this item tumbled into the inbox last week, throwing us more of a scare than higher beer prices we’ve seen lately: Krogh’s brewpub in Sparta, in New Jersey’s northwest, announced that the hop shortage was forcing it to suspend sales of beer to go.

Ah crap. Now we're witnessing hop shortage affecting beer availability (albeit beyond the pub’s pints at the bar), not just higher prices.

But then, thankfully, this happened: No sooner than they iced growler and keg sales, Krogh’s did an about-face, saying they could oblige folks coming in with their half-gallon jugs.

“After a few changes to brewing schedules, and acquisition of an additional supply of these key ingredients, we are happy to announce we are once again able to accommodate "To Go" sales of beer …” Krogh’s said in the follow-up announcement.

Whew!

But half-barrels and sixtels are still unavailable, Krogh’s says in its emails, adding that the situation could last up to a year before things return to normal.

After that, we started checking around a little bit to see if any other Jersey brewers were looking at workarounds to manage availability.

Happily no, or at least among the clutch of brewpubs we surveyed. Just some higher prices (25 to 50 cents her per pint).

The Ship Inn (Milford) is still putting its Brit style ales to go in their signature boxes (kinda like wine in a box) and doing growlers. (Their pint price went up from $3.95 to $4.25, by the way.)

Meanwhile at J.J. Bitting (Woodbridge), Mike Cerami says the higher price at his brewpub (from $4 to $4.50) is only the second hike in 11 years. Mike credits his brewer, August Lightfoot, with aggressively working to make sure the pub’s hop supply was safe and sound so it could keep offering the range of beers patrons have come to expect. (J.J.’s has its O’Halloran’s Irish Red, a 4.7% ABV session ale, on for St. Paddy’s Day; also look for their Barley Legal barleywine and an IPA.)

Tim Kelly at the Tun Tavern in Atlantic City says pints went up to $4.50. Our advice, join the VIP club there and save a buck per pint. (Last we check, all you had to do was sign up.)

Something else we found: Despite the double whammy with hops and malt, the bigger beer styles, like IPAs and strong ales, weren’t being sacrificed because of the extra malt or hops they require. Case in point: Harvest Moon has a Belgian strong ale (8-8.5% ABV) coming on tap (if it’s not already), and another big Belgian beer in the works. Brewer Matt McCord says patrons have been supportive in the face of higher prices.

Matt adds that it helps to get the word out about what’s driving the increase. And others say the tale of hops and small-batch breweries, where locking in prices three years out isn't affordable (like the giant brewer A-B can do), goes something like this:

Small-batch brewers (who often work on thin margins to begin with) last year had to make a snap decision and commit to hops at sharply higher prices. How much? Suppliers couldn't immediately say, but not committing meant the risk of not having hops. (An example of sticker shock: It’s costing Flying Fish in Cherry Hill a skyrocketing 80 grand just for the Styrian Goldings it uses in its seasonal Farmhouse Summer Ale.)

Then there's malt costs. Sowing barley has taken a back seat to corn and soybeans. Brewers need malted barley, the government thinks corn figures into the next fuel source (yet, sugar cane yields better results as far as ethanol goes) ... The commodity shift has picked craft brewers' pockets.

Wheat beer brewer High Point Brewing says their barley went from $20 to $35 per 55-pound bag; owner Greg Zacardi Butler says the brewery uses 15 to 20 of those bags per 15 barrels of beer. (Prices for the noble hops he uses jumped from $5 a pound to $20 to $25. Greg says High Point luckily overordered hops for 2007, so they got plenty at the lower price point. Still, the higher prices bring pressure.)

So yeah, we’re paying more for beer, a buck or so more per sixpack at the liquor store, and that quarter to half-dollar more for pints at the brewpubs. But don’t shove everything into the woe unto us column just yet.

Pint prices we surveyed hadn’t hit 5 bucks yet – you could pay as much as 6 bucks for a pint of Sam Adams at traditional bars – and folks at Triumph Brewing’s Philly location told us back in December they hoped to hold the line on pint prices if at all possible.

Also, consider this: Craft beer prices hadn’t really risen much for some time. And while no one likes paying more, your money is going for a better product: fresh, more flavorful beers.

So save any bitching for gas prices.

Getting their fill, Part 2

Flying Fish's new bottler is now up and humming.

We swung by the brewery in Cherry Hill last week and shot some footage as a run of Hopfish was getting the glass treatment.

A few years back, we shot the brewing, kegging and bottling processes at FF, but the tapes sat as an unfinished project (work schedules, other commitments and an external hard drive crash put a chill on turning the footage into something).

So when we heard the new bottler would be installed last month, it seemed like a good opportunity to dust off our 2004 footage of the old bottler (installed in 1996) and work up a short piece with shots of the new machine. That's a run of Grand Cru in the old footage, by the way.

All that was left was to come up with a presentation idea. And that came while watching a Simpson's episode in which the animators simulated an old movie. The result is "Beer Under Glass." Runtime: 3:49

Cheers.

PS: Thanks once again to FF.

Got you covered

While paging through some of the beer sites we normally check, we happened up this image.

It's the cover art of the New Jersey beer compendium Lew Bryson and Mark Haynie are making progress toward putting into your hands.

(We gave it the Apple iWeb-reflection Photoshop technique, which, yes, we're a fan of. And to think, just a mere seven or eight years ago adding scan lines over images was all the rage.)

As we noted earlier this week, and as Lew says on his blog, publication is still targeted this August.

Eat Drink Man Woman

These are some promotional clips we were asked to create for The Brewer’s Plate.

We’re very much flattered and honored that a topnotch, benefit event like this invited us to contribute something. We went last year and loved the food, the craft beers and what the event stands for (it’s a fundraiser for White Dog Community Enterprise’s Fair Food program), so when asked to help out, we happily said yes. A note of thanks to Benjamin – Ralph Archbold – Franklin, who contributed his time, and the Independence Visitor Center for allowing us to videotape there. Check out Breakfast with Ben some time. It plays to all ages.

Even if we weren’t involved, albeit in our small way, we’d still make this our don’t-miss event of the March 7th-16th Philly Beer Week.

And since March is overflowing with beer offerings (the Philly Craft Beer Festival is March 1st, while the Atlantic City beer fest is March 8th and 9th ), you might find yourself pressed for time, or cash to part with. So if you need to narrow your options to one, the BP again gets our vote. (Tickets are $50 for general admission – $60, after Feb. 15; and $100 for the premium, VIP admission.)

It’s bigger this year, 21 breweries paired with 21 restaurants in small stations, up from the 18 of each last year that attendees toured, sampling brews that complimented the food dishes. And it’s now at the Independence Visitor Center, at 6th and Market streets, having moved from the Reading Terminal Market.

Jersey beers on tap
A theme that runs through The Brewer’s Plate is locally grown and produced/locally served. The participating restaurants represent the cream of the Philadelphia region, and the brews come from a 150-mile radius of Philly, which means Jersey has a presence at the event: Climax Brewing, Cricket Hill, Flying Fish, River Horse and Triumph.

Cricket Hill and River Horse are newcomers to the BP and are serving American Ale and Tripel Horse Belgian style ale, respectively. Look for Flying Fish’s Farmhouse Summer Ale, a porter from Climax and a rye bock from Triumph (which as we know enjoys locations in Princeton, Philly and New Hope, Pa). Pint trek: Eric Nutt from Triumph tells us the Philly location is pouring a rauchbock now. Where there's smoke, there's good beer.

Aside from our home state brews, we’re looking forward to offerings from Troegs, Victory, Sly Fox, Iron Hill, Nodding Head and Yards. But truly, you can’t miss with any of the breweries that will be there.

Real food, real beer, real advice
Also on hand will be Brooklyn Brewery’s brewmaster and noted food and beer expert, Garrett Oliver (author of The Brewmaster’s Table: Discovering the Pleasures of Real Beer with Real Food), and Marnie Old, who, as one of the country’s leading wine educators and Philadelphia’s highest profile sommelier, is more widely known for grapes than hops. But she also knows beer, and last fall the Brewer's Association named her one of its three annual Beer Journalism Awards winners. Marnie was recognized for her article Beer Takes the High Road in the June 2007 issue of Santé.

She and Garrett will be leading tutorials on how to match beer and food. Classic pairings, we say.

Like the Brewer’s Plate and the Philly-area beer scene.