Uno holding first summer cask event

Brewer Chris Percello pours a half pint of cask ale.

Over the years, Uno Chicago Grill & Brewery has staked out territory as a champion of real ale, annually staging spring and fall cask events.

The most recent one at the Middlesex County brewpub last March saw a healthy crowd polish off 60 gallons of Jersey-brewed cask beer in about four hours. 

Now Uno's brewer Chris Percello is presenting a first-ever summer cask event on Saturday, with another Garden State lineup that this time stirs newcomer Bolero Snort Brewing into the mix. (Bolero launched as a contract beer company back in January, with its beers made at High Point Brewing in Morris County.)

Also featured will be beers by Carton and Kane Brewing, from neighboring Monmouth County, Climax Brewing, and Flying Fish. 

Kane cask

The pay-as-you-go event of half and full pints begins at noon at the Metuchen brewpub and will last as long as the beer does. Chris' advice is to arrive early if you want to get a taste of the entire lineup.

This incarnation will be Chris' fifth turn at the cask event, something he inherited when he took over as brewer from Mike Sella, who jumped to Basil T's brewpub in Red Bank in 2011. Mike started the Uno cask events in 2009.

"We're probably going to have at least three firkins this time around and about seven pins," Chris says. "The most important thing is making people aware of the great beer we have in our state."

Among Chris' own contribution of house beers will be a saison dressed up with lemon verbena and Szechuan peppercorn, thanks to a people's choice survey.  

"It's a basic saison recipe. I use French saison yeast. In the actual brew I use coriander and lemon peel," Chris says. "Then we put it out there and asked people how they would like me to treat the pin. The combination they selected is lemon verbena and szechuan peppercorn added to the pin. We're hoping to get a little more of that lemon character out. 

"The szechuan peppercorns, although not like a typical peppercorn – they're actually not even considered a peppercorn – have a nice woody, earthy, slight citrus taste, and actually leave a kind of a numbing, tingling feeling on your tongue. They're actually supposed to enhance other flavors."

Brewing up history: Ballantine IPA à la today

Harvest Moon brewer Kyle McDonald stirs the grist during
the mashing in of the  IPA collaboration at Carton Brewing.

At best, this IPA can only approximate the past.

But it can still satisfy the present. 

And who knows, maybe it will point toward a future.

Five New Jersey craft beer brands – production breweries Carton and Kane, joined by brewpubs Harvest Moon, Uno and Trap Rock* – convened at Carton's digs in Atlantic Highlands on Sunday to jointly strike a mash on an IPA that will ultimately surmise the taste, salute the legend, or simply speak the name of Ballantine IPA, a hearty gem born of Newark's now-gone brewing identity. 

Uno brewer Chris Percello
checks Cluster hops aroma

Ballantine was chosen, says Carton founder Augie Carton, as a way to give the collaboration a Jersey-centric theme. It also allows the team marshaled from the Garden State Craft Brewers Guild to reclaim some of the state's brewing lore, given Ballantine IPA's influence on modern craft brewing. 

"It's from Newark, New Jersey. The yeast that Ken Grossman cultured to make Sierra Nevada, the Chico yeast, was stolen from Ballantine IPA. So it makes its way back," Augie says.

Using the IPA bible written by Stone brewmaster Mitch Steele as a guide (Ballantine's IPA is referenced in the book), the five breweries crafted a sturdy 8% ABV recipe with some adjunct ingredients (flaked maize) and Bullion hops to capture some signatures of the original beer. (The collaboration beer is being fermented with White Labs California yeast.)

Ballantine IPA label. Note that
it mentions Newark, something
that would disappear as the
the brewery changed hands.

The 15 or so gallons brewed on Carton's pilot system will be served at the guild's festival June 22 from a guild-bannered table, but hopefully talked about by all who trod the fantail deck of the USS New Jersey battleship, where the festival has been annually staged for nearly 10 years now.

Ballantine India Pale Ale owns a place in beer culture as an American-made IPA that won a following generations before the Pavlovian response those call letters – IPA – would come to evoke in craft beer drinkers today: a thirst for muscled-up, super-hoppy brews turned out by U.S. brewers rewriting the natively British style's guidelines. 

Ballantine's IPA was apparently brewed on either side of Prohibition. Some historians say the first printed references to the company making a beer designated India pale ale appeared as early as 1878. It could have been brewed even earlier. IPA, as style was in demand in England in the 1840s, with advertising references to India Pale Ale existing 20 years prior. Brewing the style the U.S. around that period doesn't seem that much of a stretch.

Whatever the case, Ballantine India Pale Ale, a 7.5% ABV wood-aged beer (60 IBUs) with its signature aroma owing to hop oils added to the aging vessels, went on the market post-Prohibition in 1934, about a year after the 21st Amendment had officially taken effect and the 18th Amendment was truly buried.

From left: Carton brewer Jesse Ferguson,
Kyle McDonald, and Uno brewer Chris Percello 

Overtime, as production shifted to other states via corporate changes, the brewing techniques evolved, with the alcohol content ultimately trending down a couple of points, after the IBUs were reined in. 

By the time Sierra Nevada Pale Ale was undeniably making a name for itself, Ballantine IPA was fading from the landscape, becoming a setting sun, but still revisited on homebrewer and beer enthusiast Internet discussion boards. Not to mention chat among brewers like the guild crew, pondering its quest to make something like it, or honoring it.

Stepping away from the brewing, Kyle McDonald, Harvest Moon's brewer, took some time to reflect on the moment, calling the gathering a chance to build a buzz about the guild's festival and what he hopes will be a "great IPA" plus a brewing camaraderie that continues.

"Collaborations are very trendy right now in the brewing industry. For us to do something like this, (it) offers something special at the battleship to encourage people to come out," Kyle says. "I hope to see more of this type of collaboration moving forward." 

*EDITOR'S NOTE: Trap Rock Brewery and Restaurant supplied hops for the brew, but brewer Charlie Schroeder was unable to attend the actual brewing. Also, a shout-out JessKidden, an email friend and an ongoing source of historical guidance to BSL. Thanks again. 

Clockwise from left: Michael Kane, Kyle McDonald,
Augie Carton and Jesse Ferguson

Guild collaboration brew set for Sunday

How many Jersey brewers does it take to make 20 gallons of beer for a summer festival?

As many as can fit around a Tippy brew set-up at Carton Brewing on Sunday.

The Atlantic Highlands brewery, in conjunction with Kane Brewing from nearby Ocean Township, will brew a throwback IPA that echoes Ballantine India Pale Ale. 

The beer will be served at the Garden State Craft Brewers Guild Festival on June 22. 

Planned to track toward maltiness, the beer is also targeted to finish out at 8% ABV, with Bullion hops walking point. 

Joining the two Monmouth County breweries will be guild members Trap Rock brewpub (Berkeley Heights) and Uno's (Metuchen), and possibly some others. 

A taste of serendipity for Carton Brewing

Carton Brewing, the Garden State's newest craft brewery, plans to turn out another batch of the session-strength golden ale that the draft-only production brewery teamed with a double IPA when it entered New Jersey's craft beer market back in August.

Launch (4.6% ABV) was a brew Carton made to break the seal their 15-barrel brewhouse in Atlantic Highlands in mid-July, a 30-barrel batch produced over a two-day trial run to put the newly installed Newlands Systems brewing set-up through the paces and ensure everything functioned properly.

The ale was intended to be a one-off brew and a placeholder beer on taps until Carton's flagship brew Boat, a hoppy session beer, was ready. Serendipitously, Launch found favor among craft beer bars that are inclined to steer patrons more accustomed to drinking pedestrian macro light brews toward better beer.

"The first beer we ever made is winning over the Miller Lite crowd. We haven't been able to stop making that beer," founder/co-owner Augie Carton (pictured above) said Saturday during an open house/brewery tour. "It's definitely become its own thing, and we will make it again, even though we thought we'd only ever make it that one time.

"There are those bars in New Jersey that are craft and want to cure people of Miller Lite, and they find they are having enormous success with Launch, where I thought they would have an enormous amount of success with Boat."

Boat was the catalyst for Augie and his cousin, Chris Carton, to start the brewery with their homebrewer friend Jesse Ferguson, (who is now the brewer for Carton Brewing). They wanted a beer that was as full-flavored as a double IPA from start to finish, yet session strength to be enjoyed over a few pints without ending up incoherent and on the floor.

"Boat is playing more to the craft beer crowd as a quaffable IPA," Augie says. "We thought it would play better to the wings community. What we've found is, it's killing in places of IPA drinkers who were having the same troubles we were having ... places like Cloverleaf (in Caldwell), which is a robust beer drinkers bar. They've got a collection of IPA-drinking regulars. Those guys wanted a beer they could have multiples of."

Three months in the New Jersey beer scene, Carton's lineup also features the double IPA 077XX, which with Launch, kicked off the brand, and a table beer BDG, a riff on biere de garde (the beer is actually more of a brown ale), or you can think of it this way: brunch, dinner, grub.

"It's doing well, better than expected, and for people who don't like hops – the rest of our beers tend toward hops so much – that's working for the brown ale/malt crowd," Augie says. "And now we're working on our milk stout because we're Carton, and you can't not have a carton of milk."

The stout, dosed with a mid-kettle addition of Bullion hops, is now in a second generation of pilot brewing, with another test batch or two to be done before a final version will be brewed in time to hit the market in late December or the start of next year. The goal now is to dial back some of the customary sweetness found in milk stouts.

"We don't really like sweet beers. The problem is, milk stout is inherently a sweet beer. I think the guys like Keegan (Mother's Milk) really nail it. It's just not too sweet," Augie says. "We're big into the session beer idea, and I don't find any beer as sessionable as a good low-alcohol stout. So that's what we want our milk stout to be.

"It's going to come in around 4 (percent ABV), and what we're doing is taking a super-roasty, just a ridiculously acrid over-roasted, malt bill and mashing it up against the sweetness of milk, and try to find the complexity to get you through a fifth, sixth, seventh, eighth, ninth, 10th pint."

Meanwhile, Augie says the fledgling brewery is already discovering the byproduct of their beers being well-received in the marketplace: the matter of keeping pace with demand. Carton Brewing is already talking about adding more capacity, unless their production schedule can be tweaked without compromising quality of the beer.

"We're in 40 places in New Jersey. We hit that right around eight weeks; we've been open 10 or eleven," he says. "We kind of had to stop. If people come to us and ask for our beer, we'll sell it to them, but we're not really pushing to get into new places because the last thing we want to do is let down those (initial) places."

To keep pace, though, new tank space could come online by next year's boating season.

"I think we're going to order it at the beginning of 2012. I think we're going to need it come summer," Augie says. "We've got an account right down the street that's selling six sixtels a week of Boat. By our business plan, they were only supposed to be selling one sixtel a week of Boat. They're selling six sixtels a week of Boat in November; it's going to be a dozen in June, so by June, we have to be able to make more Boat.

"Part of that is figuring out the true capacity of this brewery," he says.

Jersey brewers in Irene's tempest

One of New Jersey's newest craft brewers sits on the frontline of Hurricane Irene's wrath, but the folks who run nanobrewery Cape May Brewing are optimistic the massive storm won't rob them of the 7 barrels of beer now conditioning in their cold room.

Irene is expected to be the first hurricane to pound the Garden State since the Great Hurricane of 1994. The storm's south-to-north trek along the heavily developed Atlantic Coast, bringing buckets of rain, savage winds and power outages, is a reminder of how vulnerable businesses can be at the hands of Mother Nature.

But such a storm could prove a product-spoiler nightmare for a business like a brewery, where glycol chillers keep the beer temperature-controlled for fermenting and conditioning. And, given the size and slowly diminishing strength of Irene, breweries inland (especially River Horse in Lambertville, along the Delaware Canal) could face a share of problems, too.

In Lower Township, in Cape May County, Ryan Krill, of Cape May Brewing, says the brewery's tiny size is a blessing in the face of Irene.

The brewery's 5 barrels of Cape May IPA and 2 barrels of Cape May Wheat, a new brew for the nano, are conditioning in the brewery's insulated cold room, kept at 56 degrees by a window air-conditioner unit adapted as a chiller.

In the face of a prolonged power outage, Ryan says, the air conditioner could be powered sufficiently by a portable, gasoline-fired generator. Despite the storm, Ryan says Cape May Brewing, which began making beer earlier this summer, had plans to brew a porter using honey from a beekeeper in nearby Marmora.

Meanwhile in Atlantic Highlands, 100 miles north along the storm-threatened Jersey Shore, the folks at Carton Brewing say a prolonged power outage is a worry for New Jersey's newest craft beer-maker. Nonetheless, there's a silver lining.

"Big fear is power outage," Augie Carton said via text message Friday night. "We have nothing starting fermentation, so nothing is generating heat. As long as it's not out too long we hope everything stays in line."

Carton received its state license a couple of weeks ago, and entered New Jersey's craft beer market with a brace of brews, a session-strength golden ale called Launch (4.6% AV) and a double IPA called 077XX. The brew lineup reflects a slight change from earlier plans of leading off with a hoppy session beer called Boat.

Look for Boat, made with a kolsch yeast, to come out next month. Augie says releasing Boat in September will help reinforce its place in the market as a year-round signature brew.

Test brews go smoothly at Carton

An inside look at the test-run brew days at Carton Brewing.

Augie Carton, who founded the Atlantic Highlands brewery with his cousin Chris, says the two beers – a generously hopped session pale ale à la kölsch yeast and a double IPA brewed July 17th and 18th, respectively – are on track: "30 barrels of each beer bubbling away."

There are still some minor details to get squared away at the brewery, but an early August launch is the hope of the crew at Carton, which brewed those two initial beers under a temporary license from the state.

NOTE: Special thanks to Mike Kivowitz from New Jersey Craft Beer for an assist on the video.

Brew trifecta for Kane

Three brews in the fermenters at New Jersey's newest craft beer-maker, Kane Brewing.

The Monmouth County brewery broke the seal* on its brewhouse earlier this month with a Belgian single (a blonde ale) dosed with a Trappist ale yeast from East Coast Yeast.

After a short production break to fine-tune some of the brewery's control systems (i.e. gylcol), brewer Clay Brackley and founder Michael Kane fired up the kettle at the end of last week, brewing an American pale ale and a West Coast IPA.

"The first brew day was little longer, since were getting used to everything. The second and third days went smooth. We hit our gravities and volumes," Michael says. "The flavor profiles are looking good."

For beer geeks and the curious, German pils malt, some Vienna malt and wheat make up the grain bill for the 5.2 percent ABV Belgian blonde that's likely to be just one batch this summer but is expected return next year as Kane's summer seasonal. It's hopped with Styrian and Saaz.

The brew also serves as a step-up for the Trappist ale yeast, since it will get used in an upcoming big Belgian brew intended for the fall season taps, although the actual style hasn't been decided yet.

Michael traced the specifics of the second brew, the American pale ale, describing its grain bill as 2-row with some Munich malt, a touch of rye, and crystal 77, and hopped with Columbus and Hallertau in the boil and finished with Cascade and Centennial. You can expect the "C" hops for the dry-hopping.

"We hope (the rye) will add a little spiciness, more than you get with the average pale ale," Michael says. The brew will be around 5.5 percent ABV.

The third beer features pils, 2-row, cara-pils and crystal 44 malts, angling for a lighter color and drier finishing IPA at 6.5 percent ABV. "We weren't going for a super malty IPA, but we wanted to make sure there was some body to it," Michael says.

The brew was hopped with Columbus and Chinook in the boil, with later additions of Citra, Ahtanum and Centennial. Michael says it will be dry-hopped with some combination of those varieties.

This year has been an especially active one for craft brewery start-ups in the Garden State, with three licensed so far. Right now Kane Brewing is the state's newest craft brewer, a title it's not likely to hold for long, as Carton Brewing in Atlantic Highlands moves closer to licensing and its official launch. That could come sometime next month.

Calling Ocean Township home, Kane occupies industrial park space not far from where Heavyweight Brewing made its celebrated artisanal beers before closing shop five years ago. The closing left Basil T's brewpub in Red Bank as Monmouth County's sole craft brewery.

Basil's opened its doors in 1996 – a big year for craft brewery start-ups in the state – and Red Bank in particular has been at the forefront of craft beer in New Jersey, with the long-defunct Red Bank Brewery and its craft lagers part of that history. (Departing Basil's brewer Gretchen Schmidhausler got her start with Red Bank Brewery.)

In addition, Triumph Brewing once eyed the artsy town for a second location. (Triumph opened in Princeton in 1995 and followed that up years later with brewpubs in New Hope, Pa., and Philadelphia).

Triumph is again considering a presence in Red Bank. If that comes to fruition, Monmouth County could end up with four craft breweries, more than any other county in the state, and outpacing its neighbors to the north, Middlesex County and Essex County, by one. (Middelesex County is home to brewpubs JJ Bitting, Harvest Moon and Uno Chicago Grill & Brewery. Essex County has craft brewers Cricket Hill, Gaslight brewpub and Port 44 Brew Pub. It's also home to the outsized mainstream brewer Budweiser in Newark.)

*Figuratively speaking, of course. Not an equipment malfunction.

Carton Brewing fires up kettle in test run

Carton Brewing christened its 15-barrel brewhouse Sunday with back-to-back brews of a not-for-sale American pale ale called Boat Beer that, along with an amped-up IPA, will make up the brace of beers the Atlantic Highlands brewery is targeting for launch.

Another round of brewing was planned for Monday, with back-to-back runs of the double IPA called 077XX. (The name is a play on Monmouth County ZIP codes).

"Boat is our session pale ale: kolsch yeast, German malt bill and American hops. It's a 4.2 (percent ABV) session beer hopped within an inch of its life to keep it interesting for the whole session," says co-founder Augie Carton, explaining the brew that was first in the kettle.

The beer is bittered with Crystal and Nugget hops, with later additions of Galaxy, Citra, Cascade and Nugget again.

"We started (brewing) this morning. We just added our hops in the boil, so we're about an hour out from finishing it. And then we're going to do it again. Thirty barrel fermenters, 15-barrel brewhouse, so we're doing that twice to fill the fermenter," Augie says. "We did a water brew yesterday (Saturday) to make sure all the seals worked. But this is it. This is a first, true 15-barrel brew of this recipe that we've pilot-brewed probably 30 times."

The two days of beer-making were allowed under a temporary permit from state regulators, who granted the special permission so Carton could put the brewing equipment through the paces while a representative from manufacturer Newlands Systems was available to provide technical guidance for brewer Jesse Ferguson. (That's Jesse up top and at left; Augie is pictured at far right in photo below.)

The expected 60 barrels of beer from the brewing sessions won't be commercially available until the state officially issues Carton its limited brewery license. Augie expects that to happen sometime next month.

The brewery is awaiting installation of its kegging equipment and cold storage unit. The latter is expected to be installed by the end of the week. In addition, the brewery is also waiting for local officials to give a final blessing of the brewery building renovations.

Despite those unfinished details, Carton Brewing is on the cusp of becoming the Garden State's 24th craft brewery, following a run of six breweries coming online in New Jersey in just the past two years.

Two breweries opened last year – New Jersey Beer Company (North Bergen) and Port 44 Brew Pub (Newark), while 2011 has so far seen nanobrewers Great Blue (Somerset County) and Cape May Brewing getting licensed, and the larger production brewer Kane Brewing (Ocean Township) launching this month.

Three more nano breweries – Flounder Brewing in Hillsborough, Pinelands Brewing in Egg Harbor City and Tuckahoe Brewing – are in development, as is larger production brewer Turtle Stone Brewing down in Vineland.

The reality is, 2011 could wind up as New Jersey's biggest year ever for craft brewery start-ups – eight – should all of the projects in development come online behind those breweries that were licensed this year.

Right now, 1996 is the year with the most start-ups: six.

Interior work at Carton progresses

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.

Atlantic Highlands brewery in development

Another production brewery is under development in New Jersey, with hopes of entering the state's craft beer market with a draft brew around Memorial Day.

Cousins Chris and Augie Carton got the blessing of Atlantic Highlands officials for their planned Carton Brewing Company late last year. They've been spending this month gutting the interior of their building (pictured below) on Washington Avenue in the Monmouth County bayshore town to get it prepped for delivery of brewing equipment.

The equipment from Newlands Systems in Canada – a 15-barrel brewhouse, three 30-barrel fermenters, a 30-barrel bright tank and same-size hot liquor tank – is expected to arrive some time in March. Barring any glitches or delays, the cousins hope to have their state and federal licensing squared away in April so they can launch in time for the summer with a hoppy, kolsch-like beer. That brew could be followed up with a steam beer (working name Carton Common) or an IPA.

For their brewer, the Cartons have hired Jesse Ferguson, a Brooklyn friend and trusted homebrewer now turning pro after a stint managing the indie hip-hop record label Definitive Jux. Over the holidays, Jesse did some on-the-job training at Terrapin Brewing in Athens, Ga., where his brother-in-law, Bob Weckback, works. For the past couple of weeks, Jesse has been dividing his time between some on-site work in Atlantic Highlands and additional brewery training at Greenpoint Beer Works in Brooklyn. (Pictured at top around their half-barrel test brew kettle is Chris, Jesse and Augie.)

"It's my version of beer school. I'm trying to learn everything I can," he says.

New Jersey's craft beer scene is enjoying a growth spurt since of late. Iron Hill brewpub opened in 2009 in Maple Shade as the first new Garden State brewery in 10 years. In April 2010, New Jersey Beer Company launched, and last August, Port 44 Brew Pub began turning out its lineup of house ales.

By the end of 2010, there were four limited brewery license applications pending before state regulators.

Carton Brewing's development is tracking closely to that of Kane Brewing, which is taking shape about 20 miles south in Ocean Township and also eyeing a potential launch this spring. (Kane and Carton would become the second and third breweries in Monmouth County behind Basil T's brewpub in Red Bank.) And then there's the planned Cape May Brewing in Lower Township, which, like Carton and Kane, also has designs on a spring 2011 launch.

On Saturday, in separate telephone interviews, Chris and Jesse outlined plans for Carton Brewing.

The vision for the brewery goes back two or three years, says Chris, who's an attorney in Newark. (Augie works in finance in Manhattan.) The cousins, both longtime residents of Monmouth County's bayshore, were enjoying some beer (Troeg's Nugget Nectar, Chris recalls) one day, and in some discussion, came to the conclusion that their home state could and should be more of a player in the craft beer scene. Homebrewers themselves, they decided to take matters into their own hands and make the leap into the industry.

Fast forward to now, and Carton Brewing is shaping plans to hit the market initially with a draft beer, self-distributing to regional accounts. In time, packaging could include bottles or cans, with an early preference for cans, Chris says.

As the brewery project moves along, Jesse says, there's a palpable sense of excitement.

"I was down there (in Atlantic Highlands) yesterday taking some water samples and doing some measuring for the grist mill. I had to pinch myself," he says.

Jesse described the brew they plan to launch with as leaning toward a kolsch but with some hop assertiveness.

"The goal isn't to be a kolsch but to have a kolsch-like quality, with a hoppier profile," he says. "It will be complex enough that craft beer drinkers will know they're getting something special."

(NOTE: Interior shots courtesy of Jesse Ferguson and Carton Brewing.)