This chocolate's hot

Iron Hill writes another chapter in its ongoing sponsorship of competitive homebrewing, tapping a chipotle pepper-cocoa-cinnamon porter Monday night created by Camden County homebrewer Michael Bittner, who claimed the 2011 Iron Brewer title.

It's the second year for the contest at IH's Maple Shade location, continuing a tradition that started at the brewpub's West Chester, Pa., site a half dozen or so years ago and takes its name partly from the Iron Chef television show.

Claiming his top prize of making beer on a commercial scale, Michael, an Audubon resident and member of the Barley Legal Homebrewers club of South Jersey, brewed the 9-barrel batch of Aztec Ale Nov. 5th under the supervision of head brewer Chris LaPierre, who scaled up Michael's 5-gallon recipe.

(Last year's Iron Brewer beer was a coffee stout called Luca Brasi, brewed by Barley Legal members Jim Carruthers and Scott Davi, winners of the inaugural Maple Shade competition.)

Aztec Ale has a chocolaty aroma and taste, with a finish of gentle pepper heat; there's a bounce of vanilla in there, too. The cinnamon was prominent on the palates for some folks, but less so for others.

Both pro brewer and homebrewer were happy with the outcome.

"It's just what I remember it being, reminds me of the original recipe ... the smell, the taste is very similar," Michael said after the tapping.

Aztec Ale, Chris says, stands as one of the more exotic brews to be entered in the Iron Brewer contest.

"This would be one of them. It definitely had a lot of ingredients that I don't often use in the brewery," he says. "There was also a beet beer last time that came pretty close to winning. That was really interesting."

Aztec Ale also marks the third fusion of chocolate, cinnamon and hot peppers by a Jersey brewpub this year. Basil T's in Red Bank and the Tun Tavern in Atlantic City both brewed with those ingredients back in January as a collaboration called Chocolate Fire, done under the Garden State Craft Brewers Guild's Jersey's Finest banner.

Like the other 10 or so contestants who vied for the Iron Brewer title this year, Michael made his beer with wort collected from the second runnings of IH's The Situation, a robust ABV beer (almost 10%) that weaves in and out of a few styles (think barleywine meets double IPA).

The contest, in fact, started as a way to make use of the healthy amount of malt sugar that would otherwise go down the drain after the needed volume of wort for The Situation is collected in the kettle.

Chris says The Situation likely will be scheduled for brewing again in February. "So that's probably when we'll do the next Iron Brewer wort pickup," he says.

Right now Michael is basking in the limelight of Aztec Ale, and planning to clone Dogfish Head's Indian Brown Ale, not to mention looking forward to defending his Iron Brewer title after the next wort give away.

"I'm not going to say what I'm going to brew, and it may change before then, but I've got some ideas," he says.

Chocolate & Beer, Beer & Chocolate

Chocolate stout, chocolate porter ...

When it comes to putting chocolate in beer, those two styles are ready candidates.

Which is why Iron Hill brewer Chris LaPierre, looking for something a little different, opted out of those styles and turned a brown ale into a chocolate brown ale loaded with 22 pounds of dark Belgian chocolate for an October beer release at the Maple Shade brewpub.

The beer and a truffle, made with wort from Iron Hill's mash tun by chocolatier Mike Collins of Reily's Candy in Medford, were the centerpiece of an event this past Wednesday night that also saw a selection of Reily chocolates* paired with IH beers.

The video gives you the backstory to how this fusion came about. But the quick version goes something like this: Chris grew up in Medford and knew of Reily's, a 40-year fixture in the Burlington County town. Mike, who's been with Reily's for almost half of the shop's existence, is a Iron Hill mug club member and discovered IH beers at the company's West Chester, Pa., location.

Combining their crafts seemed like a natural idea, and the result is Reily's Chocolate Ale and the Iron Hill truffle.

*The pairings at the October 5th event:

• 70% Cacao with Gogi berries & Abbey Dubbel
• Tierra Missou Truffle & Bourbon Wee Heavy
• Jalapeno Chocolate & Ironbound Ale
• Vanilla Caramel & Oktoberfest
• Bourbon-Soaked Cherry Cordial & Cherry Vanilla Porter
• Iron Hill Chocolate with Caramelized Wort & Reilly’s Chocolate Ale

One for the chef

Some quick calendar notes:

Toms River brewpub Artisan's holds its mug club dinner Friday, beginning at 7 p.m., with a lineup of six beers, including a weizenbock that marks the first time ever brewer Dave Hoffmann has made that style for public consumption (Dave also owns Climax Brewing in Roselle Park).

There's also a really exceptional pils on tap, and as much as we'd like to keep talking up the beers, it's fitting to give some credit to Artisan's chef Steve Farley.

Steve puts together a really kickin' spread for this gig, including a buttermilk fried chicken that will have you ignoring your doctor's warnings about fried foods. Not because it's guiltless, but because it's incredibly good. (Think Thomas Keller of Ad Hoc fame – that kind of chicken).

So go for the beer, stay for the food.

Meanwhile, Saturday in Maple Shade Iron Hill celebrates its second anniversary with a bourbon-barrel aged winter warmer (kept four months in the barrel), appropriately dubbed Christmas in July, and a second generation of the Sorachi Ace-hopped Rising Sun, this time a double IPA called Second Rising and dosed with enough Sorachi for an emperor.

(One of the cool things Iron Hill has done with this beer is use it to raise money for earthquake/tsunami relief in Japan. Sometimes, it's not about the beer's flavor, but what the beer can do to help people.)

Iron Hill gets a little fancier on July 27th with a beer dinner that also salutes the brewpub's two years in New Jersey. The brewpub was founded by three Jersey guys who launched in Delaware for business reasons but had always wanted to be in the Garden State.

Two years ago, they got their homecoming.

Munich study for Iron Hill's No. 2 brewer

Iron Hill assistant brewer Jeff Ramirez will get to hone his brewing skills in Germany this spring.

Jeff heads to Munich March 26th for a five-week study gig that comes as the back end of his training with the Seibel Institute of Technology.

"This is their 12-week international brewing diploma," says Jeff, who's been with Iron Hill's Maple Shade location since it opened in 2009.

"Basically there's seven weeks in Chicago, different modules (of study). They'll go over the wort production, raw materials, fermentation biology, cellar stuff, packaging, the business of brewing. Then you go out to Germany, in Munich, and work at Doemens, which has the World Brewing Academy. There you do applied techniques."

The training abroad wraps up with a brewery tour of Europe. "You go to Belgium, London ... go to different places like maltsters and different breweries," Jeff says.

Jeff enrolled at Seibel while awaiting word on a job at Iron Hill. The folks who run the show there have supported his endeavors, letting him take time away from work with head brewer Chris LaPierre for the course work in Chicago.

And now Germany.

Before Iron Hill, Jeff worked briefly at Trap Rock brewpub in Berkeley Heights, helping out brewer Charlie Schroeder (in the photo above, that's Jeff on the left, with Charlie). But it was at Kenyon College in Ohio that Jeff decided he wanted to be in the beverage industry.

It was either tea or beer.

"Tea is more research and travel. Beer is more labor and science, hard work," he says.

Fans of Iron Hill's beers, no doubt, are glad Jeff chose beer.

Mocha mash-up

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

But you judge for yourself.

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

Luca Brasi sips with the fishes

The buzz could be caffeine, but probably not.

It' s more like the buzz is all about the coffee stout that will go on tap at Iron Hill on Tuesday (Nov. 9).

As the first champs of Iron Hill Maple Shade's Iron Brewer homebrew competition, Jim Carruthers and Scott Davi brewed the stout, named Luca Brasi (à la Godfather Don Corleone's enforcer), about a month ago at the brewpub under the supervision of IH head brewer Chris LaPierre.

The stout was just given a jolt of whole dark roast coffee beans in the serving tank on Wednesday, and some cold press dark roast coffee gets added on Friday.

In the video, Chris explains the origins of the Iron Brewer contest (2010 was the first year for the Maple Shade location), which is a byproduct of that big, big beer IH makes, the Situation.

It's a pretty good situation to find yourself in, so look for it to come back around next year; the competition, too.