Update: Progress on River Horse move to Ewing

Logo on floor, a little dusty now

For the folks at River Horse Brewing, the finish line for the brewery's ongoing move may include something bigger than making beer in a new location.

"It'll be time for a nap," says Chris Walsh, one of River Horse's co-owners. 

He's joking. 

Sort of. 

Moving the 17-year-old brewery from Lambertville, its founding location in the brick Original Trenton Cracker factory building beside the Delaware River and canal, to Ewing 14 miles south is no easy task and could never be accomplished over night.

Or in a month.

Or two.

Still quite difficult in three. Things move just so fast, and there's a number of modifications going on.

This is, after all, a move to meet current growth needs, plus those of the future. 

It can be exhausting overseeing the modifications and still running the brewery in the original location, paying a premium in rent there because you're out-of-lease (time is money), and pushing to wind down that location to get into the new one.

It's critical to keep your beers, like your very popular Summer Blonde Ale, flowing to draft and retail accounts and the beer fans who helped you outgrow the first home. 

For River Horse, the exit from Lambertville, a walk-around town in southern Hunterdon County that's  practically devoid of retail chain stores but laden with art galleries and antique shops, is an undertaking that got going in January. 

Back then, the hopes were that things would wrap up about now, or be wrapping up. The revised forecast is now the end of May/start of June. 

"I've accepted that," Chris says, allowing himself a laugh amid a sigh of resignation.

General floor plan of brewery space

That doesn't mean there hasn't been substantial progress at the Ewing location, 25,000 square feet on four acres at 2 Graphics Drive, around the corner from the town's police station. It just may not look like it, not like a brewery at the moment. But in fact, there's been plenty effort to that end – drains, concrete work, plumbing, company logos painted on the brick-red non-skid flooring ... 

At this point, River Horse is coming out of the backstretch and into a far turn. The homestretch is in sight, and so is the finish line. 

"The drains system is completely in; the floor is epoxied. So that part is done," Chris says. "The two internal rooms are built for the mill room and the mechanicals. The piping is probably 75 percent done; electrical is probably 35 to 40 percent done. We have to get it insulated, all tested, and a couple tweaks here and there. Then we're good. But that takes some time."

When it's ready, the 25-barrel brewhouse and some fermentation tanks will be brought down from Lambertville, connected to waiting support components and fired up. (Over time, the brewhouse will be replaced with one double the its size; larger fermentation and bright beer tanks will also be swapped in for the 40 barrel tanks that River Horse now has. Overall production is expected to increase 30 to 40 percent.)

"We've put in all the vital organs. They're already going to be here," Chris says. "There's going to be a new chiller, new boiler, new air compressor. We don't need to move any of that, so we can get going here ... So it's the brewhouse and some fermentation, and away we go.

However, it's a different story right now, Chris notes, for grain silos that will go outside. A tasting room is also on the back burner, a lower priority as far as immediate needs go. But the brewery expects to still conduct tours as it resolves that addition. 

"The silos ... we're still working on that. We may need to continue with bagged grain and a manual process of getting rid of spent grain and that kind of stuff for a short amount of time, just to get in here and get going," he says. "But that will eventually all go over to a spent-grain silo ...

Exterior of building

"The tasting room, we haven't even started. We want to continue to have tours and tastings, but what we'll probably do is something makeshift out here (on the brewery floor), with the tap system that we have now, put some wheels on it, bring it out here with some picnic tables, that kind of stuff. Then we'll start on a remodel, something more formal, more settled. We just don't have the resources now to take that on as well."

The tasting room, Chris says, needs to be developed with the brewery's current and future fans in mind.  The new home won't be like Lambertville, where a lot of people stopped by because they were already in town for something. It's also not a matter of just having dedicated space for brewery special events; tour visits of all walks need to be meaningful experiences.

"It's a concept we have to figure out, how we want to use it, what kind of theme we want to have," he says. "In Lambertville, we were a stop-by. We were still a destination for a lot of people, but a lot of it was, 'I can't take antique shopping any more,' or whatever it was, using the (canal) towpath, or whatever you were doing. 

"But here it will be more of a destination, so it has to be more accommodating ... Friday tours, how are we going to get people here? When they walk in the door, what's the experience going to be like?"

Maybe a good rest, that nap, will yield some ideas on that.

But for now, River Horse has a few more miles to go before anyone sleeps.

EDITOR'S NOTE: Find the January post on River Horse's move here.

River Horse's countdown to Lambertville exit

The brewery seen from across the canal

Say you own a craft brewery that turns out some quite popular beers. 

And for every batch of beer you make, part of the cleanup chore involves some aerial maneuvering: raising the forks on your forklift all the way up their mast so you can fetch a bin of spent grain raked from the mash tun at your second-floor brewhouse.

Try dealing with that about six times per brew day. Doable, but a little tricky, certainly logistically cumbersome, and a huge mess if one of the bins should accidentally fall.

Graining out the hard way

Here's another scenario ...

Your distributors are due to pick up pallets of beer. So you need to know if they're bringing the 40-foot truck or one about half that size. Uh, it's the long one? Please get here early. 

The cramped local road your brewery sits along is the only access, and it's dotted with some homes, offices and galleries ... it's not exactly ideal, having big commercial trucks navigating that narrow lane.

So what would you do under those circumstances? Probably move. 

River Horse Brewing is. 

For those reasons and more, River Horse is exiting its 17-year home of Lambertville, heading about 15 miles south to Ewing, outside of Trenton, to a single-floor, stand-alone building in a business park along Graphics Drive. 

The new location on Graphics Drive

The new location in Mercer County promises to cure a lot of River Horse's current headaches, big and small, as it serves both immediate and future growth needs. 

"It's been a cautious path, this move," says Chris Walsh, who bought the brewery with co-owner Glenn Bernabeo in 2007, a time when River Horse was pretty much a withering brewery, a label in some serious trouble. 

"We wanted to do it for a long time, but in the beginning we had to fix the business. A move then, it would have been too much. We had to get the brand stable."

They did. And then some. 

The brewhouse on the 2nd floor

River Horse is New Jersey's second-largest craft brewery, coming in behind Flying Fish Brewing, which itself moved just last year from its original home of Cherry Hill to nearby Somerdale. 

These days, River Horse cranks out almost 10,000 barrels of beer a year, a tide of draft and bottled ales, both big and sessionable, in five year-round brews, plus five seasonals (brewer's reserve beers, too). 

Packaging River Horse Special Ale

The lineup includes a trifecta of Belgian styles (Double Wit, Belgian Freeze dark ale, and Tripel Horse), and once boasted a popular lager that had to be retired for the sake of freeing up tank space for production. 

(Dunkelfester, a dark lager made for Oktoberfest 2008, though a hit with the brewery's following, met a similar fate for similar reasons, having never seen its planned seasonal reprise.)

At 25,000 square feet and with four high loading docks to accommodate delivery trucks, the new location is expected to goose production by 30 to 40 percent over time and enable the return of that idled brew, River Horse Lager. 

"That's the short-term thing we'd like to do. It  had a big following," Chris says. "But the whole lager family is now open." Like a pilsner, a perfect warm weather style to slip into the seasonal lineup beside the brewery's über-popular Summer Blonde Ale.

Seek and find

Situated in the shadow of Ewing's town hall and police department, the new location was most recently used as warehouse space by The Mega Group, a public relations and marketing company that counts AAA Mid-Atlantic and Verizon among its clients. 

Siting the new location proved to be an arduous task. Chris says the brewery enlisted the help of Mercer County to find suitable space. After 30 to 40 prospective sites, the Graphics Drive property got the nod, pretty much to the delight of Ewing officials, who were happy to be drawing an industry with a rising profile.

Taps in the tasting room

Right now, floor drains are being installed, along with a mill room and a mechanical room. The brewery looks to leave Lambertville behind sometime in early spring, with its 25-barrel brewhouse and accompanying fermenters and bright beer tanks up and in use in Ewing around the start of April, a time when the brewery gets pushing out that Summer Blonde. 

Over time, as production needs demand, the brewery plans to replace its current brewhouse with a 50-barrel system and swap out its 40-barrel fermenters for 150-barrel tanks.

As bright as the horizon looks, and as sorely needed as the extra space is, saying so long to Lambertville is still bittersweet. The old Original Trenton Cracker factory, a 10,000-square-foot building that sits along the Delaware Canal, has been River Horse's only home since launching in 1996. 

Sure, the brewhouse is on the second floor, an arrangement that doesn't lend itself well to brewery tours. Yeah, there have been times the forklift has been driven beyond the loading bay, out to delivery trucks waiting on the street. Sure, the ceiling buckled under heavy, wet snow a few winters back, and the building flooded about 10 years ago when torrential rains swelled the canal beyond its banks. 

Oktoberfest 2008 crowd

But those are less complaints than realities, conditions on-the-ground, so to speak. For all that, the building and Lambertville have been a big part of the brewery's identity. Lambertville's an artsy Hunterdon County town you get around in mostly by walking, taking in the specialty shops, art galleries and restaurants.

That kind of foot traffic invariably makes its way to the brewery, whether during the annual ShadFest in the spring, Oktoberfests each fall, or just whenever. Both of those events, by the way, have always pulled in large crowds, making the brewery a point of interest in the town. 

"It's been home, part of the community since '96," Chris says. "We're certainly giving up some stuff, no doubt about it."

The shad are back

The celebration of the return of shad to Delaware River waters is tomorrow in Lambertville, home of River Horse Brewing.

Folks familiar with the two-day ShadFest know it showcases the artsy community nestled along the river and canal in southern Hunterdon County.

But it's also a moment for River Horse to show off the brewery's best. This year, along side RH's flagship and seasonal brews, like Hop Hazard or Summer Ale, you can try a pint of a big, fat red rye that's brimming with hops and stands tall at 9 percent ABV.

To get something bigger, you have to reach for a Tripel Horse, a Belgian style brew that, as Mark Haynie of Mid-Atlantic Brewing News tells the story, originated from a suggestion by the late great beer hunter Michael Jackson during a visit to the brewery once upon a time. (Mark was escorting Jackson to breweries that day.)

The brewery will have a setup in its back lot, featuring food concessions and live music. It's pay as you go, and the brewery usually has commemorative pint glasses for sale.

See you there.

Go fish

What we really mean to say is, take a trip to Shad Fest, but go for the beer.

Lambertville is pulling out the stops again Saturday and Sunday (noon to 5 p.m.) for the annual shad fest, and River Horse Brewing will tempt you with their Summer Blonde ale this time of year. Or if you want to go large, try their new Double Honey Weizenbock (brewed for Philly Beer Week back in March) and Double Wit Belgian ale, now in its second year as a seasonal (and new to being on shelves as a four pack).

The weather is supposed to be summerlike, in the 80s, so you can’t go wrong with the lighter, blonde brew. River Horse also has a quenching, unfiltered lager (they had it on tap back in the fall during their Oktoberfest, so maybe again in the spring). You’ll find them pouring a range of brews in the back lot of the brewery, and it’s pay as you go so you can get a full pint (just buy the glass).

There's a lot of local support for the brewery, and RH can draw a crowd with its brews. But they’ve scored some extra space this year, so you’ll have plenty of elbow room to enjoy the beer and food. We confess, the shad chowder really isn’t something to write home about, but there’s plenty of selection in the cuisine concession.

The great thing about going to Lambertville, as we’ve said boatloads of times, is you can explore the best of two beer worlds, since over the bridge (within walking distance) in New Hope is Triumph Brewing.

Pictured below is Triumph’s beer board pulled from their Web site. It looks a little sparse for them, but as of this writing, it could have been updated. With 80-degree weather, go for the kellerbier if you wander over.

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.