Jersey's Finest, and a new age of NJ craft beer

Sen. Norcross draws first pint

Call it a great beer collaboration, if you want.

But Wednesday evening's release event for Flying Fish and Iron Hill's third swing at a Jersey's Finest brew had the hallmarks of a new day dawning, an ushering in of New Jersey Craft Brewing Industry, Version 2.0.

An American IPA dosed with experimental hops was the feature, the vehicle to celebrate the camaraderie of Jersey craft brewing; the industry neighbors that production brewer Flying Fish and brewpub Iron Hill are; and the growth spurt that New Jersey's industry has been experiencing on either side of an overhaul of the state's regulations. 

New Jersey has moved into a new era, thanks to the state Legislature and a bill signed by Gov. Chris Christie last September. Flying Fish president Gene Muller and Iron Hill co-owner Mark Edelson walked point on the legislation, logging a lot of hours talking to lawmakers and attending committee hearings.

Jersey's Finest ice sculpture

Coming at the end of a Garden State Craft Brewers Guild meeting, Wednesday's event was attended by a bevy of Iron Hill-Maple Shade faithfuls, plus new and longtime Jersey craft beer industry faces, and featured a trio of other brews put on tap for the occasion. 

On had for the ceremonial first pour were Michael Kane, founder of Kane Brewing (Ocean Township);  Ryan and Bob Krill, owners of Cape May Brewing (Rio Grande); Becky Pedersen and Ben Battiata, owners of Turtle Stone Brewing (Vineland); and Tim Kelly, brewer at the Tun Tavern brewpub (Atlantic City). 

Michael Kane and Casey Hughes

Kane and Cape May Brewing both celebrated first anniversaries last summer; Turtle Stone's one-year mark is coming up in March.

Flying Fish, as many people know, is up and running in a newer, larger home in Somerdale, while Iron Hill just started work on its second New Jersey location (its 10th overall), targeted to open in Voorhees in mid-summer.

If you looked a little closer in the crowd you would have spied John Companick, whose Spellbound Brewing is on the drawing board.  (Savvy beer folks know of John's association with Heavyweight Brewing, the former Monmouth County brewery that closed up shop in New Jersey in 2006, but morphed into the Earth, Bread + Brewery brewpub in Philadelphia.)

A closer listen to crowd chatter would have cued you to the news that Bolero Snort Brewery just launched and has two beers that will soon be hitting taps in North Jersey.

Such growth, lawmakers say, was the goal when they and the governor updated New Jersey's craft brewing rules. State Sen. Donald Norcross, who took the honor of drawing the first pint of the Jersey's Finest IPA, calls the current quick pace a bonus.

The senator, a Camden County Democrat, was a key sponsor of the legislation that freed New Jersey craft breweries from a regulatory chokehold that made it not just tough to launch a brewery in the Garden State, but to keep one in business. One of the event's brews, a dry-hopped, cask-conditioned blend of Flying Fish Hopfish and Abbey Dubbel, paid tribute to the legislation, taking its name for the Senate bill number, S-641.

"There was an article today (Wednesday) about Pennsylvania," says Sen. Norcross. "They have gone from 10 to over a hundred breweries in the last decade, and that's the type of expansion we're looking for in the state of New Jersey. The design was to try to increase the productivity of our craft brewers in the state. We have the added benefit that this is actually turning out the way we had it planned."

From left: Ryan Krill, Tim Kelly, Casey Hughes

Indeed. 

New Jersey's first craft brewery, Ship Inn, opened in 1995.

Until Iron Hill opened its Maple Shade brewery-restaurant in 2009, New Jersey slogged through a 10-year drought of new, home-state beer-makers. Though still not the friendliest of business climates in which to site a brewery, the state licensed five new breweries in 2011, and two last year.  

Right now there are at least four brewery license applications, such as one from Pinelands Brewing in Ocean County and Tuscany Brewhouse in Passaic County, pending with state regulators. Other projects across the state are in various stages of development, like Spellbound Brewing.

"If not for that bill passing, we were seriously thinking about putting our production site in Pennsylvania or New york," says Bob Olson of Bolero Snort Brewery. "The fact that it has will definitely keep us here." 

Gene Muller (right) talks to Ben Battiata

Bolero Snort launched this month with a pair of contract-brewed lagers, Ragin' Bull and Blackhorn. Bob, who spoke by phone Thursday, says the business plan for self-distributing Bolero is to have its own brewing facility, ideally sometime next year. In the interim, High Point Brewing (Butler), makers of the Ramstein wheat and lager beers, will do their brewing, stocking Bolero's warehouse in Bergen County.

Working together

Brewery collaborations continue to be popular. In Garden State, the Jersey's Finest banner owes to a Garden State Craft Brewers Guild initiative from a few of years back. 

Flying Fish and Iron Hill were the first breweries to put their minds together for a Jersey's Finest beer, offering a mashup of stouts (chocolate and coffee versions brewed independently and later blended) in January 2011. The Tun Tavern and Basil T's in Red Bank followed suit with a brace of chocolate-chili pepper beers. 

By that summer Flying Fish and Iron Hill's brewers, Casey Hughes and Chris LaPierre, were working together to produce August 2011's Iron Fish, a black Belgian IPA that, with a tongue-in-cheek nod, employed about every beer trend you could think of back then.

Flying Fish and Iron Hill's latest round of collaboration is much more straight-forward, using some hops from a Washington State farm that also grows apples and berries. 

"It's a nice hoppy IPA, using all experimental hops," Casey says. "I'm really happy with it. I think it turned out really nice: golden, light, dry, crisp, drinkable with a nice hop character, nice bitterness to it. 

"We kind of went by the seat of our pants and just brewed, and played around with the hops as we had them. It's funny. If you look at our recipe, it says 'high alpha hop, low alpha hop, and Roy Farms hops.'"

Tun barleywine through the ages

It's called Santa's Little Helper* right now, but that name could change.

Brewer Tim Kelly certainly hopes the beer does go through some transformation.

The first-ever barleywine Tim made as the guy who makes all the beer at the Tun Tavern went on tap a couple weeks ago as the seasonal offering at the Atlantic City brewpub.

Barleywines can have a longer pouring life than their flagship siblings at brewpubs, given the specialty beers' higher alcohol content and the smaller-than-pint serving sizes.

Santa's Little Helper clocks in at 11% ABV, so you can expect this brew to hang around and evolve some over its life as a draft beer.

That's just fine.

But Tim's taking a longer-range view. Like a couple of years, maybe half that.

Or maybe even much longer, since it's being left up to you.

Last week, Tim racked off about 12 cases of the barleywine into 750 milliliter bottles for retail sale.

And that was after conditioning the beer for a month on French oak soaked in dark rum and dry-hopping it.

(As far as the brewing went, throughout the boil he hopped it with Styrian, Nugget, Chinook, East Kent Golding and Fuggles, finishing it off with Cascade.)

"I designed this beer with it being bottled and aged in mind. Little nuances will hopefully develop and come out over time," Tim says.

The beer began its life as an answer to those who remember the Tun having a barleywine on tap but forgetting who made it.

In that regard, Tim's brew harkens back to his predecessor, Ted Briggs, who left nearly five years ago with a big golden barleywine aging in barrels that Tim, as pretty much one of his first tasks upon arriving, racked off into 750's, then corked and capped. (Ted's now brewmaster at Lander Brewing in Wyoming.)

Those bottles (pictured below) have been sold out for some time now.

But now that Tim's barleywine is on tap, and in bottles for sale, a new chapter has been written.

How that plot develops is up to you.



*Yes, Santa's Little Helper is a Simpsons reference, a nod to their race-losing greyhound.

Make it big

Some Jersey-brewed big beers to talk about: a first-ever barleywine by Tun Tavern brewer Tim Kelly; the upcoming release of Cricket Hill's pro-am brew; a reprise of Climax Brewing's imperial stout; and a new dimension in take-home beer from Trap Rock.

Thirst for first
Brewers come and go, but sometimes the beers they make end up staying, brewed by the next hands to take over. And sometimes a few of the predecessor's beers stay in mind. Such is the case at the Tun, where memories of Ted Briggs' barleywine have survived for some folks more than four years after Ted left Atlantic City. (Ted's now the brewer at Lander Brewing in Wyoming.)

Amid that scenario, Tim Kelly, who took over for Ted in May 2007, decided to brew a barleywine. Coming in at 11% ABV, it's one of the biggest beers Tim has made professionally, edging out a Belgian tripel made last spring off a pro-am contest sponsored at the Tun, a wee heavy Tim did in 2010 and a Belgian brown he has done for the holidays in years past.

"Rumors keep perpetuating that I did this awesome barleywine and I hadn't done it in a while; they must be confusing me with the former brewer ... So to appease everyone, and also to challenge myself a little, I decided to develop a barleywine," Tim says. "It's dry-hopped with Cascade, aged on French oak; it's been conditioning for a couple months now. It will come out after the pumpkin lager, so this will probably be after Thanksgiving. I'll probably end up bottling about 100 bottles for retail sale, sit on them and let them age and sell them next year."

The pumpkin lager (a 7% brew) is almost gone, and when it does kick, that will open up a tap for a maple black walnut brown ale that Tim brewed a few weeks ago.

Stout royalty
Speaking of pro-ams, next month will see a teaser release of Cricket Hill's imperial stout, brewed from homebrewer Bill Kovach's recipe that bested 32 other brews in the contest Cricket Hill sponsored a year ago.

Brewery co-owner John Watts says the 10.5% ABV stout is set for official release in bombers in January, but fans of the Fairfield brewery will get an early shot at it in a prerelease event to coincide with a mid-December Friday open house.

Folks long familiar with Cricket Hill know the brewery staked out a place on the Garden State beer-scape with a flight of session beers and has been moving deeper into reserve-series big beers, notably among them an 8.5% barleywine done in 2010 that also got some bourbon barrel treatment.

Some of the barrel-aged stock got stashed away for special occasions, John says, so Cricket Hill fans should keep an eye out for them. "I can tell you, a year of aging on that, it's spectacular," he says.

Stout royalty, redux
In nearby Roselle Park, next month brewer Dave Hoffmann plans to turn out bomber bottles of his Hoffmann Doppelbock, a traditional toasty, caramel-like heritage brew (Dave's of German lineage), formerly only available from Climax Brewing as draft and in 64-ounce growlers.

"I've been making it for a long time, for like 10 years now. It's one of my favorite styles. I make it every year for the holidays," Dave says.

Climax Brewing began turning out six-packs last summer thanks to a newly acquired bottler. The bomber-bottled bock marks Climax Brewing working yet another label from its beer lineup into the brewery's new packaging model.

Early next year, look for another Climax brew to come out in 22-ouncers: an imperial stout that will make a reprise after a decade-plus hiatus. To be named Tuxedo Imperial Stout, the brew salutes the black cat, Tuxedo, that has mouse-policed Climax's brewery for 13 years.

"She did her job for all these years, so we take care of her now. She's getting older, so before she dies I want to make a beer for her," Dave says. "It'll probably be 8 or 9% alcohol, big and burly, a little hoppy in the finish ... it's the recipe I made 10 or 12 years ago. I made it twice already, but it was a long time ago, but this time it will be in bottles."

Rock in a bottle
Speaking of bottles, brewer Charlie Schroeder at Trap Rock has racked off about 30 1-liter bottles of the Berkeley Heights brewpub's Jet Fuel Double IPA, a step toward getting Trap Rock's bigger beers into more user-friendly take-home sizes (high-alcohol brews in growlers, especially ones like barleywines, aren't always the best idea, easy to finish in one drinking session).

Jet Fuel (yes, the brew's name speaks to the New York Jets and their followers in the Trap Rock locale) clocks in at 9.5% ABV, stuffed full of Nugget, Challenger, East Kent, Willamette and Bramling Cross hops.

Trap Rock added a third 7-barrel fermenter last month (it now has 3 of them, plus three 15-barrel tanks) to boost capacity, keep pace with growing demand and enable more runs of the bigger, specialty beers.

The long-range plan, Charlie says, also includes having have more of the big brews available in the take-home bottles and to set some of them aside as reserve brews for inclusion on the beer menu.

The new tank has necessitated some rearranging in the brewery space, plus some additional installation, before the bigger beers will be completely integrated into the brewpub's work flow.

Fresh-hopped ales & a hop farm to watch

Jersey-grown hops in two Garden State pub-brewed beers, and a small Burlington County hop farm to watch ...

For as long as he's been in charge of the kettle at the Tun Tavern, brewer Tim Kelly has used hops grown by his friends, Ray Gourley and Kathy Haney of Haddon Heights, to do a fall dry-hopping of the Tun's All-American IPA, a popular beer at the Atlantic City brewpub.

This year is the fourth for the IP-Ray version of the brew that's part of the Tun's regular tap lineup.

Tim (pictured at left with a load of hops on the bine) added to the serving tank just over 3 pounds of the Camden County hops – Cascade, Nugget, Chinook and Zeus cones picked Sept. 3.

(The beer was brewed with pellets of Chinook and Centennial for bittering and flavor. It finishes out at just over 6 percent ABV.)

One hundred miles north, in Woodbridge, Chris Sheehan, brewer at J.J. Bitting brewpub, has his annual hop harvest ale bubbling away in a fermenter.

Mostly Cascades, but with some Mount Hood, Cluster and Fuggle, Chris says he used the 6 pounds of hops grown (pictured below) at his mom's property in Delhi, N.Y., in the Catskills, and the 3 pounds from friends' hop gardens, adding them throughout the boil, supplementing them with some commercially grown whole leaf hops.

Chris has made the beer six years running, last year at Port 44 brewpub in Newark, and prior to that at Chelsea Brewing in Manhattan. (He has typically called it Catskill Hop Harvest Ale, but thinks the name will get shortened this year.)

The harvest ale is the second brew Chris has made for Bitting since taking over the brewhouse there this month, fresh off his year-plus stint at the now-closed Port 44.

Meanwhile, down in Burlington County, Sarah Puleo and Mike Visgil are looking to double the size of the hop yard they started at the 166-acre farm Sarah grew up on in Buddtown in Southampton Township.

The farm is an area where the open space and country roads seem to take you out of New Jersey. But it's also a ground zero for New Jersey farmstand staples like blueberries, asparagus and raspberries. You'll also find Chinese growers on neighboring farms, raising cabbage and snowpeas for restaurants in Philadelphia and New York.

Against that backdrop, hops are a non-traditional commodity. But then again, with the bines' inclination for a towering reach, and the high ceiling of blue skies, a hop yard seems like an easy fit at Isaac Budd Farm. (Sarah and Mike share the place with her parents and brother, and some chickens, peacocks, dogs and a lake.)

After trial plots over the past three years, the two went bigger, planting an eighth of an acre last spring, setting out rhizomes of Cascades, Centennial, Nugget and Fuggles, among other varieties.

"Cascades and Centennials showed well, yielding a few pounds of wet weight. Nugget and Fuggles flowered, but there was not a whole heck of a lot in terms of harvest," Mike said last week via email.

The two have networked with the Northeast Hop Alliance and Rutgers agriculture extension folks (Rutgers raised trial plots of several hop varieties back in the late 1990s, and also provided technical advice to Weyerbacher Brewing in 2008, the first year of a now-annual crop grown by the brewery that ends up in a Weyerbacher harvest ale.) Sarah and Mike also tracked this summer's progress on their Isaac Budd Farm Facebook page.

"Our main goal here is to establish community," Mike says. "For our first few years, we anticipate it being more of a homebrewer/homebrew shop presence. If we get a couple nanobreweries, a couple microbreweries in the area, that's great."

Some of this year's crop, dehydrated and vacuum-packed after picking, was passed along to the Barley Legal Homebrewers, the South Jersey-Philadelphia homebrew club Mike and Sarah are members of.

(Last spring, the two scored a second-place finish in the annual pro-am contest Iron Hill brewpub sponsors for homebrewers who brew with wort drawn from the second runnings of The Situation, a super-high gravity beer that IH brews during the winter. Mike also did an internship in 2010 with Cricket Hill in Fairfield, a gig that helped him with enrolling in the American Brewers Guild.)

"Sarah and I also will be toying with the therapeutics of hops by making some homemade sleep pillows, as well as some hop teas," Mike says.

Make no mistake, a hop yard, even a small plot, can be a lot of work. But the two dived into the task with a dedication that speaks a lot to their belief in and commitment to producing a local farm commodity.

"It's our evening job, our second shift," Sarah said during an interview back in May, on a picture-perfect Saturday that found her and Mike cutting and laying planters paper around the hop mounds to control weeds. "As soon as we get home from work, we're out there – if it's not raining – pruning, digging, planting, putting up (irrigation) hose."

The two started the hop yard on a shoestring budget. The hose purchased for drip irrigation is probably their biggest expense. For other project needs they improvised. Their trellising was fashioned from bamboo cut from the 1- to 2-acre cluster of the stuff that grows wild and skyward on the farm.

"We figured that if we can do it with what we have right now, put all the work in," Sarah says, pausing, "the second year if it goes well, then maybe we'll put more money into it."

Homebrew Day, the video

This year's video from National Homebrew Day/AHA Big Brew, shot May 7th in the back lot at Iron Hill brewpub in Maple Shade, where the year-old Barley Legal Homebrewers club pretty much calls headquarters.

Special thanks to Chris LaPierre at Iron Hill and Tim Kelly from the Tun Tavern.

Remember to support your local homebrew shop.

And brewery.

Cheers.

Think Tun tripel at AC beer fest

The Atlantic City beer festival opens on Friday, and amid the tide of beers from 75 breweries at the sixth edition of the Celebration of the Suds, this beer should stand out: the Belgian tripel brewed at the Tun Tavern by homebrewers Vince Masciandaro and Evan Fritz, under the guidance of the Tun's brewer, Tim Kelly.

Vince and Evan's beer paced ahead of 19 other brews to claim victory in the Tun's first homebrewer contest. Top prize was the opportunity to scale up their recipe and brew a commercial batch for the Tun's taps and for the Friday and Saturday crowds at the AC beer fest. (The beer will be taphandled At The Shore Belgian Ale because of a tie-in with The Press of Atlantic City newspaper and its entertainment guide, At The Shore.)

The pleasure Vince and Evan got from playing pro brewer for a day should be all yours. The beer they brewed will have no equal at the festival. It's imminently fresh – brewed in early March, racked over this week for serving. It exists because of the festival – brewed specifically for the event. And Vince and Evan rose to the challenge of brewing on an exponential scale.

Talk to Vince about his beers and he'll tell you that he's his own toughest critic. A minor errant flavor you forgive because you've tasted it in store-bought brews is a rough spot that Vince wishes he had or plans to file down. A flaw is still a flaw to this Marlton guy, and that's that. And that's why his beers have that certain above-and-beyond effort that gives them a fine finish.

For Evan, homebrewing isn't about shaving some pennies off the cost keeping the fridge stocked. Hardly. Brewing's an intriguing science to him, a challenge, and re-creating the best beers he finds on the store shelves is equal parts holy grail and the proverbial practice that makes perfect.

He brews practically every Friday afternoon at his home in Williamstown (he'd love to do it daily as a professional), with the same goal Vince has: to make a great beer.

And that's what they did for the festival.

Cheers.

Tripel checking

That big, pro-am Belgian tripel brewed at the Tun Tavern for the Atlantic City beer festival is coming along.

Tun brewer Tim Kelly (shown at left taking a sample on Thursday) projects the beer will come in around 9 percent ABV or a little higher when it finishes out fermentation.

Come Monday, Tim says he'll begin to step the fermenter temperature down, with filtration of the beer set for March 30.

The beer, brewed with Tim's guidance by homebrewers Vince Masciandaro and Evan Fritz earlier this month, will be served at the AC beer fest on April 1-2, as well as at the Tun Tavern itself.

Vince and Evan took first place in the homebrew contest sponsored by the Tun, winning the opportunity to re-create their tripel on the Tun's 10-barrel Newlands brewing system.

Fire in mid-winter

Cocoa fuego, cocoa fuoco ...

By either name, this chocolate-chili pepper-cinnamon beer, a collaboration between brewpubs Basil T's and Tun Tavern, keeps the fire burning for the Jersey's Finest craft brewing ventures that kicked off in mid-January with a pairing of a stouts from two other Garden State brewers.

Chocolate Fire will also warm your mid-winter mug when it goes on tap at Basil's and the Tun in February, just in time for Valentine's Day. (Note: It may go on tap at the Tun this week.)

Cocoa fuego (the name in Spanish) is the version Tun brewer Tim Kelly made Jan. 6 in Atlantic City with the assistance of Basil's brewer Gretchen Schmidhausler, whom Tim approached last summer with the idea for a beer collaboration. Gretchen is using the Italian phrasing, Cocoa Fuoco – after all, Basil's features an Italian menu – for the version she brewed in Red Bank last Thursday with Tim's help. (Tim showed up at Basil's with a couple of in-progress samples pulled from the five-barrel batch made for the Tun; there's a chocolaty presence with a hand-off to subtle, unfolding heat.)

Inspiration for the beer comes from a chili pepper chocolate bar that Tim discovered. He mentioned it to Gretchen at the Garden State Craft Brewer's Guild festival aboard the USS New Jersey in Camden.

"The Red Fire Bar ... it's chocolate with a couple chili peppers, some cinnamon ... I thought it was a delicious thing, and these flavors might make a great beer," Tim says. "So I approached Gretchen last June at the battleship, to see if she would be interested in collaborating. She had some experience brewing with peppers; I've worked with chocolate and cinnamon before."

Six months later they put together a recipe that features ancho, chipotle and guajillo peppers, Dutch chocolate, and cinnamon. (The specialty malts range from aromatic, munich, chocolate and crystal rye.)

For the craft beer enthusiast, it's one recipe but two beers that will be alike, yet with some individuality owing to the different brewers, brewing systems (the Tun has a 10-barrel system; Basil's is a 7-barrel), and some minor variations between the grain bills and hops. (For instance, Tim used Nugget hops; Gretchen used Goldings.)

"I don't think they need to be identical. I think they'll be very close," Gretchen says.

Collaboration craft beers are trendy now, and one of the flashiest marquee examples is probably Infinium, the recently released brew created by Boston Beer and the Weihenstephan Brewery in Bavaria.

Last year, Flying Fish in Cherry Hill teamed with Philadelphia's Nodding Head Brewery and Stewart's Brewing in Delaware for FF's Exit 6 rye beer, then with Iron Hill in Maple Shade, under the banner of Jersey's Finest, married its newly minted Exit 13 chocolate stout with a coffee stout that IH brewed last fall.

Collaborations serve many purposes, Gretchen says, notably to create a buzz about beer brewed in the Garden State and to promote some camaraderie among Jersey brewers. It's also a touch of marketing for the brewpubs.

"After the first of the year, things tank a little bit. You've got the weather to contend with; sales are generally a little slower. So it's nice for us to generate a little publicity for the Guild, for our individual pubs and for craft beer in general," Gretchen says.

New deadline for Tun homebrew challenge

There's a deadline extension for the homebrew contest sponsored by the Tun Tavern brewpub and The Press of Atlantic City's At The Shore entertainment guide.

Homebrewers now have until Monday, Feb. 14 to drop off their entries at the Tun in Atlantic City.

Remember, the winner's circle includes a chance to scale up your recipe and brew it on the Tun's 10-barrel system under the guidance of brewer Tim Kelly, plus admission to the Atlantic City beer festival, April 1-2, at the Atlantic City Convention Center. The finished beer will be served at the festival and will be on tap at the Tun.

More details:

• Entrants must submit six bottles of their homebrew (or the equivalent of 72 ounces).
• All bottles must be clearly labeled with the homebrewer's contact information (name, phone number and email) and the style of beer.
  
• Entries must be dropped off at the Tun Tavern by Feb. 14. (The Tun is located in same building as the Sheraton hotel, across from the convention center. The phone number is 609-347-7800)
• Judging will take place Thursday, Feb. 17.

Tun Tavern homebrewer contest

The Tun Tavern in Atlantic City has details on the homebrewer contest it's sponsoring with The Press of Atlantic City's At The Shore entertainment publication.

The top prize is a chance to scale up your recipe and brew it on the Tun's 10-barrel system under the guidance of brewer Tim Kelly. The finished beer will be served at the Atlantic City beer festival, April 1-2 at the Atlantic City Convention Center. It will also be on tap at the Tun.

If you're interested in entering here's what you need to know:

• Entrants must submit six bottles of their homebrew (or the equivalent of 72 ounces).
• All bottles must be clearly labeled with the homebrewer's contact information (name, phone number and email) and the style of beer.
  
• Entries must be dropped off at the Tun Tavern by Monday, Feb. 7. (The Tun is located in same building as the Sheraton hotel, across from the convention center. The phone number there is 609-347-7800)
• Judging will take place Thursday, Feb. 10.

Meanwhile at Cricket Hill

The brewery says it's turning a homebrew recipe into a 2011 specialty brew (see beernews.org brief here). The Russian imperial stout is the creation of homebrewer Bill Kovach and will become one of the reserve beers the Fairfield brewer releases four times a year in bomber bottles.

Kovach's brew was crowned champ out of 33 entries in a homebrewer contest sponsored by Cricket Hill. His American pale ale also landed him in a three-way tie for second place.

A Russian imperial stout marks a step away from the beer philosophy and business model on which Cricket Hill was founded 10 years ago.

Although it has in the past included a maibock among its seasonal offerings and some whiskey barrel brews, the core of Cricket Hill's lineup has generally been session beers: its East Coast Lager, American Ale and an IPA that trends on the lower side of alcohol content, to name a few.

The brewery has even branded itself as making transition beers for people ready to step away from lighter beers, like Bud and Miller. So an imperial stout – which would be, generally speaking, twice as strong as some of Cricket Hill's year-round brews – could indicate a transition for Cricket Hill itself.

Tun Tavern's Marine Corps birthday salute

If you've been inside the Tun Tavern for even half a second, then you know the Atlantic City brewpub's decor is US Marine Corps.

It's hard to miss the scarlet and gold Corps flag on the wall, life-size jarhead statue just off the bar and the World War II-era images on the doors to the head, among loads of other memorabilia.

But more to the point: If you know US military history, then you know the brewpub borrows its name from the Philadelphia tavern where the Marine Corps was founded in 1775, seven months after the skirmish that was the opening volley of the American Revolution.

Every Nov. 10th, Tun owner Monty Dahm, a former Marine, throws a birthday party for the Corps at his brewery-restaurant in the shadow of Atlantic City's convention center. (This year will be the brewpub's 13th tribute.) It's a generally well-attended affair, and attracts current and former Marines from far and wide.

(Incidentally, Nov. 10th is also famous as the date the SS Edmund Fitzgerald sank in Lake Superior in a storm in 1975. The doomed freighter is honored with a Cleveland-brewed porter that bears its name.)

Brewer Tim Kelly usually has something on cask for the night, in addition to the Tun's flagship brews, like Devil Dog Pale Ale and Leatherneck Stout.

Semper Fi.

Carving a different kind of pumpkin beer

Six-packs of pumpkin beer hit the store shelves long before autumn and the first leaves fell from the trees, while a few pub brewers held off, waiting until late this month to tap their versions of the seasonal and eclipse the annual Märzen invasion that is Oktoberfest.

As is typical with this gourded rite of fall, most of the pumpkin beers in the patch this year have been ales, with fruity aromas rippling with spices that entice the senses before the first sip washes over the palate.

Except one. It's a lager.

At Atlantic City's Tun Tavern brewpub, the pumpkin beer is crisp and brisk, like the fall season itself, with just enough spice and zest suspended in a clean lager profile that allows the delicate flavor of the 230 pounds of roasted pumpkin that brewer Tim Kelly used to come through.

"Most of the pumpkin beers you get are ales," Tim says. "They're heavily spiced, like pumpkin pie. A lot of them don't even have pumpkin in it – because what people equate is the spice – and that's fine.

"I like a good pumpkin beer. Weyerbacher has a bronze-medal imperial pumpkin ale. It's delicious; I love it. But really, how many of those are you going to sit down and drink? They're more of a dessert beer – you're going to have one."

However, Tim's version, even at 7.6 percent ABV ("imperially evil for Halloween," he calls it), beckons a second round. Perhaps a third. And that's by design.

The Tun's pumpkin lager comes from Tim's days of homebrewing and an idea that rests on the notion of less is more.

"I went for a lager yeast as opposed to an ale because ales generally lend a lot of their own characteristic flavors to beers, particularly through fruity esters, whereas lagers tend to be clean," he says. "Pumpkin is a very subtle flavor, if you can taste it at all. I wanted to make a beer that tried to bring the pumpkin out. I didn't want to mask it with ale flavors, so I wanted to ferment it clean with a lager yeast, spice it very lightly."

Tim introduced pumpkin lager to Tun Tavern patrons in 2007, during his first year in Atlantic City. It didn't exactly wow the crowd, whose tastes trended toward the ale and its pumpkin pie bouquet. But a funny thing happened the subsequent fall: when Tim made the ale those patrons pined for, most wistfully remembered the lager version.

"I made it the first year and heard nothing but complaints from all the people who wanted the sweet, spicy ale," he says. "So the second year I made the sweet, spicy ale and heard nothing but complaints about where's that wonderful lager you made last year."

So the lager's back, in all its smoothness, just in time for Samhain, and a little beyond. (Tim supposes pumpkin brews have a three-week window in which they're in demand. Thus, he brewed accordingly.)

As a lager, the brew leans a little toward steam beer, a warmer fermentation to let the yeast have a bigger say in the finished product. But Tim steps the process down from 63 degrees after three days to about 55, reining in the yeast signatures that, within ales, help buoy the aromas of the traditional pumpkin-friendly spices (nutmeg, clove, ginger, cinnamon and allspice).

"I'm not trying to go totally clean with it, but I am trying to avoid a lot the esters and other ale characteristics," he says.

Right now, the pumpkin lager joins another of Tim's homebrew recipes gracing the Tun's taps. A couple weeks ago, his wee heavy Scotch ale debuted. At 7-plus percent ABV, Tim's is quite rich, with deep folds of caramel and just a hint of warmth on the back of the throat.

"It's the first time I've made it here. I tried to be as traditional in the production of it as possible. I fired up the kettle before the wort went into it, so I got some good caramelization off that (and added) a little bit of peated malt to it," he says, suggesting the beer be allowed to warm up some in the glass before drinking.

Looking ahead, Tim and brewer Gretchen Schmidhausler of Basil T's in Red Bank plan a collaboration brew, "something with a dark chocolate, with some end notes like cinnamon and a hot pepper, like an ancho or pablano, something along those lines." (Last month, Gretchen marked a decade as Basil's brewer.)

Until then, there's a pumpkin beer that stands out in the patch.

Märzen chronicles, Book III (or yet again)

Oktoberfest is a short season, but the beer that distinguishes it from other fall observances deserves a lot of mention.

So here's some more, specifically, a spotlight on a couple of interpretations of the style that are worth your stein and leisure time.

It just went on tap at Uno Chicago Grill & Brewery in Metuchen a few days ago, and the Oktoberfest that brewer Mike Sella turned in this season is richer than Warren Buffet and more enjoyable than watching Jon Stewart riff on Glenn Beck's chalkboard, kabuki histrionics.

In fact, it's also a taste of two seasons: Clocking in at over 7% ABV, the beer has all the signatures of Oktoberfest but a middle flavor and coppery color that hints at doppelbock.

Mike's brew is also proof that you can take an ale yeast and bend it to a lager will. He used an American ale yeast and fermented at 58 degrees. If you didn't hear him cop to that, you'd never know it. (Yeah, other brewers have done this, too, but sometimes you still get that ale nose in the beer. Not here, Mike's is malty and lager-clean.)

Not quite a hundred miles down the Garden State Parkway from Uno, Tim Kelly set up the Tun Tavern in Atlantic City with some of his finest work since taking over as the brewer there in 2007.

Like Mike's fest beer, Tim's 6.6% ABV, noble-hopped Oktoberfest will have you time-traveling to March. By your second round, you'll swear you've poured a Maßkrug of doppelbock. (Honestly, that second glass will feature a middle flavor quite reminiscent of Salvator. And by the way, Tim did use a lager yeast.)

Tim's an ambitious brewer and has turned in some interesting Belgian styles for the Tun (a brown he made a couple Christmases ago tasted great at yuletide, but a filled-to-the-rim growler of it we aged until February became a really superior beer). For his first try at an Oktoberfest at the Tun, Tim reached for toasty melanoidin signatures and attempted a decoction mash.

"I'll never do that again," he says, with some self-deprecating humor.

The beer was fine. But problem was the Tun's brewing system isn't set up to do decoctions. Tim (with the help of Flying Fish head brewer Casey Hughes, as we recall) used buckets to ladel a portion of the grist from the mash tun into the kettle to be boiled, then back into the mash.

A regular five- or six-hour brew day thus grew by more than a couple of hours, a noble effort for a payoff that could still be attained by infusion mash means and some Munich and aromatic malts, as his efforts this season ably demonstrate. (That's not a swipe at decoction; try High Point's Ramstein fest beer to taste what decoction can do.)

Look for Tim's Oktoberfest at the Central Jersey Beer Fest on Saturday. Or better yet, head to the Tun. And Uno.

Woodbridge, Belmar & Iron Hill's F.red

Turnpike Exits 4 and 11 figure big into the beer picture on Saturday, but the day has nothing to do with the Flying Fish Exit Series beers theme-brewed to those numbers.

Exit 11 on the turnpike is Woodbridge, where the 4th edition of the Central Jersey Beer Fest runs from 1-5 p.m. About an hour's drive south, in Maple Shade off Exit 4, Iron Hill brewpub will be hand-bottling and making available for sale some well-aged Flemish red ale.

On top of that, there's a worthy beer gig at the Shore where more Jersey beers will be poured.

Woodbridge
Parker Press Park, along Rahway Avenue, just past the bend in Main Street, is once again the location for the JJ Bitting brewpub-sponsored Central Jersey Beer Fest. From its debut in 2007, this has been a charity event, and this year's proceeds will benefit a cancer-stricken mother of two from Woodbridge and American Legion Post 87.

Jersey brews at the event, according to organizer and Bittings owner Mike Cerami, will include brewpubs Harvest Moon (New Brunswick), Tun Tavern (Atlantic City) and host JJ Bittings; production brewer Cricket Hill (Fairfield); and Boaks Beer (contract brewed at High Point in Butler) and East Coast Beer Company (contract-brewed in New York). Rounding out the list will be beers from Brooklyn, Blue Point, Ommegang, Erie Brewing, Boston Beer, and Doc's Cider.

There will also be food vendors and live music.

Admission is $25, and $15 for designated drivers. Unlike last year, no tickets will be available at the gate (you can buy them at Bittings on Main Street).

If you were at last year's event, you may recall things got a little testy when the admissions outpaced the beer. In order to keep things running smoothly this go-round, ticket sales will cut off at 800.

The park is spacious, with plenty of shade trees. Plus you'll find picnic tables to relax and take a load off. Travel tip: There's construction planned to commence very soon on Route 9 in the area, so coming in on Routes 1 and 35 may be the best path. NJ Transit is a good bet, too, since the train station is a bottle cap's toss from the park.

Maple Shade
The folks at Iron Hill always have something up their sleeve. This time, it's a bottling party for a 9-month-old, barrel-aged Flemish Red tricked out with wild yeast and bacteria to give it a tang that's worth writing home about. (It's a pay as you go event.)

The brewpub will be tapping some F.red (5.3% ABV, 20 IBU), as it's called, while it packages the beer (made in December 2009 and stored in Beaujolais barrels since the headwaters of this year) in corked and caged 750 ml bottles, labeled, signed and numbered by head brewer Chris LaPierre (who's a big fan of sour beer styles) and assistant brewer Jeff Ramirez.

Bottles will then be available for sale at the bar.

FYI: This deep red ale is a bottle-conditioned beer, so the bottle you buy must be stored until it carbonates naturally (Chris recommends a couple of months, or even letting it mature for years).

From Chris' note to mug club members: "This will be a couple of firsts for us: our first beer available in bottles and the first time we’ve done an entire batch of sour, wood-aged beer in Maple Shade."

Belmar:
With this festival, Beer on the Pier, look for Jersey brews from Climax (Roselle Park, go for Dave Hoffmann's well-regarded Oktoberfest and his IPA) and Artisan's brewpub (in Toms River where Dave is the hired consultant/brewer), Cricket Hill, River Horse, New Jersey Beer Company (North Bergen, makers of 1787 Abbey Single and Garden State Stout), and East Coast Beer Company and Hometown Beverage. Hometown, like East Coast Beer Company, is a shore-based contract brewer. East Coast is based in Point Pleasant Beach, while Hometown, the purveyors of New Jersey Lager (as well as New York Lager and Pennsylvania Lager), is based in Manasquan and closing in on a second anniversary in the beer business.

Both Cricket Hill and East Coast Beer are doing double duty on Saturday. Newly minted in the beer scene, East Coast is a co-sponsor of the event with BeerHeads and the borough of Belmar, and just brought its Beach Haus pilsner to market (it's brewed by Genesee in upstate New York) late last month.

"We actually sold through 650 cases in three weeks. We’re thrilled; we're just starting off and we're at the higher end of expectations," says East Coast founder John Merklin. Saturday's event is part of a marketing blitz that has seen the company hit nine craft beer events or tastings in those three weeks.

John says the company has message beyond the flavor and style of its beer, a pre-Prohibition pilsner. "This is not a summer seasonal. It's regional; it's a reflection of the region ... a direct reflection of being at the Shore. The analogy I'm using is the Beach Boys, (hearing them) you know what it's like to be in California," he says.

Beer on the Pier, Belmar Marina, Route 35.
VIP Tent: 1-3 p.m
. General Session: 2-6 p.m

$40 online; $50 Gate; $60 VIP (soldout); 
$10 designated drivers. (A portion of the proceeds go to benefit the Monmouth County Foodbank.)
Food from 10th Ave Burrito, Mr. Shrimp, Crab Shack, Jacks Tavern, Federico's Pizza.
More info (732) 681-2266

You, too, can brew

Friend of the blog John Holl steered us to this piece he wrote recently for his former task masters at The New York Times.

You can sit on the couch and have a commercial tell you all about (bland) triple-hopped Miller Lite (as if most beers don't get hops for bittering, flavor and aroma) or you can put on your work boots and find out for yourself, take at trip beyond the taste and aromas of the finished product.

Scott Cronick of The Press of Atlantic City gave that idea a shot, spending a day at the Tun Tavern in Atlantic City last month to help brewer Tim Kelly create a dunkelweizen that will be served at the Atlantic City beer fest March 2o-21 and, of course, at the Tun, under a tap logo that commemorates the occasion.

Scott has Oskar Blues Dale's Pale Ale on tap in his kegerator at home in Somers Point. So he's by no means a stranger to craft beer. And his interest in the brewing process comes mostly from a tie-in The Press has with the Tun for its weekend features supplement, At The Shore, which Scott edits.

Still, taking a turn at the mash tun and kettle as a brewer's apprentice did open Scott's eyes to a few things about beer that go beyond bubbles rising in a pint glass to buoy a head of foam.

Namely, there's the enzyme action that happens when hot water meets malted barely (and in this case wheat, too) to convert the grain's stored starch into malt sugar and collectively the wort; the rolling boil of that wort and protein changes that take place; not to mention the boil time necessary to let hops do their thing.

These are all things pro brewers know, and homebrewers, too, have memorized and can chew the fat endlessly over at Big Brew in May. But to the beer enthusiast whose compass doesn't point to beer geek, the experience is a little bit like pulling back the curtain on the wizard to discover some chemistry is responsible for his magic.

"I never realized how much of a science it was," Scott said. "It was eye-opening from a work perspective ... and how everything is so precise."

It's also like cooking and serving a big dinner: Someone has to clean up afterward. Like Scott did, digging out the spent grain from the mash tun. Anyone who has done that can tell you it's a bit of a workout.

But there's no shortcut to quality. And the same goes for brewing quality small-batch beer.

On Monday, Scott said Tim informed him the beer they brewed nearly two weeks ago is coming along nicely, with some aroma notes of banana and bubblegum that you may typically find with such a wheat beer.

All that's left is for the beer to condition a little more and it will be ready for the pint glass.

In the meantime, as part of the Press-Tun tie-in, you'll see mention of the brew in At The Shore. If it's a hit, other Tun seasonal brews and At The Shore tie-ins may follow in the dunkelweizen's footsteps.

Benefit at Firewaters Atlantic City

A calendar item coming by way of beer writer Mark Haynie, the New Jersey correspondent for Mid-Atlantic Brewing News ...

From 2-7 p.m. on Sunday (Sept. 27), Firewaters bar in the Tropicana casino is holding a benefit to help cover medical expenses for one of their bartenders, Jackie, who has a rare digestive disorder that causes her to reject foods of almost any type.

Jackie's 26, and unfortunately as is the case with a growing portion of the country's population, she's without medical insurance. She's had surgery to treat her condition, and that's left her with some big bills.

There's a $20 cover charge with food and drink specials, plus a Chinese auction and prizes. Brewer Tim Kelly from the nearby Tun Tavern is sending over a pin of dry-hopped red ale, and Mark is kicking in some offerings from his impressive beer collection. If you're an Eagles/Giants/Jets fan (everyone's playing 1 o'clock games), fret not, there's a TV or two.

For the uninitiated, Firewaters specializes in casting a wide net for beer, bottle and draft. In Atlantic City, Firewaters and the Tun Tavern stand alone as the places for good beer.

An FYI: Firewaters isn't located in The Quarter side of the Tropicana. It's probably a little easier to hit from the casino's boardwalk entrance.

Central Jersey Beer Fest 2.0

It’s back, it’s bigger, and yeah, as all promos for sequels boast, better than ever.

The Ws and the H
What: Second Annual Central Jersey Beer Fest
When: 1-5 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 20th (Rain date is the 27th)
Where: Parker Press Park in Woodbridge
Why: It’s for charity; plus it's one of Woodbridge's Main Street events
Weather: As of now, the forecast is picture-perfect: sunny in the mid-70s
How much: Twenty bucks. Tickets are limited (Phone number is 732-634-2929)
What you get: A souvenir glass and unlimited sampling (which means, you can enjoy small pours of the brews; however, don’t get drunk or be dickish. That will get you – rightfully so – shown the door. The 2007 event was family friendly and commendably free of bad behavior; help keep it that way)
Hungry? Yes, there will be food vendors (plus live music)

Last year’s inaugural drew 650 people, depsite only four featured breweries: JJ Bittings (the event organizer), Climax Brewing (Roselle Park), Pizzeria Uno (Metuchen/Woodbridge) and the Tun Tavern (Atlantic City). It was a crowd pleaser, answering a thirst for a fall beer festival in the Garden State. (Watch video of the 2007 fest.)

This year, the lineup has doubled, with Jersey brewers Cricket Hill (Fairfield) and River Horse (Lambertville) and Boak Beverage (Pompton Lakes), joining the returning 2007 lineup.

Brian Boak, a familiar face and volunteer at High Point Brewing (Butler), started Boak Beverage on the strength of winning top honors in the New Jersey State Fair homebrew contest a few years back and the fact that plenty of people liked his beer. High Point contract brews for Brian, and he self-distributes in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. This is his first festival, and he'll feature his core brands, Monster Mash Imperial Stout (the state fair winner) and his Belgian turn, Two Blind Monks.

Rounding out the beer lineup are Weyerbacher Brewing (Easton, Pa.) and Hunterdon Distributors, which will bring draft and bottled beers from out west: Lagunitas, Boulder Brewing, Stone, Rogue and Flying Dog, and Smuttynose from the Granite State.

Point of order
That latter part of the list raises the question, is this a Jersey brewer fest? Yes and no. Yes, in that the foundation of the festival is made up of Jersey-based brewers, and no, since this fest is independent of the Garden State Craft Brewers Guild (although five of the home state brewers are guild members). The guild will hold a fall festival at the Newark Bears stadium on Oct. 19th (that’s a Sunday; more about that one soon).

OK enough parsing. The bottom line is, version 2.0 of the Central Jersey Fest grew, fattened up and looks to easily outdo the inaugural version.

We chatted briefly with August Lightfoot, brewer at JJ Bitting brewpub (which is a stone’s throw from the park), who said he’s bringing his 2008 Märzen (it's not on tap at the pub yet, hint, hint), an imperial IPA inspired by the WHALES homebrew club, his raspberry wheat and a standby keg of porter.

Some more styles to expect: Tim Kelly of the Tun Tavern plans to bring a Belgian wheat, possibly a pumpkin spice ale (it was being filtered on Tuesday), and an IPA dry-hopped with Jersey-fresh Cascade and Nugget hops (grown by Tim’s friends, Ray Gourley and Kathy Haney).

See you there.

A pint of Jersey fresh

What’s better than fresh beer? Fresh beer dry-hopped with freshly picked Cascades and Nuggets.

We spent some time Wednesday in the brewhouse at the Tun Tavern in Altantic City, where brewer Tim Kelly put on tap a special take on the Tun’s All American IPA, dialing up the beer’s aromatics with a few pounds of hops grown in South Jersey.

The beer’s a lightly filtered version of the Tun’s IPA, trending toward malty but smoothed out with the Cascades and Nuggets. The lighter touch with filtering gives the brew a hint of English real ale, however the carbonation is what you’d expect with American craft beer.

This is the first time Tim’s had a chance to use locally grown hops in a brew, but his preference is to be able to do it more frequently.

The cones came by way of Tim’s friends, Ray Gourley and Kathy Haney, whose small-space garden in Haddon Heights has produced an impressive crop of Nuggets, Cascades, Glacier and Goldings, among other varieties (check out the photo by Ray, cones as big as your thumb).

What got sacked up in a mesh bag and tossed into the serving tank smelled really great, so you can bet the beer’s worth moving up on your list of pint choices. (We took home a growler pulled early from the batch; haven't sampled it yet, but it will be more like real ale IPA, nice hoppy nose and low carbonation with the malty signatures.)

While waiting for the IPA to filter, we sampled a couple of the California brews – Lost Abbey Judgment Day and Moylan Brewing’s Hopsickle Imperial IPA – sent this way by the Thirsty Hopster.

Judgment Day, wow, the Cecil B. DeMille of beers, a quad as big as its biblical name. It’s got a warm alcohol kick (10.5% ABV) right from the start, in the nose and first sip, plus some chocolate notes before you get to the raisin flavors (it has raisins as an adjunct, plus some special B in the grain bill). Let it breathe and relax in the glass and some really big flavors unfold.

Hopsickle (9-something % ABV) was a beer that smelled better than it tasted, and that’s not a slap at its flavor, just an observation. You sort of expect an imperial IPA to be as bitter Paul McCartney’s ex, but the chorus of hop aromas were a nice preface to each sip from this pumped up IPA.

Looking ahead
Leather Neck stout, which has been off the Tun’s taps for a little while, is returning soon, and Tim plans to get rolling on an Oktoberfest (a Märzen fermented with Munich lager yeast) in a matter of days (just a tad behind schedule). Deeper into the fall, think spiced beer, and another lager will probably be coming back around.

Also, look for the Tun beers – four to six of them in fact – at a dinner at the Laguna Grill in nearby Brigantine about the third week of October. Plans for that were starting to take shape on Wednesday. Stay tuned.

Reminder

Lew Bryson and Mark Haynie will be at J.J. Bitting brewpub in Woodbridge on Friday for their first Garden State appearance to support their just-released book, New Jersey Breweries. Look for 'em from 5-8 p.m. or so.

If you miss that appearance, they’ll be at the Tun Tavern in Atlantic City 1-4 p.m. on Saturday. The actual kickoff for the book promotion was last Sunday at the Grey Lodge in Philly, a few books sold and some elbows bent in slàinte and salut!

Lew, whose other pursuits are writing for a CondeNast mag, his blog and web site (not to mention his staring contest with the Pennsylvania Liquor Control Board) was kind enough to take some time and talk about New Jersey Breweries in an on-camera at The Ship Inn in Milford on Tuesday, a trip that’s not too far – but also not a run to the corner grocery – from his home in Pennsylvania.

If you’ve wondered why just about every corner of the mid-Atlantic region has had its breweries showcased by Stackpole Books except New Jersey – land where the drive-in theater was born, the home of Thomas Edison, heck, the place where George Washington scored a win to make the post season in that armed dispute we call the American Revolution – well Lew has some answers.

Lew's an affable guy with a hearty laugh and an appearance that vaguely resembles James L. Brooks (one of the subversively creative minds that jump-started TV comedy with The Simpsons all those years ago, and who grew up in Hudson County, by the way). Lew and Mark, who's from Somers Point down in Atlantic County, have been on the beer scene in the New Jersey-Philadelphia area (and, for Lew, the rest of Pennsylvania) pretty much since the region caught the craft beer wave. They know their worts-worth.

A word about the brewery books …
They aren’t instant books, done by some trend-sniffing writer who parachutes in, takes a few notes and beats a retreat to his desk to bang out a requisite number of pages to make the publication look viable and sell a boatload of copies, get rich and move to Hawaii.

It’s more like there’s a lot of legwork, some of it inconvenient and not exactly budget friendly; there's time away from family, whether on the road or in that headspace that shoves out all extraneous voices so some serious writing can be done. And the dividends come less from sales, but more from the satisfaction of accomplishment, bragging rights and, if you’re into craft beer, maybe a sense of duty to the movement.

So, support the book, go to a signing, buy a copy and have a beer, or two. You’re also helping to raise the profile of the good beer brewed in the Garden State.

Postscript: A special thanks to The Ship Inn for letting us use their space for the video. (By the by, if you board the Ship any time soon, we do recommend the Black Death stout. Take some home; we did.)

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.