In the Bears' den

Some thoughts on the Garden State Craft Brewers Guild festival last Sunday ...

Best thing: The guild did two events this year – a North Jersey festival, at that – instead of the usual single, summertime festival that has essentially found a home over the past three years aboard the battleship/museum USS New Jersey in Camden.

The fall fest’s location, the Newark Bears stadium, proved more than viable: plenty of space, shelter in case of rain, and a boatload of seats in case you wanted to sit for a while.

Tied for best thing: A real ale/cask-conditioned beer station, where the 10 participating Guild breweries could feature live-beer offerings in one stop. This was a worthy addition, a way to break up the monolithic set-up of brewery, brewery, brewery. It’s also a selling point. We hope it carries over to next summer’s festival, then repeated in the fall.

Good thing: The festival had a theme. OK, so it was a no-brainer, Oktoberfest, but themes speak to deeper planning than just setting a date and putting tickets up for sale. Themes add to the marquee (that selling point) and create specialty attractions for festival-goers.

Another good thing: Mass transit to Newark. It was a cinch by train.

Yet another good thing: Great weather. Blue skies, sunny and comfortable. Not hot, not cold. Obviously out of everyone’s hands except Mother Nature’s, but still you couldn’t ask for better fall weather.

Buzzkill: Attendance. It was low by a lot of people’s standards, less than half of what the Guild’s summer festival did. But that shouldn’t be a deal-breaker. We’ll explain why in a minute.

Buzzkill No. 2: Some Guild members, notably Long Valley, Ship Inn and J.J. Bitting, skipped the festival. Long Valley has had some doubts about the bang for the buck, and stayed away from June’s festival, too. We don't dispute their argument, just hope this fall fest can spark a new interest. Meanwhile, this has been a hectic year for the Ship’s brewer, Tim Hall, just too much going on to worry about the festivals (the Ship was likewise absent in June). But it was curious that Bitting passed.

Another buzzkill: Festival held on a Sunday, during football season (and there may not be a simple solution to this, given the brewpubs' schedules and some other issues). During the festival, the Giants-49ers game was on the big, outfield TV screen, but the distance made it look small; plus, you couldn’t see the chyrons of scores from the other games going on. Simpsons moment: “Moe’s Tavern, home of the world’s biggest small-screen TV …” Trivia moment: Bartender Moe Szyslak is modeled in part on Jersey City bartender Red Deutsch of Tube Bar fame.

Bottom line: Have faith and look forward to a 2009 Guild Oktoberfest, thanks to some foundations laid this year.

So yes, we’re saying that even pulling off this festival qualifies it as a success, despite a turnout that could throw a log on the fires of critics wont to point out the gate didn’t do a blockbuster return. The key point is North Jersey is an underserved demographic, when it comes celebrating Jersey-made beers and the Guild getting across that message. It's a circumstance made more puzzling when you consider most of the Jersey craft brewing action happens above Interstate 195. So this is the start of new push to turn things around, find some equillibrium.

The venue is something Dan Soboti of the Gaslight brewpub has chased for a while, for either the summer festival or follow-up second festival. The difficulty, Dan says, has been changes, time and time again, in the front office of the Bears. Whenever he’d get some momentum rolling, one of those changes would send him back to the starting line.

By the by, Dan counts himself among those who saw the turnout as a downer. But, like Greg Zaccardi of High Point Brewing, he concedes the compressed time between getting a final greenlight for the festival (mid-September) and the day of the event left little time to get the word out and build a buzz among beer enthusiasts.

But ask either brewer, and they’ll tell you the location worked well, and the gate can be boosted with sufficient advertising and advance ticket sales at Guild breweries’ open houses and tours. That’s something that wasn’t in the cards this time out.

Speaking of …

• The Gaslight’s Web site has undergone some redesign and should be up and running by the end of the month. The South Orange brewpub has a Halloween party set for next Friday, featuring their pumpkin ale, Prince of Darkness dark mild, Warrior ESB (hopped, of course with Warrior hops), and Abbey Normal Belgian dubbel. Plans are also taking shape for their Victorian Christmas dinner in mid-December.
• High Point’s November open house comes early this year, on the 8th. They’ll be rolling out the ’08 Ramstein Winter Wheat Doppelbock, a big beer with a big following. The Butler brewery’s open houses are held on the second Saturday of the month; hence the heads up about it falling early next month.
• The Tun Tavern’s buffet Oktoberfest ($24.95 per person) is 1-5 p.m. this Sunday at the brewpub in Atlantic City. Brewer Tim Kelly says he just filtered a pumpkin lager that will be served along side his Märzen. The Tun will also have a keg each of Hacker-Pschorr and Paulaner Oktoberfests, thanks to an assist from their beer distributor (remember, AC is a convention town, so the Tun keeps some tap space set aside for mainstream brews). Next month, look for a cask-conditioned Irish Red, dry-hopped with East Kent Goldings. Tim just got a pin, and hopes to make a monthly cask ale feature (like a happy hour).

Off to the next one

The start of a fall classic? Could be.

The Garden State Craft Brewers Guild pours at its inaugural Oktoberfest event today, from the confines of Riverfront Stadium, home of the Atlantic League baseball's Newark Bears.

Not to feed the North Jersey-South Jersey biases, but a lot of people above I-195 are happy to again have a Jersey-brewer festival that's closer to home.

Whatever the case, here's a look at the Guild's summer festival on the battleship.

Hi-ho, Silver!

Congrats to Flying Fish for winning a silver medal in Denver at the Great American Beer Festival over the weekend.

FF placed for their Abbey Dubbel, a brew that a while back won kind words from the late Michael Jackson, the Beer Hunter himself.

Bishop’s Tipple Trippel, from Main Street Brewery in Corona, California, took the gold out of the 53 entries in the Belgian-Style Abbey Ale category.

At 7% ABV, the Dubbel is the biggest beer in FF's year-round lineup. (BigFish, a 10% ABV commemorative barely wine, tops the Dubbel as, indeed, the biggest Fish in the brewery's pond.)

FF's Web site says the Dubbel was first released in January of 1997. We seem to recall its inaugural brew on a Saturday in the fall (October?) of 1996, a brew day that also served as an open house, a couple months or so after beer started flowing for FF.

Folks who popped in at the brewery in Cherry Hill that day got to try their hand at an essential element of the commercial brewing experience – cleanup! The handful of beer aficionados got to help dig out the mash tun, but were rewarded with some samples of FF's Extra Pale Ale and ESB, first two styles under the brewery's belt.

FF's Web site lists demerara sugar as one of the adjuncts in the Dubbel, but we seem to remember Belgian candy sugar at some point (or more like we remember seeing sacks of candy sugar stacked in the brewery.)

Nonetheless, congrats. Next year, gold.

Speaking of MJ, congrats also goes out to Lew Bryson, who was named one of the three Michael Jackson Beer Journalism Award recipients. Lew won for trade and specialty beer media.

The complete winners list can be found here.

Dark beers, new frontiers

We shot up to Lambertville on Saturday for a return visit to River Horse Brewing’s Oktoberfest observance.

But that’s only half the story. The lead is what’s going on with RH. The hippo’s got a new swagger.

Sure, the O-fest was fun, and if you’ve never been to one of RH’s two-day affairs, you should go. Good bands (519 South rocks, no lie), good food, good time. That's Rich Dalrymple (above right) sporting the lederhosen. Rich just returned from a two-year stay in Hamburg, Germany, for work purposes. (He had to skip Oktoberfest in Munich this year, but was there last year.)

Rich gets rock ’n’ roll points for exiting Germany via the Reeperbahn, the city’s happening nightlife district that's also famously remembered as the place where The Beatles honed their chops before going on to wider glory.

Rich says he made one final tour of the Reeperbahn before catching his flight to the States.

But the story here is the beer.

When Glenn Bernabeo and Chris Walsh, two beer enthusiasts from the finance world, took over RH a little more than a year ago, they knew there would be some changes to come under their stewardship. To their credit, Chris and Glenn spent some time getting a feel for the topography before making those changes.

That’s the backstory. What’s new is this: gold medals, dark beers and new frontiers.

For instance, RH’s Double Belgian Wit and Cherry Imperial Amber, the first two installments of RH’s Brewer’s Reserve series (a stout will be the third; more on that in a bit), each won World Beer Championship gold medals. The wit was popular enough to earn a place in RH’s regular beer lineup. The cherry, well, we recommend you try it. Some nice flavors unfold with this beer, and cherry is just one.

But there’s more.

Dunkel Fester, RH’s draft-only dark lager for the autumn, proved so popular that demand outpaced availability (RH did a limited brew of one tank with Fester). Rest assured, that lesson has been taken to heart and Fester will come back in 2009 in bottles, too.

(Fester was in a lot of glasses on Saturday, and one chap we talked to had this to say upon being told of the bottling plans: They better!)

Did we mention there’s more?

Down the road, look for a double IPA, featuring Perle hops. But next month get ready for Brewers Reserve 003, an oatmeal milk stout that we got an advance taste on Saturday. It’s silky smooth from the oats, roasty in a lot of places and sweet in between. The fusion of oats and milk was the brainchild of Jeremy Myers, RH’s assistant brewer since May.

A Penn State grad, Jeremy’s a product of Lambertville, and comes to the brewery by way of Churchville, Pa. When he’s not helping brewers Christian Ryan and Tim Bryan, he’s probably working with his screen printing business, Jump Start, in Philadelphia.

Jeremy’s friends had a hand in RH’s new packaging (photo above): Jon Loudon did the layout on the new variety packs, and Bruno Guerreiro designed that hippo with some attitude.

Wait, there’s even more.

Tried RH’s lager lately? They switched to a Danish yeast and are bottling and kegging the beer unfiltered. It has a biscuity signature and gentle hop smack, quite drinkable at 4-and-change ABV. (The lager and Fester were the beers we had seconds of on Saturday.)

RH ... new swagger and making a splash.

More fests, g'suffa

Oktoberfest has ended in Munich; the 16-day bash in Bavaria wrapped up last Sunday.

Not so on our side of the Atlantic.

Fest beer will be with us for a little longer, and so will the conviviality that’s a hallmark of the celebration. With that in mind, here’s what’s coming up ...

• Long Valley Pub & Brewery holds its Oktoberfest from noon to 5 p.m. this Sunday. Check their Web site for more details.
• Tun Tavern has its O-fest set for Sunday, Oct. 26th.
• And as we’ve noted, River Horse Brewing has its two-day Oktoberfest this Saturday and Sunday at the Lambertville brewery's back lot.

RH has been hitting some high marks with new beer styles it added to its lineup just this year (think Belgian white and a cherry-finessed imperial amber). So by way of advice, RH’s event could be your last chance to grab some Dunkel Fester, a draft-only autumn seasonal that proved to be a huge hit soon after its release a few weeks back. (Co-owner Chris Walsh told us at the Sept. 20th Woodbridge festival that Fester was almost gone, but the brewery was holding some back for this weekend.)

In the Valley
Last year, the legions of Oktoberfest fans put away six barrels of Long Valley brewmaster Joe Saia’s copper-hued fest beer. That’s 186 gallons served up at last year’s annual pig roast in the side parking lot of the pub, housed in a scenic, two-century-old, stonewalled barn located in the Morris County community founded by Saxon immigrants in the 1700s.

Now in its 12th year, the event draws anywhere from 800 to 1,500 people, but there’s plenty of room to accommodate 2,000. If you go, expect a German menu served along with the pork, four other beers to choose from, including a cask-conditioned pale ale, and of course live music. (Parent alert: There’s also activities for kids.)

Joe’s Oktoberfest is actually fermented with an ale yeast, but done at a lower temperature to produce a beer that’s closer to the crispness of lager, with the signatures of the German malts and balanced bitterness of Tettnang and Saaz hops coming through. (FYI: Joe’s got five beers, including his Lazy Jake Porter, in competition at the Great American Beer Festival, which starts tomorrow in Denver. Lazy Jake took home a gold medal three years ago.)

Märzen by the sea
In Atlantic City, Tun Tavern brewer Tim Kelly describes his 2008 Oktoberfest beer, Tunfest Lager, as a slightly smoky brew, with a hearty 6.3% ABV. So what do you pair with a full-bodied beer like that? Try a buffet, a band and a live, remote broadcast by WAYV radio station.

Here’s the Tun’s Oktoberfest menu:

• Cucumber salad with sour cream
• German potato salad
• Sliced weisswurst over red cabbage
• Chicken with potato dumplings
• Meatballs in a mushroom cream sauce with spätzel
• Beer-basted bratwurst with sauerkraut and mustard
• Apple strüdel/cobbler with whipped cream

Check with the Tun for pricing and if reservations are required.

And toast the season.

Bis später.

Party with this Guy

Actually, the party gets the better of Guy. But you’ll still want to be there to see it.

The Ship Inn, the British-themed brewpub in Milford, is now taking reservations for its annual Guy Fawkes Night (35 bucks per person, includes banquet), set for the evening of Wednesday, Nov. 5th.

It’s a night of good food, good ale, mirth and merrymaking. Period costumes are encouraged.

Students of UK history will remember Guy as the guy who was nabbed red-handed in a cellar of Parliament in the early morning of Nov. 5, 1605, a torch in his mitts, about to light the fuse to enough gunpowder to launch the House of Lords into orbit.

As you can imagine, such treason was dealt with harshly. Guy and his co-conspirators in the Gunpowder Plot, if they hadn’t already been run down and dispatched in the name of King James I, met their fates at the hands of the executioner the following January.

In Britain, the foiling of the plot is still celebrated with a bonfire and fireworks (squibs). At the Ship, Guy will get burned in effigy in the parking lot, weather permitting (can’t have a stiff wind blowing hot ashes around), then everyone enjoys a banquet fit for, well, a king.

The Ship’s in the process of securing its permit for the open flame, a minor routine procedure before dealing with the traitor.

Brewer Tim Hall, who's of British lineage and whose family owns the pub, says Guy Fawkes Night has been a tradition at the Ship since 1985, a decade before the brewery was added and the Ship became the first New Jersey brewpub.

Speaking of the brewery, Tim has turned out a brown ale, Broken Silence, that’s a tweak here and there of a past brew called Dark Charger. The update produced a more robust beer at 5.7% ABV.

But the important thing to know is when you buy a pint of Broken Silence, proceeds of the sale go toward fighting ovarian cancer, which Tim’s mom, Ann, died of last summer.

Good beer, good cause.

Oompahs and umlauts

Some scenes from Basil T’s Oktoberfest dinner last Friday in Toms River, a winning combination of food and beer.

Oh, and the Mädchen servers bringing the dinner courses and beer were pretty delectable, too. Good job on the night. Danke schön.

(FYI: The pictures open large, and if you're one of the people who asked for a photo, just pull whatever you want off the page and save them to your drive.)

If this fest celebration gets any bigger, they’ll have to get a big tent and move it to the parking lot, where the Firehouse Polka Band can turn up the heat.

Last year’s crowd of 50-plus doubled this year, and, alas, some forlorn folks learned the event had sold out.

Think next year. Plan early.

The huge jump in turnout – in a troubled economy, no less – tells you a few things: Great beer, great food and a great time don’t take a back seat.


THE RUNDOWN
Credit for Friday’s menu goes to Chef Steve Farley and brewer Dave Hoffmann, who was obviously enjoying a celebration of his deutscher roots:

Light touch
The opening culinary salvo for the crowd's reception: Bavarian shrimp cocktail paired with Barnegat Light, an easy drinking lager.











Side pocket
The night's appetizer: German ravioli – Steve’s translation of Schwäbische Maultaschen – with veal and vegetables, demi-glace and crisp caramelized onions.

Whatever you want to call it, Dave gave it high marks, with a favorable comparison to his mom’s.

Maultaschen goes well, by the way, with Dunkel Hefeweizen. If you know Dave’s wheat beers, you know they skew toward banana aromas, not clove.

This one was a tasty steppingstone toward the night’s featured beer.

Teaming up
Hey, BMW and Rolls Royce have a joint venture, so why can’t you pair the best wurst you can find in New Jersey with an India Pale Ale, the British origins of which beer writer and emcee Kurt Epps traced for the night’s crowd.

The weisswurst, bratwurst and bauernwurst came from Schmalz European Provisions in Springfield (Union County). And of course, no one passes on the chance to riff on the best/wurst line. Just ask Kurt. And that IPA, well if this weren’t Oktoberfest …

Roll out the barrel
After a Munich-style ceremonial tapping of an Austrian oak barrel – the coopering was courtesy of Roger Freitag – the night’s Märzen flowed, a hearty match to the smoked pork loin and spätzel.

(With Dave's heritage, you'd expect nothing less than a topnotch fest beer, and he does not disappoint, with either of his versions that New Jerseyans can get their hands on. His toasty-rich Climax Brewing version, eponymously named Hoffmann Lager Beer Oktoberfest, has been out for a while now. Basil's put the pub's Oktoberfest on tap at the end of last month. Both go quickly, so grab your stein.)

Finishing touch
Black forest cake and a pumpkin porter closed the night. That porter rocks, by the way, and was one of our take-home beers.

Wind-up
Basil’s does Oktoberfest right. So maybe that tent isn’t a bad idea.

Prosit!

ADDENDUM:
Basil's makes The Star-Ledger ... Columnist Paul Mulshine (he's the fellow sitting on the far right in the photo above right) filed this for Tuesday (10/7). Thanks for the mention, Paul.

Central Jersey Beer Fest 2.0, Part 2

Here’s the video we shot in Woodbridge a week ago.

And we’ll make this point about the 2008 Central Jersey Beer Fest: Growth suits it. It doubled in size from last year, and it has more room to grow for next year, room for more brewers and vendors, especially food.

The pizza and bar-type fare are OK, but the event's all about beer, and that creates a great opportunity for more interesting pairings. That’s probably easier said than done, but we still think it’s something to consider, something worth investigating.

Anyway, the video ... It runs a little under 6 1⁄2 minutes. Thanks to everyone who paused for an interview, and a special thanks to Brian Boak for sparing some time from his Boaks Beer station, where for most of the day, he was working solo, keeping up with the demand for his Abbey Brown (7% ABV), Two Blind Monks (7.4% ABV) and Monster Mash imperial stout (10% ABV), all proving to be very popular choices of the day.

A longtime homebrewer, Brian jumped into commercial beer not quite a year ago, hiring High Point (where he volunteers and conducts the tours at the Butler brewery) to turn out a batch of Monster Mash for him under contract. Woodbridge was Brian’s first festival, but he’ll be pouring at Sippin’ By The River, the beer, wine and food fest at Penn’s Landing in Philadelphia, on Sunday (Sept. 28).

Monster Mash and Two Blind Monks form the core of his brands right now. But if you check out his Web site or brochures, you’ll notice he has plans for a porter, a wheat beer with lemongrass and Three Blind Monks, a stronger version of Two Blind Monks that's meant to be aged.

Aside from the contract brewing, Brian’s essentially a company of one, labeling his bottled beer by hand from his business digs in Pompton Lakes, and trucking cases and draft versions of his beers in his white van to bars (like Andy’s Corner Bar, the first establishment to carry him) and outlets in New Jersey and a distributor, Stockertown Beverage, in Pennsylvania, a state that’s so far been good for business. (Brian’s beer is in 17 eastern Pennsylvania counties, including Belgian beer-loving Philadelphia.)

With 33 barrels brewed so far this year, Brian forecasts finishing the year at 60 to 75 barrels. If Woodbridge is a bellwether, 2009 could a Monster year.

Throwing stones

The Newark Star-Ledger, on a respirator and hemorrhaging money (so say the news sheets), is wading into the waters of magazines with Inside Jersey. It’s a business move, so whatever, that’s not the beef. (FYI, links to it may be gated and ask for birth year and ZIP code).

But their review of the state’s brewpubs, though not an utter trashing, is the point of contention. And not because it’s a review. There’s plenty of scoring (take that in a few definitions of the word) of Jersey brews going on at Rate Beer and BeerAdvocate. Beer is subjective (which is why we don’t venture down the review road. We know what we’ll have two or three pints of, and we allow you the same).

The real issue here is the degree of outdated uselessness of the review. (Plus this piece is a warmed-over turn of something done by the Ledger four years ago – Aug. 27, 2004. We plumbed the Web and found it. Again FYI, that's a cached link, so it may crap out.)

For the record, we don’t care when they started putting this together, nor care about the amount of legwork involved. Or if it had to be done as a spare-time side gig to another newsroom duty, or that it took a while to get around the state and drink. The readers don’t know that, nor should they have to account for it; they just see the Sept. 16th date.

The Web’s immediacy demands being current. And anyone in the know about Jersey beer (and there are plenty of folks out there who are) can see the legwork here is utterly Jurassic. Yet the review was published in mid-September, when the fest and fall seasonals are going on tap and brewers are gearing up for winter warmers or a hearty, smoky Scotch ale. There's no mention they even do them.

A good example of the ancientness: Dave Hoffmann hasn’t had a maibock on at Basil T’s in Toms River for months (we called Dave on Tuesday to ask how long it’s been, he says four months at least). And it won't come back until next May because it's a spring seasonal, of course. (Yet here were are in the fall. Hmmm.)

One more: Tun Dark at the Tun Tavern in Atlantic City kicked at least a couple of months ago (again we checked with brewer Tim Kelly; we had guessed three). In late August, Tim put on a new version of their IPA, dry-hopped with some really floral-smelling Cascade and Nugget hops, fresh from his friends’ suburban garden. Guess the Tun gets no points for what they're doing right now – locally grown, locally served. Sigh.

Yet another point regarding the Tun: trashing the house light beer, Tun Light. Let’s face it, light beer is to real beer what Britney Spears is to real music. Most craft beer drinkers know what to expect with the house-brewed lights. They're light beer, meant to be less pronounced – hops, body, maltiness – than the rest of the beer list; they're the mainstream brew knockoffs, more bubbly than anything else. They're not for everyone, just like that double IPA isn’t, either. It’s a business decision (like, perhaps, the ailing Star-Ledger and its magazine venture?)

Yet another example: The Ship Inn’s Black Death Stout went on late June, early July, and kicked by the time we were back there in Milford in mid-August, which is when we tried their West Coast IPA, something new at the Ship.

And not for nothing, but word got out three weeks ago that New Jersey is getting another brewpub, Iron Hill, in Maple Shade. So what if that’s not for a few months; if you’re willing to talk about beers people can’t drink right now, or for that matter in quite a while, you can mention a place that opens next May. Iron Hill’s a fresh part of the beer scene in the Garden State. It's current.

Also, maybe it’s just us, but we think this is a misleading point in the review ... The brewpubs are conveniently spread around the state. Um, no more than say corners bar are. They, in fact, are the corner bar for many folks. But, as important, they're also destinations for those passionate about beer and interested in sampling the brews of New Jersey. So for the latter (especially South Jersey), it’s hardly convenient. We raise the point because the review attempts the statewide glimpse and because high costs for liquor licenses charged by local governments keep new brewpubs out of places where they would easily enjoy support.

So, spread out means traveling the state (trust us, we’ve done it – regularly), which brings up another point. Better guidance for the beer tourist. All of these places have their mainstay brews, styles almost always on tap, plus their seasonals, and even specialties (like Triumph in Princeton and those oak barrel-aged and cask-conditioned beers brought up from the cellar on the first Wednesday of each month), some clear, serviceable information there would have been nice. It's not always about what's on tap, but what the pubs do.

So yeah, we're throwing stones at others who threw stones. Defending the brewpubs? Sure, we'll cop to that. Many of them have just a lone brewer tending the kettle, fermenters and serving tanks, toiling in a state where pedestrian Bud and Coors Light dominate practically every bar.

If you're truly interested in navigating the Garden State’s brewpubs in one stop before you hit the trail, forget Inside Jersey. Just grab Lew and Mark’s book. You'll be doing yourself a favor.

Next!!!

We’re off to the Central Jersey Beer Fest today. But before leaving, it’s worth taking a few minutes to point out what’s ’round the corner.

New Jersey Breweries book signing, with Lew Bryson and Mark Haynie
When: 5-7 p.m., Friday Sept. 26th
Where: Flying Fish Brewing, Onley Avenue, Cherry Hill
Wallet: Free, unless you’re buying a book, which you should if you don’t have it already (Here’s a thought, buy an extra copy, mail it to Governor Corzine’s office, slip in a note: Now is the time to revise New Jersey’s arcane laws concerning beer. Signed, New Jersey Craft Beer Drinkers.)

Last time we stopped by FF, they had their 2008 Oktoberfish on tap for the brewery tours. That’s reason enough to swing by. But, seriously, on the heels of Lew and Mark’s book (released last July), it’s a perfect time to embrace all that the Garden State has by way of breweries and brewpubs, and to lend a voice or show some solidarity in the hopes that the industry can continue to grow.

By the by, Lew and Mark will be signing copies from 1-3 p.m. at Borders on Route 73 in Marlton the next day. See Lew talk about the book here.

Oktoberfest in Philadelphia
When: 1-5 p.m. (special noon VIP tasting) Saturday, Sept. 27th
Where: 23rd Street Armory (in Center City)
Wallet: $45 for general admission. $15 for designated drivers. $75 for the VIP tasting

This event (see more details here) fills the void left by the city’s loss of the Oktoberfest at Ludwig’s, the German restaurant on Sansom Street. (It was sold. High Point Brewing was often a part of the festivities at Ludwig's.) Flying Fish will be among the 50-plus beers being poured at the armory event. Proceeds go toward Philly Beer Week 2009 (March 6-15), and the breast cancer research drive Mugs for Jugs. Get a Maßkrug and help out a good cause. Seems like mugs and jugs have long association with beer, something not lost on Frank Zappa. (Rest in peace, Frankie, you're very much missed.)

Basil T’s-Toms River
When: 7 p.m. Friday, Oct. 3
Where: Basil T’s Brew Pub & Italian Grill, Hooper Avenue and Bay Avenue, Toms River
Wallet: $65, all inclusive, so you get food and brew
Music: Firehouse Polka Band

We had hoped to hit this last year, but had a work commitment that meant getting up with the chickens the next day, something that a night on the town doesn’t mesh well with. So we regrettably had to pass. This year, we hope to be there, to sample the Oktoberfest and catch the mädchen in dirndls.

The dinner is hosted by beer writer Kurt Epps and brewer Dave Hoffmann. As many people know, Basil’s-Toms River is Dave’s moonlighting gig, an easy trip down the Garden State Parkway from his mainstay of Climax Brewing in Union County.

River Horse Oktoberfest
When: Noon-5 p.m., Saturday and Sunday, Oct.11-12
Where: Back lot of the brewery, 80 Lambert Lane
Wallet: Pay as you go event
Music: 519 South Band

Oktoberfest 2007 was the first event that Glenn Bernabeo and Chris Walsh had at their disposal to start selling the new image of River Horse. They’d only taken over a month before as the new owners. And they did quite a job.

And they’ve been on a roll since: new beer styles coming out of the brewery, more events, a bigger presence around the Garden State and in neighboring Pennsylvania.

Last year’s RH Oktoberfest drew a healthy crowd, as did the two-day festivities at the brewery during ShadFest. This year’s fall festival should be on your calendar. And, as always, when you’re finished on the Jersey banks of the Delaware, take a moment to hit Triumph's brewpub in New Hope. Locally made beer on two sides of the river within walking distance really makes this area a special treat.

Garden State Craft Brewers Guild OktoberFestival
When: 1-5 p.m., Sunday Oct. 19
Where: Newark Bears Riverfront Stadium, Newark
Wallet: $40 in advance; $45 day of festival. See Web site for details

First things first. Yes, this is on a Sunday during football season. But the Giants game will be on the Jumbotron at Bears stadium, so you won’t have to miss Big Blue. The Eagles have a bye week so you’re good there, too. The N.Y. Bretts, er, uh, Jets are on the road in Oakland, with a 4:15 p.m. kickoff, so that might be the only wrinkle with this fest being on a Sunday (unless you have tickets to the Giants game, like friend of the blog Tom E. does. Enjoy the game, Tom).

Anyway, we’ve run into a lot of North Jersey people (just last weekend, in fact) who mention they’d like to see a guild festival closer to their neck of the woods. Happily, here’s the answer. And if you noticed on the guild’s Web site, there will be cask ale, in addition to the Märzens. That alone might be reason to go.

Don't forget Andy

Shame on us.

We nearly forgot to point out that Andy's Corner Bar in Bogota is one of the places in New Jersey that does Oktoberfest right.

And that happens on Saturday, Sept. 20th, which as we know is the start of Oktoberfest in Munich (we'll be in Woodbridge, good beer there, too. Has us cursing the scheduling conflict. See what we mean when we said September is a busy beer month?)

High Point and their 2008 Ramstein Octoberfest (yes, they spell it with a C) will be a featured brew at Andy's, with the oak barrel tapped at 2 p.m. Ramstein beers are a fixture at Andy's, have been for quite a while, in fact.

Of course there's a German menu – the best wursts you can find, plus all the side dishes and trimmings that keep you happy. (Food will be served from 2-7 p.m., while the beer will flow until the 2 a.m. closing, or of course, like any bar must do, last call in anticipation of closing time.)

Andy's is well know for its impressive beer list – it's really one of the best beer bars in New Jersey – and on Saturday, the 16 taps (10 inside, six outside) will pour only Oktoberfest or pumpkin ales.

Here's a taste of the beer list ...

• German: Ayinger, Erdinger, Hofbrau and Spaten. Trivia tidbit (via Wikipedia, so yeah, take it for what it's worth): The Hofbräuhaus in Munich inspired a worldwide famous song, and the phrase "eins, zwei, g'suffa" ... Hmm, we always thought it was a count of three, but anyway ... There's also Weihenstephaner Fest in bottles.
• Our favorite O-fest: Ramstein. High Point makes great beer, and they're good people.
• Credit where credit's due: Samuel Adam's Octoberfest. Some folks think Boston Beer has gotten too big, but let's not forget Jim Koch's doggedness in creating a beer brand 20-plus years ago that remains a big part of the rising tide that still floats a lot of microbrewer boats.
• Regionally brewed festbiers: Sly Fox, Lancaster.
• Smashing (good) pumpkins: Weyerbacher Imperial Pumpkin Ale, Dogfish Head Punkin Ale.

Aufwiedersehen! Tschüss! und Mach's gut!

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.

Ein Prosit, Ramstein

Gemütlichkeit (geh MOOT' lik KITE'): noun. Geniality; friendliness. ORIGIN mid 19th cent.: German.

We’ll get back to the deutsch in a minute. First things first.

You know you’ve hit on a good idea when you see someone else doing it.

This weekend was a busy one for New Jersey beer lovers: Pizzeria Uno’s cask ale event and High Point Brewing’s debut of its Ramstein Oktoberfest 2008 falling on the same day.

We tried to figure out how to do both equally, but alas, there was no easy solution, since we had planned to do some coverage of Ramstein, and it was 45 minutes away, along the Morris-Passaic County line.

We ended up spending a very short time at Uno, in Metuchen, or Woodbridge, depending on how you want to map it – and believe us, we really, really, really wish it weren’t this way, because cask-conditioned beer simply cannot be beat; it is to die for – then hit the Parkway-78-287 combination to arrive in Butler in time for the High Point/Ramstein open house. (That's a shot of the casks at Uno.)

But we weren’t the only ones.

Halfway into the Ramstein event, we looked up and saw a couple who had been sitting to our right at the bar at Uno, just an hour earlier.

Meet Fred and Doris Kirch of Freehold, regulars at Uno and followers of the High Point/Ramstein brand as well.

Fred said they had been anticipating the release of Uno’s Oktoberfest; hence their stop there about noon. But they also wanted to make a return visit to High Point. So they doubled up on the day. Like we did.

We feel validated. Great minds … yada, yada, yada.

But at the same time, we seriously wished we could have made a day of Uno’s event. We sampled some kick-ass smoked porter from Captain Lawrence Brewing, and did an obligatory turn on a cask version of Climax ESB. (Dave Hoffmann makes great beer, and when we say obligatory, we mean how could we pass it up? Also, Dave, we stopped at Liquor Mart for your Oktoberfest, but they hadn’t received it yet. We’ll be calling.) Sigh, too much to pack into a day.

Take-home beer
We will say this, Uno’s Oktoberfest and Ike’s IPA were our take-home beers. Uno brewer Mike Sella turned in an excellent Märzen, and if you’re anywhere near the Woodbridge-Metuchen-Edison area, you’d be crazy to not stop at Uno for a pint or some take-home while it lasts. (Seriously, Mike nailed it; this is good beer.)

As for Ike’s IPA … If you’re into assertive IPAs that still answer with malt, then this beer will make you quite happy. It’s hoppy, but drinkable, flavorful without being coarse, like some takes on IPA can be nowadays. Plus, it leaves a nice hop smack on your lips. And the best thing, it’s one of Uno’s flagship beers, so odds are you will find it on tap anytime you stop by. Which you should.

Meanwhile, in Butler
Märzens are among our favorite beers, and the Ramstein event has become one we’ve calendared. High Point’s Oktoberfest (6% ABV, and yeah, we know their tap handles spell it Octoberfest) is among the best we’ve tried. (Last year, at Deutsche Club of Clark, we got to sample some unfiltered, golden Paulaner Oktoberfest from two oak barrel’s worth flown in from Munich.) Of course, German beers are their focus, but High Point never disappoints. But alas, the Oktoberfest is only available on draft (check with the brewery for locations).

Greg Zaccardi, High Point’s founder, says the event drew 185 people, the largest crowd for this open house. HP went through six kegs of its Märzen, as the legions queued up with their growlers.

Gemütlichkeit
Back to the deustch. Like the beer, there was plenty of conviviality, the social part that is beer, the Gemütlichkeit.

Food is part of that, and the volunteer-prepared food spread at High Point’s open house was enough to spoil you.


Acknowledgements
So, some shout-outs. First to Karen Ontell (at left, with her mom) for that food and the hard work that went into creating it. Great job, Karen. (Remember, she does theme catering; reach her at kontell@optonline.net)

And to the Nutley crew of Thomas Pluck and John Milkewicz, loyal Ramsteiners, who’ve made the trek to Butler for open houses several times before (like last month for the eisbock. That's Thomas in the olive green shirt below, John in red.)

Thomas is the keeper of the Pluckyoutoo blog. Movies, beer, hotdogs and boobies. Sounds like the bases are covered, in this Internet-express-yourself age. John stood out to us by virtue of our editing video of last year’s Ramstein Oktoberfest event. Watching footage over and over makes for faces you don't forget.

John’s holding a growler in the foreground at 1:33 and 1:57 minutes into the piece, in some b-roll footage. (We knew we saw him from somewhere!) But more importantly, John’s a Marine Corps reservist, and pulled some duty in Iraq (at the sprawling, multitasked airbase in al-Anbar Province), so a toast to you there.

Apparently a diehard Ramsteiner, John, a lance corporal, shipped out for Iraq just days after popping in on the 2006 High Point Oktoberfest open house. He's been back for a while. Glad you’re home, John, back in Jersey.

Also, a nod to Bryan Jenkins, morning anchor with News12 New Jersey. Karen and Howard Ontell ran into Bryan during a Jamaica vacation and stayed in touch with him afterward, forwarding him emails about Ramstein events over the following months.

Great to see you could make the big one, Bryan. This is Jersey craft beer at its best. Spread the word: Think Jersey, drink Jersey.

And finally, to the Star-Ledger photo staff guys who knew where the good beer was that day. Can you capture Gemütlichkeit with a lens?