Beach Haus Kick Back Ale due in early May

The folks who bring you the contract-brewed Beach Haus Classic American Pilsner and Beach Haus Winter Rental black lager are exploring having their own brewery in New Jersey.

Big news, yes, but hang on for a second because there are some asterisks that go along with that information. Not to mention the fact that word of it shouldn't dwarf news that East Coast Beer is on the cusp of bringing a third beer to market, an American amber ale ale that will be Point Pleasant company's second year-round label and its hoppiest brew to date.

Previewed to the festival crowds in February and March, Kick Back Ale is scheduled to be bottled and kegged May 7th at Genesee Brewing (East Coast's contractor in Rochester, New York) and hit stores after the 11th. (In development for a while, Kick Back was actually supposed to be introduced last year, but Winter Rental was pushed ahead of it as a fall seasonal.)

At around 5.5% ABV, the brew is a sit and chill with friends kind of beer, says John Merklin, who  with his friend, Brian Ciriaco, launched Beach Haus pilsner in 2010 as their year-round flagship label.

"Beach Haus Classic American Pilsner and Beach Haus Winter Rental, they were kinda like the yin and yang to one another – one certainly more sunshine, spring/summerish feel (and) Winter Rental being part of the whole fall/winter motif," says Merk, as friends call him. "This (Kick Back) was just a departure of any season whatsoever, any single day or single event. It's just the everyday backyard setting, which is the first place of leisure for most folks."

Square Melon Communications, the Westfield promotions and graphic design house that has done all of the Beach Haus labeling, turned in some inviting companion artwork this time: an emblematic backyard stockade fence with a pair of kicked-off work boot slung over the pickets, while sunrays (setting or rising, you can make a case for either amid the hues) filtering through.

Label aside, the Beach Haus brand has made its name with beers that are accessible to folks who still hang around the Budweiser tent, but the brews also hit the spot with craft beer enthusiasts. Kick Back follows that arc, and Merk describes the flavor profile as hoppy but balanced.

"It's an American amber ale, so you're definitely going to get some good hop presence. It certainly will be our hoppiest beer," Merk says. "To style, it's going to have a really rich aroma, (which) will also have equal part as far as the maltiness. Besides the color, what keeps it from being an IPA is the fact that it's a little less on the hoppy side. That equal part in maltiness really balances it out."

Now about that Beach Haus brewery in New Jersey (and those asterisks). For starters, Merk says, things in that regard are embryonic and that farming out their beers to another company to brew remains part of the Beach Haus business model. But having a local brewery was also part of the company plan that came together five years ago. Additionally, Merk says having a brewery will "give us a little added flexibility in terms of introducing new styles and new brands ... getting more beers out to market in a more timely fashion."

"We're in the early phases of looking at properties and working out financing," he says. "It's far from a done deal, but we're taking action on it probably a year or two earlier than we had initially thought.

"It's always been part of the entire picture, the long-term picture. It's something very interesting to us. Not to get away from contract brewing, I'm certain we will always contract brew. We're very happy with our relationship (with Genesee). We've actually made some really outstanding beers we feel have had a lot of success."

Here's another asterisk about the Beach Haus, something else to consider when you think of contract brewing ...

The fact that Beach Haus beers are contract brewed shouldn't be misconstrued as Merk, Brian and Tom Przyborowski, East Coast's beer-development point man, just writing a check for a brewing and kicking back while Genesee does all the work. All three Beach Haus brews have been pilot-brewed by the trio first, the recipes refined, then handed off to Rochester. And then, the trio will put their hands on whatever tasks Genesee allows.

"The best way to put it is we do every non-union job they let us, which is quite a bit. Everything starts as a brew in my garage, not just a single event," Merk says. "For instance with Kick Back Ale, we went through four different iterations – and it was 18 months worth of development, all in my garage – before we even took the first trip to Rochester."

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Brew haha

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4-barrel brewhouse for Cape May

New Cape May brewhouse

It looks like Flying Fish isn't the only New Jersey craft brewery that's getting bigger.

Cape May Brewing is living larger these days. Not quite like the new brewhouse and that bunch of 150-barrel fermenters installed at Flying Fish's new digs in Somerdale, but it's nonetheless a healthy jump in size for New Jersey's southernmost beer-making enterprise.

For just shy of a year, Cape May Brewing has been making a splash in its corner of South Jersey, with a range of beers produced in batch sizes of a barrel and half or less. The brewery and its beers have been well-received; check out one of their Saturday afternoon open houses to find out for yourself. (See their Facebook page for hours.)


In light of that reception, owners Chris Henke and Ryan and Robert Krill saw that it was time to grow again.

This time, the jump is a big departure from the capacity tweak they made around last fall, when they stepped up from their tiny initial brew set-up (a trio of repurposed half-barrel kegs) to a 1.5-barrel system that Chris, an engineer, created.

Even with last year's size change, Cape May was staying quite busy, with Chris brewing four times a week.

Now, buoyed by a $68,000 economic development loan from their host town (Lower Township), Cape May Brewing is now stepping up to a 4-barrel Pub Brewing system acquired last November from a Maryland brewpub. The brewery is backing that up with a half dozen 15-barrel fermenters.

To make room for all of this, Chris, Ryan and Robert have taken over two adjacent units in the business park-like building on the Cape May County Airport property where the brewery launched last summer.

But wait, there's more.

Cape May is retiring its start-up Cornelius kegs more common among homebrewers, switching to sixtels and half barrels, for which the brewery is adding a kegger and a keg washer. (It pays to have an engineer on board: Chris is building the keg washer.) Supportive draft accounts accommodated the Corny kegs, but the new industry-grade ones will give Cape May a wider reach.

Meanhwile, the floor drains have been dug and concrete was expected to be poured this week. Ryan forecasts Cape May Brewing version 2.0 will be up and running in June.

Floor drain work

Licensed in May 2011, Cape May's draft beers began hitting the taps at its first account, Cabanas, a nearby oceanfront bar, a couple of months later.

Since then, the brewery has produced a dozen different styles, including a wheat beer, a stout, a honey porter, a brown ale, and a flagship IPA that took a first place in judging at last month's Atlantic City beer festival.

In the pipeline now are a saison and a kölsch, plus a re-release of their cranberry wheat.

"We started out on a shoestring budget, but we're getting more sophisticated as we go. Our licensing happened quickly, our popularity happened quickly, and now our expansion is happening quickly," Ryan says.

Craft beer billboard hits, the Top 50

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Ahead of the Craft Brewers Conference (May 2-5 in San Diego), the Brewers Association has been doing an industry data dump (like this and this).

The latest one is the chart at left (we added the background of a new Flying Fish fermenter).

The list of Top 50 craft brewers (by sales) is populated with a lot of names you'd expect, and the compass points in directions you'd likewise guess to be there,  i.e. California and Colorado.

Regionally, you'll find F.X. Matt (No. 6), Dogfish Head (No. 12), Brooklyn Brewery (No. 13), Victory (No. 27) and Blue Point (No. 34).

There is another ranking worth noting, Alaska Brewing at No. 14.  (And what follows isn't commentary on their beer.)

Alaska has less than a third of the population of Brooklyn (a borough), and about a 12th of that of New Jersey (an East Coast state); it's median income is $64,000, compared with $70,000 for the Garden State.

Yet, it's a bigger craft beer producer.  Draw your own conclusions.

But ...

Keep those phone calls and emails pouring in to lawmakers in Trenton. The legislation to change the regulations is still pending. 

Brewers Association cites export growth

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Canada continues to have a big thirst for US craft beer, remaining the largest export country for America's  craft brewers, who saw the volume of beer sent to international markets surge 86 percent last year, the Brewers Association says.

Craft beer exports last year topped 110,000 barrels, for an estimated $23.4 million in revenue, a tiny fraction of $7 billion industry but nearly double the export dollar figure for 2010, according to statistics the Brewers Association released Tuesday. The statistics are based on the results of a recent industry survey.

Given that it's the US's northern neighbor, Canada is a natural market, one readily accessible, as far as transporting beer goes. The Brewers Association, the national nonprofit trade group for US craft brewers, says the volume of exports to Canada approached 28,000 barrels in 2011, a 127 percent increase fed by surging demand in British Columbia, Alberta and Ontario.

On the heels of Canada were the trans-Atlantic markets of United Kingdom and Sweden. The Brewers Association says exports to both countries totaled just over 13,000 barrels.

While Canada is the largest single-country market for US craft brewers, western Europe clocks in as the largest regional export market, with shipments surging 52 percent last year and now approaching about 52,000 barrels.

Exports to markets out of the country remain a bridge too far for New Jersey craft brewers (and a daunting project for any brewer sending unpasteurized beer, which craft beer is, to far away markets). This is for a lot of reasons. Perhaps most notably is New Jersey breweries relatively small size, and there being not much in the way of payoff potential in trying to take on exports.

In addition, many Garden State brewers are too busy working to keep up with core markets at home and in the New York, Pennsylvania, Delaware region (and some other mid-Atlantic states), and do not wish to impede supply.

That's something Dogfish Head in Delaware encountered as it sent beer to the UK and Canada but had to pull back last year to protect domestic supply. (For whatever it's worth, the Brewers Association's news release about skyrocketing export growth isn't tempered with a mention of circumstances such as that.) 

Still, brewers like Stone (San Diego), Great Divide (Denver) and Odell Brewing (Fort Collins, Colorado) have developed overseas markets; Boston Beer as well.

Eight years ago, with the assistance of federal funding, the Brewers Association launched a program to help US craft brewers carve out such export markets. Since that program's start, the Brewers Association says, US craft beer exports have risen sharply.

"The growth in international sales is remarkable in light of the lingering global economic recession. Despite decreasing purchasing power, consumer demand for American craft beers has remained strong and importers have continued to expand their portfolios of American craft beer brands, even in emerging markets, like Brazil and India," says Bob Pease, the Brewers Association's chief operating officer.

 

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Homebrew permit saw rise in final year

With Big Brew/National Homebrew Day just a month away, here's an interesting statistic concerning New Jersey's now-buried requirement that homebrewers get a permit to make beer in their backyards.

Last year, when the requirement was in its death spiral thanks to legislation moving through Trenton, there was a spike in the number of homebrewing permits issued by the state Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control, the agency that regulates all things dram in New Jersey.

From Jan. 1, 2011, to the last day of December, ABC issued 633 permits to make homebrew. That's more than twice the number issued for 2009, when ABC granted 299 permits, and 213 more than the year before (for 2010, the number was 420).

With the stroke of a pen on Jan. 9, 2012, Gov. Chris Christie turned the permit obligation into a footnote, freeing homebrewers from a near-paper tiger mandate that nearly all of them had been ignoring to begin with.

True to form, when word of the permit's demise got out, homebrewers didn't exactly take to the streets singing "Ding, dong, the witch is dead!" It was more like they yawned, and said, "Meh."

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Still, there were those who brewed at home who felt pressured to comply with the nearly 20-year-old regulation. They ponied up the $15 fee. Many others did so because they were partaking of the hobby through brew-on-premise shops, which, for reasons of protecting their businesses (and legitimately so), required patrons to apply for the permit before any brewing could take place.

What's more, BOPs probably accounted for last year's spike in the number of permits, given that there are at least two now operating in the state, Brewer's Apprentice, a fixture in the Freehold area since the mid-1990s, and Brew Your Own Bottle, a newer BOP and supply shop in Westmont in South Jersey. 

Like a lot of things surrounding craft beer, homebrewing is riding a wave of popularity, too.

The American Homebrewers Association, the national group that supports the hobby and sponsors Big Brew/National Homebrew Day, says its membership has crossed the 30,000 mark, a milestone for the organization that sprang from the 1978 legalization (technically, it's a federal tax exemption) of making beer at home.

The AHA also estimates that these days there are 1 million homebrewers in the United States and more than 1,000 homebrew clubs.

Big Brew this year will be observed on May 5, with homebrewers striking mashes simultaneously (or close to that) across the country, brewing from AHA-provided recipes (this year it's brown ale) or their own.

But the reality is, the event is a show of solidarity and camaraderie around the craft of making beer.

In New Jersey, there's an extra reason on Homebrew Day to raise glasses in a toast: Even though Gov. Christie's eliminating the permit obligation may seem like some pro-forma going through the motions,  it does provide some relevant cover for those who enjoy making and sharing their creations. New Jersey homebrewers can indeed say, "Ding, dong, that witch is dead."

Homebrew Competitions

The Tun Tavern is once again holding a pro-am homebrew competition, and Cricket Hill Brewing was planning another one toward the fall.

The entry deadline for the Tun Tavern's contest is Tuesday, May 1. And yeah, that's less than a month away, but this competition was announced weeks ago on homebrew forums, such as the Barley Legal Homebrewers, so consider this note a reminder. If you live in North Jersey, don't let the fact that this is in South Jersey keep you from entering. Well-made beer always wins.

Entries should be comprised of a six-pack or the equivalent of whatever style you're submitting, plus your contact information (email, cell phone number, land line ... just make it so you can be reached.)

Grand prize is a chance to scale up your winning recipe and brew a batch that will be served at the Tun's booth at the Garden State Craft Brewers Guild Festival, June 23 aboard the battleship USS New Jersey at the Delaware River waterfront in Camden. The prize also includes passes to the festival. The Tun's phone number is 609-347-7800.

As far as Cricket Hill's contest goes, we caught up with brewery co-owner Rick Reed at a Friday night tour and asked if they planned to hold another competition. If you remember, it was a homebrew competition that produced CH's nicely done Russian imperial stout, plus an IPA the brewery released just a couple weeks ago.

Rick says they plan to hold another contest, some time around or after August. Best bet is to mark your calendar and check with the brewery toward the end of July to see if their plans hatched in early spring are is the same in late summer.

More tanks arrive at Flying FIsh

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Construction of the new Flying Fish brewery in Somerdale is really starting to come together.

There's still boatloads to do, after all, it's a quite an undertaking to set up an automated brewery that will triple the size of the one that has been producing 15,000 barrels of beer annually for a while now.

But on Monday, some more key pieces to the puzzle began falling into place. The brewery took delivery of six more tanks (fermenters and bright beer) from fabricators Paul Mueller Company of Springfield, Missouri.

The tanks arrived in pairs on flatbed trucks, and then, one by one, each was hoisted up to the roof and lowered through a hatch (specially created this purpose) and into the building.

From there, each tank was moved a few feet by forklift to make room for the next one. The tanks will be set on the concrete pad adjacent to the brewhouse over the balance of this week.

The work that took place Monday was the same process that played out back in February when the first round of fermenters and other tanks arrived from Mueller. The brewhouse equipment, custom made in Germany, arrived back in late January.

So when is all of this stuff going to be pressed into service to make beer? Well, that's a question best answered by the folks at Flying Fish (they say test brewing could start in May). But whenever that day comes, to quote Dr. Emmet Brown, "you're gonna see some serious shit."

Here are the photos from Monday.

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March beer fest madness

A kiss before trying (the beers)

Images from the Atlantic City beer festival last weekend (March 30-31).

The shots are from the Friday night session, and most are of folks who were with the home brands, the Jersey breweries that were there.

Got your Facebook page open? There are more uploaded to an album there.

Beer banter at NJ Beer Company booth

Meanwhile, below are shots (again more in a Facebook album) from Beers on the Boards, the March 24th Point Pleasant Beach festival at Martell's Tiki Bar that featured not only beer, but a buffet with foods prepared using some of the beers poured the event.

Beer me, please

Tun Farmhouse IPA in da house

Brewer Tim Kelly filters Tun's fest beer

American craft brewers love to ignore beer style guidelines and crash styles into each other. In the process, the unconventional has led to some conventions, like American IPAs – bold, strapping beers that have more hops than a hopyard and left their British IPA ancestors behind years ago.

Call 'em West Coast or American IPA, hophead tonic, or whatever. Just don't call 'em unconventional, because these days they're ubiquitous and true signatures of US craft brewing.

For the Atlantic City beer festival, Tun Tavern brewpub brewer Tim Kelly was looking to create a beer that bucked convention and spoke to fusion of styles. What he came up, a Farmhouse IPA, may sound like something Flying Dog Brewery (Frederick, Maryland) did with last year's In de Wildeman tribute beer.

Aside from the style, there's only a minor bit of overlap (a specialty grain – rye), so there's no copying here (but you have admit, Flying Dog is good company to be keeping). Tim made sure to cut his own path with the Tun's version, using oats and crystal rye in the grist, along with some sour mash, plus raw apple blossom and goldenrod honeys in the kettle.

Simcoe, Cascade dry-hopping

"I often sit around at night and think, 'What can I do different?' The idea of a farmhouse IPA struck me. After I thought of it, I went online and looked around to see if anyone else had done it. I  came across only one; it was actually Flying Dog," Tim said Wednesday as he filtered the 4-plus barrels of the 6% ABV IPA brewed for the festival that starts Friday night at the neighboring Convention Center. "I tried to do some layers of things, so it's not a one-dimensional hopped beer, so there's some character to it."

With the brewing, the hops started off with Nugget, moved into Saaz, finished with Styrian Goldings, with a dash of Chinook in the whirlpool. Tim dry-hopped with a touch of Cascade added to Simcoe. (The beer was fermented with a saison yeast.)

"Simcoe tends to be not as citrusy as the Cascade. It's a little more like apricot flavor," Tim says.

The result: a bit of a bizarro IPA at 65 IBUs, he says, "not the American citrus hop, but something different, sweeter, you know earthy, funky, spicy."

FOOTNOTES: The Farmhouse IPA marks the third time the Tun has produced a beer specifically for the Atlantic City festival, and it's probably the only beer pouring at the festival that was made specifically for the event. (That's something brewpub's have more flexibility with than production breweries.) The beer also goes on tap at the Tun on Friday. It was produced in about a half-batch size, so it may not last long (plus, there's a maibock waiting in the wings.)

This year's brew, like the two prior – a dunkelweizen in 2010 and Belgian tripel last year – were made as part of a promotion with The Press of Atlantic City newspaper and its weekend entertainment guide, At The Shore. Mark Haynie, New Jersey columnist for Mid-Atlantic Brewing News and a beer columnist for At The Shore, helped brew the beer.

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More gains for US craft brewers

Craft brewers across the country made more beer last year and sold more of it than in 2010, according to preliminary figures released Monday by the craft brewing industry's trade group.

Craft brewers saw volume surge 13 percent, with a 15 percent spike in retail sales from 2010 to 2011, representing a total barrel increase of 1.3 million. Additionally, the Brewers Association says the total number of operating craft breweries in the United States cracked the 2,000 mark by February of this year.

“While the overall beer market experienced a 1.32 percent volume decrease in 2011, craft brewing saw significant growth, surpassing 5 percent total market volume share for the first time,” says BA director Paul Gatza. “It’s becoming increasingly clear that with the variety of styles and flavors to choose from, Americans are developing a strong taste for high-quality, small-batch beer from independent brewers.”

Across New Jersey, 2011 was the hottest year for brewery start-ups since 1996, a nascent year for the craft brewing industry in the Garden State. Five new breweries were licensed in the state last year, while two new brewers – Flounder Brewing and Turtle Stone Brewing – have been given the green light by state regulators this year. That puts the tally of Garden State craft breweries at 24.

Since 2010, only two new craft brewers in the state – Port 44 Brew Pub in Newark and Great Blue Brewing in Franklin Township (Somerset County) – have thrown in the towel.

Production has been up for virtually every New Jersey craft brewer, with some, like High Point Brewing in Butler, opting to pass on participating in some festivals in order to keep the beer flowing unabated to draft accounts.

Meanwhile, Flying Fish continues its move from Cherry Hill to Somerdale, toiling away with building a new automated brewery that will triple its capacity.

Monday's release of statistics by the Brewers Association comes a little over a month before the May 2-5 Craft Brewers Conference, when industry members will gather in San Diego to hear finalized analyses of the business of small-batch beer.

Some of what the BA put out in those statistics echoes the usual booster talk the trade group has made in prior years' analyses. Still, the data are indicative of a hot sector getting hotter:

• In 2011, craft brewers represented about 5.7 percent of volume of the U.S. beer market; that's up from 4.9 percent in 2010.
• Production last year topped 11.4 million barrels.
• Craft brewers' sales last year amounted to an estimated $8.7 billion, up from $7.6 billion in 2010. Increased retail sales accounted for slightly more than 9 percent of the nearly $95.5 billion U.S. beer market.
• The number of U.S. craft breweries operating last year jumped 11 percent to 1,989; 250 of those were new. Last year saw 37 craft breweries close.
• On the jobs front, U.S. small breweries employed about 103,585 workers last year.

Here's a footnote off the BA news ... If you doubt the sunny outlook consider this: In February, the Brewers Association hired a Manhattan public relations company, The Rosen Group, to help with getting the message out and other programs. Things have gotten busy for the BA, too.

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Notes from Harvest Moon's Sweet 16

Harvest Moon brewer Kyle McDonald

Another reminder of how craft brewing can integrate itself into a local economy ...

New Brunswick's Harvest Moon Brewery & Cafe celebrated its 16th anniversary with a beer dinner that included pork and beef produced by Rutgers University's agriculture program.

The ag program takes Harvest Moon's spent grain, sparing the brewpub disposal costs, and by feeding it to the cattle the program raises, the spent grain doesn't wind up in landfills.

Getting farmers to take the grain is a rather common practice among craft brewers, that is, when there are nearby farmers available (it's not always the case). So it may not seem like a big deal that Harvest Moon's spent grain ends up being dispatched in this fashion.

But in truth, the exchange, especially one in which a brewery finds a subsequent use for the spent grist, then in turn uses products the grain helped enable, well that makes a brewery something more than just a beer factory, and a brewpub something more than just a place to eat and drink.

Harvest Moon's relationship with Rutgers was a side point noted to patrons of Thursday night's dinner. After the dessert course of chocolate cake pops, head brewer Kyle McDonald was kind enough to take a few moments to explain the brewpub's interdependence with Rutgers' ag program, and how Harvest Moon's executive chef, Michael "Tank" DeAngelis, added Rutgers farm bacon and beef to the anniversary dinner menu.

Applause for Chef Tank DeAngelis

(The bacon was a topper to a first course of split pea soup, while braised short ribs were the main course. Beers on the night were an American-inflected mild that was amped up a little more than you might find in its English cousin; an abbey single/Belgian golden ale; a one-two shot of Irish stout and 10.5% ABV imperial stout. The finale was a barleywine that led with some hops but resolved to the warmth of its 11% ABV.)

From Kyle:

Rutgers obviously has a big ag department, and they raise a variety of different livestock. One of things they do raise is hogs.

(Taking the spent grain) is a big savings to the brewery and a sustainable thing for Rutgers in that they're giving back in the community.  

I don't think it affects their livestock feed budget at all, but they're kind enough to come and take it from us. They no longer feed hogs with it; they only feed the cattle.

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Because I work directly with the gentleman who supervises their entire livestock program – he's the one I contact to come pick up (spent) grain and I'm on their email list – so whenever they slaughter anything and they open that up to public sales, I obviously get the heads up.

We had the beer dinner coming up, so I alerted Tank. We wanted to try to incorporate as much different stuff as we could. For the pork, he thought it would be good and easy to incorporate bacon in one of the dishes. So he grabbed 10 pounds of bacon right away.

The short ribs we had for the entreé were from the cattle they raise; we got 15 or 20 pounds for the dinner. It kind of completes the full circle – livestock fed at least in part with our grain – returned back braised in our beer and served with the beer that fed either that cattle or other cattle.

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Jersey Shore attraction: craft beer & food

Click to enlarge beer list

At the intersection of the words "beer" and "festival" this weekend, you'll find quite a companion spread at the Jersey Shore: chicken and a summer ale, kielbasa and a golden lager, or brisket and a pale ale.

Beers on the Boards at Martell's Tiki Bar Saturday on the Point Pleasant Beach boardwalk features regionally and locally produced craft beers, with some of those brews used in the preparation of the dishes on the event's buffet menu. Six New Jersey brands figure prominently on the beer lineup, which also includes some of the usual big festival suspects, like Murphy's Irish Stout. (First session starts at 12:30 p.m.; evening session is set for 6 o'clock.)

Nonetheless, the event represents something bigger, as far as beer scenes go. Beers on the Boards reinforces the inroads that craft beer has made at the Jersey Shore, an area of the state where the big macro producers still command a lot of tap handles, even as craft beer's popularity continues to surge.

That doesn't mean the Shore is an utter craft beer dead zone. Far from it. But it's hard to deny that the region has trailed the west side of the state and North Jersey in craft beer appreciation and good beer bars coming online.

"The Jersey Shore has great potential, but it's a tough nut to crack. Some places kind of get it," says promoter Chris DePeppe, a Jersey Shore native-turned-Pennsylvanian whose TotalBru Marketing and Beerheads companies launched the Beer on the Pier festival in nearby Belmar two years ago. "Whether we'll sway some of the Miller Lite or Bud Light drinkers, I don't know. There are some craft beer drinkers out there though."

Beerheads teamed with Martell's and the Point Pleasant Beach Chamber of Commerce to stage Beers on the Boards. East Coast Beer, the Point Pleasant-based company behind Beach Haus pilsner, signed on as a sponsor. So did Cricket Hill Brewing, and you'll find the two brands among the Jersey brews on the event's lineup. (The others are: Flying Fish, Carton, Kane and Tuckahoe.)

"Sure it's special to us. It's our back yard," says East Coast's John Merklin. "There are actually two stories here: Craft beer has come to the Jersey Shore, and the Jersey Shore has come to craft beer."

And this time, it's borrowing some ideas from beer-and-food events like the Brewer's Plate in Philadelphia, or SAVOR, the Brewers Associations annual gathering in Washington, D.C.

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Folks who attend Beers on the Boards will find plenty of flavors to explore as they sample both the beers and the buffet, says Martell's executive chef, Tom Peet, who crafted the event menu. Tom paired the beers to the bring out the best flavors of the beef, fish and chicken dishes.

"I like the Philadelphia Pale Ale beef brisket, the Yards Brawler Fish 'n' Chips. That (beer) paired well with the fish. They're all good in their own way," Tom says, adding any dish is a good starting point.

"Start with your heart. If you like chicken go with chicken. If you like beef, go for beef. It's all about individuality; it's what you like," he says.

Turtle Stone becomes 2nd NJ licensee for 2012

Three beers for Turtle Stone Brewing.

That comes after three cheers for the Cumberland County brewery, licensed by New Jersey regulators eight days ago.

Owner Ben Battiata jumped straight to brewing after the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control made its customary inspection of the Vineland brewery and gave the thumbs-up on March 13th.

Using a 1-barrel pilot system, Ben turned out a half-batch of a milk stout, and full batches of an American stout and a red rye ale, the latter of which is destined to be the house beer at the Old Oar House Irish Pub in nearby Millville, a bar that's been one Ben's haunts for a while and in recent times has been working craft beers onto its 30-plus taps.

"It's the bar I've been going to since I've been allow to go to bars," Ben says.

Turtle Stone's 15-barrel brewhouse is still being set up. Thus, Ben cobbled together the small pilot system to get some beer produced to ensure the brewery had a presence at the Atlantic City beer festival March 30-31. "We didn't want to lose out on that exposure," he says.

As a vision, Turtle Stone goes back about six years. As brewery startup, things started coming together more seriously three to four years ago, with the acquisition of brewing equipment and scouting a location. Ben and his partner, his girlfriend Becky Pedersen, saw the pace quicken last year with federal regulators signing off on the project and brewery construction taking place through the fall and winter. Last week's visit by ABC inspectors was the breaking of the finish-line tape to what had become a bit of a marathon. Despite that, there are still a few more details to get in hand, such as bringing the 15-barrel brewhouse online and adding a tasting room. (Ben hopes to have that taken care of by summer.)

"I've been waiting for things to settle down so I could get some rest. It hasn't worked out that way," says Ben, who still works full-time for Viking Yachts in Bass River. He brewed the three inaugural ales over four sessions (two batches of red rye ale), sometimes working until 4 or 5 a.m.

With the red ale, Ben says to look for a stronger rye presence. The 6% ABV brew was made with caramel malts and an ample amount of rye, and hopped and dry-hopped with Cascades, although future versions are likely to include Amarillo hops. (Right now, Amarillo is hard to get, but Ben hopes to lock in a supply at some point.)

"I really like rye beer, so I pushed that up a little more," he says.

The milk stout (5.2% ABV), Ben says, was Turtle Stone's first batch as a licensed brewery and comes from his recipe file built up from over a decade of homebrewing. It was done in a smaller batch because he was still getting a feel for the pilot system. He plans to take a couple of sixtels of the milk stout to the AC beer fest, but more of the two other brews.

The American stout (6% ABV), a beer that has always been part of the launch plans for Turtle Stone, also features Cascade hops, plus the Zythos blended hop. The grain bill includes some oats to give the beer a silky body.

Coming six days after the approval for Flounder Brewing in Hillsborough (Somerset County), Turtle Stone is the second production brewery licensed by the state this year, nudging up the tally of New Jersey craft breweries to 24.

The two additions come on the heels of five licensees in 2011, and the exit from New Jersey's craft beer scene of just two startup breweries since 2010 (Port 44 Brew Pub in Newark and Great Blue Brewing in Franklin Township, Somerset County).

Irish sights & sounds at Cricket Hill tour

Some images from the tour at Cricket Hill in Fairfield.

Great Blue opts not to renew license

Another casualty among New Jersey's craft brewing enterprises.

Great Blue, a 2-barrel brewery on the Suydam Farm in Franklin Township, Somerset County, opted to let its licensing and bonding run out.

Ryck Suydam, one of the principals in the brewery that was licensed early last year, says the decision to idle the family-owned brewery resulted from not having a person available to run it.

"My son was my brewmaster, and he works for another brewer full time and just couldn't do both. I didn't have anybody in the wings, and I couldn't do it with my schedule," says Ryck, who also runs the 300-acre family farm and is a partner in Suydam Insurance Agency. "So, the brewery is in mothballs for the time-being. The entity still exists, but the license has non-renewed."

Known for wide range of produce and commodities, including eggs, pork, hay, vegetables, melons, berries and flowers, Suydam Farm also grows hops. Ryck says some hop varieties will be cultivated this growing season, but not to the degree of past years. (The farm has grown hops since the 1990s.)

"It's just not cost-effective compared to the other things we do grow on the farm," he says.

For craft brewery start-ups in New Jersey, 2011 was a hot year, with five brewing enterprises being licensed by state and federal regulators. Great Blue, named for the herons that feed at a pond on the farm, led the pack, getting licensed Feb. 28, 2011. (In chronological order, last year's class of new breweries goes like this: Great Blue, Cape May Brewing, Kane Brewing, Carton Brewing and Tuckahoe Brewing.)

With a brewhouse that once produced beers for the now-defunct Cedar Creek brewpub in Egg Harbor City, Great Blue had planned to target its beers made with its own Jersey-grown hops for markets near the farm, a take on the concept of farm to fork, in this case, farm to glass.

The brewery led off with a red ale nearly a year ago, a beer made as much to work out the brewing processes on its equipment as much as anything. But the matter of who would tend the kettle proved to be an early problem, and with all of the competing interests and time constraints of the owners, finding a brewer proved to be something that was not easily resolved.

Great Blue's exit/hiatus from the Garden State's craft brewing scene follows the shuttering of Port 44 Brew Pub in Newark, which closed last summer.

For Cricket Hill, summer starts now, runs longer

Rick Reed pours at Brewer's Plate event

The news out of Cricket Hill is their newly acquired 30-barrel fermenters have been put into service – an imperial IPA and their hot-weather seasonal, Jersey Summer Breakfast Ale, are the brews that the Fairfield beer-maker announced last week had christened the tanks.

Going beyond that tidbit of news, owner Rick Reed says Cricket Hill will bump up its production run of the summer seasonal this year and make some packaging adjustments.

New 30-barrel tanks

"We'll do 20 batches; that's up by two brews. We'll do more draft and less bottles. We'll cut back the bottles and increase the sixtels," he says.

Speaking of those two fermenters (bought from Switchback Brewing in Burlington, Vermont), Rick says the extra tank space will boost annual production capability to almost 4,000 barrels, up from 2,600.

The brewery has also added a new chiller to handle the additional tank load, plus a grain silo that is forecast to help trim operating costs.

On the festival trail this month, you can expect to run into the Cricket Hill folks at Beer on the Boards in Point Pleasant Beach (March 24) and the Atlantic City beer festival (March 30-31).

The Cricket Hill crew beneath Springsteen pic at the March 11th Brewer's Plate at the National Constitution Center in Philadelphia.

Boaks Beer on a touch screen

Will the app look like this?

Coming to the iTunes Store – the Boaks Beer iPhone and iPad app.

Boaks founder Brian Boak says the free app being developed by a New York City ad agency will be debuted at the Saturday afternoon session of the Atlantic City beer festival (March 31).

"For people who have iPhones who are there for the early session, there's going to be some very special VIP privileges they will be able to get, using their iPhones," Brian says.

"The balance of the app is going to (let you) be able to learn about Boaks and find out where Boaks Beer is available and to get us your email so we can keep you updated, have you friend us on Facebook and follow us on Twitter."

The app actually is expected to be available a few days ahead of the beer festival. However, Brian says, some features will be locked until the formal debut.

The idea for the confluence of personal gadgets and beer marketing is obvious: steering beer drinkers to the brand.

Brian Boak (right) at Brewers Plate in Philly

"The more people who interact with us, the more people are likely to try Boaks Beer. The more they learn about Boaks Beer, the more likely they will try it," Brian says.

Boaks entered the New Jersey craft beer market in 2008 as contracted-brewed label. The Pompton Lakes company's lineup of Belgian-style beers and an imperial stout are brewed under contract by High Point Brewing in Butler.

New Jersey Beer Company, based in North Bergen, was recently added as a contract brewer and last week brewed a Belgian brown (Abbey Brown, 7% ABV) for the Boaks label.