Beer Wars reminder

It's 8 p.m. Eastern Time this Thursday, at a theater near you, or close enough. A one-night event.

The image below lists the Jersey theaters. FYI, the Hamilton location is the one near Trenton.

A view from the brewhouse

These are shots from the brewing day Steve Moen and Mike Wentzel had late last month at Krogh’s. That’s Steve at right.

Steve says in a note to us that Turnpike Pale Ale, the best-in-show beer from the 2008 New Jersey State Fair hombrew contest, will be on tap in Sparta in about a month, once Krogh’s can open up a tap handle.

Meanwhile, we caught up with Brian Boak of Boak’s Beer/Boak Beverages at the High Point Brewing open house on Saturday. (FYI, High Point has this seriously good schwarzbier, Project Z, on tap in the visitors area. It's totally worth your growler, just like their maibock, a rich and malty brew with a solid hop balance. Call to check on availability of Project Z.)

This is a shot of the 15-barrel fermenter Brian popped for that will be installed at High Point. It was in transit when this photo was shot.

If you recall, Brian has a business relationship with High Point, which brews his line of Belgian-style beers and an imperial stout. This fermenter is a pretty big deal for Boak’s Beer, representing dedicated tank space for the brews that Brian has found a market for in New Jersey and Pennsylvania. Over the past year or so, Brian has had to rely on what tank space would come open around the regular lineup of Ramstein beers and High Point’s other contract brewing obligations.

So consider this fermenter, which at the end of last week made it from China to Michigan where it sat en route to New Jersey, to be the first ring in the tree that is Boak’s growth. Brian expects the tank to be installed within the next 10 days. From there, it’ll be filled with a wheat beer accented with lemongrass that'll wind up in a bunch of new kegs Brian also bought, and ultimately bar taps, perhaps one near you.

Craft Beer Week ... an action moment

Next month plays host to American Craft Beer Week. It's May 11-17, to be exact. Think of it as Philly Beer Week for the whole country, or something like that, only it's a much older awareness effort than PBW.

And we recall, through the mists of time, that former Governor Whitman proclaimed July as a beer month in New Jersey, around the time she was heading into the stretch run of her second term. Alas, it would seem that stirring these embers and keeping the flame alive for the sake of craft beer has fallen by the wayside in our state.

It's a pity, since the Brewers Association in Colorado spoon-feeds the information and a lot of the accompanying rah-rah collateral material to organizations (or bars, it would appear) that want to jump on the beer wagon. It makes you wonder what the Garden State Craft Brewer's Guild is doing. Or not doing. There's not an iota of mention on the calendar over at njbeer.org. (And not to beat up on the guild, but geez, there's crap dating back to January on the news page of the Web site, the postcard link doesn't work and the promised Frequently Asked Questions page has been in the larva stage for months now.)

Anyway, without getting into the whole saw about burgeoning growth in the craft beer segment of the brewing industry, like the BA does, we fired off a letter to Governor Corzine's office, asking that May 11-17 also be designated New Jersey Craft Beer Week, to coincide with American Craft Beer Week. We sent it conventional mail and through the governor's Web site.

Here's the letter:

Governor Corzine,
May 11-17 is American Craft Beer Week, a designation bestowed by Congress (House Resolution 753) upon the efforts of the nation’s small-batch brewers/entrepreneurs, who make excellent beers that capture the heritage and modern culture of one of the oldest beverages on Earth.

The congressional resolution also serves to raise awareness of the community of microbrewers and restaurant/pub brewers. And amid our current national recession, it would be fitting that American Craft Beer Week also serve as a reminder of the contribution that those brewers make to their local and state economies, with jobs, tax revenues and licensing fees.

New Jersey itself has a long brewing heritage, and some claims to beer fame. For instance, canned beer was developed at the Gottfried Krueger Brewery in Newark and went on the market just two years after the end of Prohibition. Moreover, President Roosevelt chose New Jersey as the site of a speech to rally plans for pulling the nation out of the Depression, referencing the resumption of legal beer as a component of the economic recovery efforts.

Today, the 18 craft brewers that call New Jersey home carry on with that entrepreneurial and innovative spirit, making world-class beers that have earned national accolades and enjoy wide appeal here in New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania. It would be appropriate – and is requested by this correspondence – that May 11-17 be declared New Jersey Craft Beer Week to coincide with American Craft Beer Week and honor the accomplishments of New Jersey’s small-batch brewers and their contributions to consumers' enjoyment, the brewing industry, their local economies and the state’s economy.

We also added another section, for good measure, just a sampling of details about Jersey brewers, things that many of us know, but points that someone outside the loop may find interesting and useful. Besides, it would be decent fodder for a press release from the governor's office, should there actually be a proclamation ...

Some facts about New Jersey craft brewers:

• The Tun Tavern in Atlantic City pays homage to the now-gone Tun Tavern in Philadelphia, where the United States Marine Corps was formed in 1775. Every November 10th, the Tun holds a birthday celebration for the Corps, drawing active duty and retired Marines from across the country.
• JJ Bitting Brewing is housed in an early 20th century brick building (circa 1915) that once was home to the JJ Bitting Coal and Grain Company. The brewery/restaurant effectively preserves a piece of American railroad history by making that building its home.
• High Point Brewing, which brands its beers with the name Ramstein, pays tribute to both New Jersey’s highest elevation, and the American-German spirit of cooperation that is Ramstein Air Base in the German state of Rheinland-Pfalz.
• Flying Fish Brewing is New Jersey’s second-largest brewery, coming behind mega-brewer Anheuser-Busch (now Anheuser Busch-InBev), and this year is producing a series of beers saluting the culture of humor and community that bonds New Jerseyans with their world-renowned New Jersey Turnpike.
• Along the Delaware River, River Horse Brewing makes its home in the old Original Trenton Cracker factory building in Lambertville.
• Boston-based Pizzeria Uno has but one brewpub across its chain of restaurants in the US. It’s located along Route 1 in Edison.

Should anyone want to follow suit and push the idea to Corzine's office, just cut and paste the letter and mail it to (but hurry, time's running short):

The Honorable Jon S. Corzine Governor, State of New Jersey Office of the Governor, PO Box 001 Trenton, NJ 08625-0001

Or cut and paste it into the correspondence part of the governor's Web site, but that's a bit of a pain in the ass, with drop-down menus etc. (we used the small business category, by the way).

Odds of getting a response? Who knows? But Corzine's treasurer did stick his foot in his mouth last month in regard to beer drinkers (tempest in a beer stein, in the end, actually), and maybe the governor could use something to settle the foam.

Cheers.

PS: And yes, we know, Uno Chicago Grill, but the corporate HQ, we discovered, is Boston, hundreds of miles from where Uno originated. What a wicked pissuh!

OK, maibock for real this time

Saturday’s open house at High Point definitely will be the 2009 debut of Ramstein Maibock.

We jumped the gun last month, saying it would be on the bill of High Point’s March open house, alongside the Ice Storm eisbock and Double Platinum Blonde. An oops on our part.

But this time, it’s definitely a go, from 2 to 4 p.m. at the brewery in Butler, with Councilman Robert Fox doing the honors of tapping the ceremonial wooden barrel.

Speaking of the Ramstein Maibock, it walked away with top ranking in Ale Street News’ tasting of springtime bocks. And take a look at that list, it bested some German-made bocks that were part of the tasting.

Ale Street gives it 4 1/2 stars; we give it our highest rating: 5 growlers.

And speaking of open houses, the photos here are from the March event, the first High Point open house for 2009.

April 7th, a date that lives

Prohibition, the national experiment, goes belly up … Legal beer finally. Happy day.

A year ago, on the 75th anniversary of April 7th, 1933, some folks were stepping all over the date to point out that in 1933, it wasn’t the final spade of dirt to bury Prohibition, that April 7th was a mere stepping stone.

Prohibition’s actual repeal wouldn’t come until Dec. 5, 1933, when Utah ratified the 21st Amendment, securing a sufficient majority of states doing so. Because government is a process.

Seems like the purists were arguing (and hawking a book) that repeal wasn’t big enough to embrace both dates, that April 7th was stealing Dec. 5th’s thunder.

Maybe that's an extreme reading of their point, but anyway, thanks for the clarification. And 76 years later, who gives a crap about splitting hairs, unless you're on Jeopardy! or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?

April 7th did mean 3.2% (alcohol by weight) beer was legal, and that certainly helped put one foot of the Volstead Act on a banana peel (the other was already in the grave). It's enough to be happy about.

The rest is history.

Have a beer.

Beer and roaming in Las Vegas

The cabdriver kept apologizing for the unforgiving choke points in afternoon rush-hour traffic en route to the Draft House, ground zero for the beers made under the Big Dog’s Brewing Company brand.

As we rode along, the driver held up his end of the beer conversation: Bud’s no longer in American hands, he says he heard, shaking his head at the fact that some European outfit snapped it up; the Draft House is a Packers bar, he adds (as in Green Bay; the brewpub’s founders originally hail from Wisconsin; brats and cheesy things on the menu); good beer there, he says, and best of all, about 5 miles from his home.

The driver knew plenty about the place, but had one question: Why the special trip to a brewpub 10 miles off the Strip, where there was no shortage of beer, food and gambling?

Answer: The Draft House has a Jersey connection we needed to check out … that and the release of the brewpub’s Belgian Wit seasonal. It seems that Miss America isn’t the only one who fled Absecon Island for the desert palms and bright lights of Las Vegas; it’s just that she’s far better known, of course, than Dave Otto, the guy behind the stouts, IPAs and pale ales from Big Dog’s.

Dave’s been in Vegas longer than Miss A, heading out there about a dozen years ago, when Bill Clinton hadn’t yet regretted giving Monica Lewinsky a copy of Walt Whitman’s Leaves of Grass and Ray Rhodes was still coaching the Eagles. In beer terms, Flying Fish was still swimming up stream then, releasing its Abbey Dubbel for the first time; the now late, mutton-chopped Michael Jackson made a beer hunter stop at the Cherry Hill brewery; and the Tun Tavern existed only as a venerated piece of Marine Corps history, not a place for fresh beer in the shadow of Atlantic City Boardwalk casino glitz.

Indeed, craft beer and the beer renaissance in general were starting to take firm hold in the Mid-Atlantic back then. And Dave, originally from Cinnaminson, did his pubcrawls at Philly bars, while Home Sweet Homebrew provided him with malt, hops and other homebrewer supplies. (He still remembers, Nugget, that colossal-sized cat that used to keep George and Nancy company at the Sansom Street shop.) Back then, Dave was also kicking around Ventnor and the Atlantic City scene, parking cars at the Showboat and Tropicana, and driving a limo for a company with ties to Trump casinos. Not much of a job, nor direction, he says, recalling those days. He did what anyone does when life starts to seem like four walls: seek a sunnier vista. So he headed west, looking for a place to go to school and study history.

Welcome to fabulous Las Vegas, Nevada.

Dave applied to a few schools, but it was UNLV that accepted him; so did Holy Cow Casino Café & Brewery, the first throw of the beer dice for Big Dog’s Brewing and Sin City’s first microbrewery. Dave worked as an assistant brewer at Holy Cow on the Las Vegas strip, turning his homebrewer knowledge into pro brewer skills while on the job.

Holy Cow closed in 2002, and its owners shifted brewing operations to their Draft House property, where fermenters, conditioning tanks and the brew kettle are housed beside the barn-shaped building and its spacious bar area, video poker and dining tables. (Big Dog’s has two other locations: Big Dog’s Bar and Grill and Big Dog’s Casino Café.) Dave took over as brewmaster a year and a half later. Besides the brewhouse, these days you’ll also find him mingling with the crowds and beer geeks that turn out for the tasting parties for new beer releases (the first round is on the house, by the way, with a complimentary appetizer), or writing about beer for Southwest Brewing News.

Dave still has family in New Jersey, and except for the White House Sub Shop, and maybe the Baltimore Grille, he’s not one to get wistful over Atlantic City. Vegas is, after all, his roll of the dice.

Looks like it came up 7. Yep, a natural.

•••••••••••

Brews we had at the Draft House (served in nonic pint glasses, with 20-ounce imperial pours and 16-ounce pours; slip a $20 into a video poker machine at the bar, your beer is comped):

• Black Lab Stout (5.5% ABV): Well-balanced, smooth and tasty, poured under nitrogen, a good starter if you’re looking for a session brew but wanting to go beyond the pale. And of course, a black Lab is the iconic brand image of Big Dog’s Brewing.
• Holy Cow! Original Pale Ale (5.3% ABV): Clean aroma and lots of hops, but not overboard with bitterness. Very much the American version of pale ale, will remind you of the first time you had a West Coast-style beer.
• Sled Dog Winter Stout, aged in Jim Beam bourbon barrels (9% ABV): Vanilla signatures abound in a quite good imperial stout. Nice brew to come back to after the hop-centric Holy Cow. Just a hint of alcohol in the flavor, tucked in behind the roasty notes.
• Belgian Wit (4.8% ABV; in wheat glass): Nice and hazy from wheat and oats, orangey and refreshing to sip. Saaz hops, coriander and curacao. Our only regret with this brew is we had to chug it and dash, so we could keep to a schedule.

What happens in Vegas gets blogged

More about this in a couple of days ...

We ran into some Jersey in Vegas while at the Draft House, the brewpub that is Big Dog's Brewing Company. Great stout poured on nitrogen, plus a Jim Beam whiskey barrel-aged imperial stout that's silky, vanilla and roasty and quite tasty.

Turns out brewmaster Dave Otto is a Jersey export: a Cinnaminson guy who headed west.

Best in show, revisted

Quick update ... Coming soon to a tap at Krogh's brewpub in Sparta: Turnpike Pale Ale.

We got a note today from Mike Wenzel, one half of the duo that took best in show at the New Jerey State Fair homebrew contest.

Mike says Krogh’s is scheduling Tuesday as the day for brewer David Cooper, himself and his homebrewing colleague, Steve Moen, to come in and strike a mash with their winning pale ale.

Turnpike Pale Ale should clock in at 5.8% ABV. Keep an eye out for it.

Speaking of Krogh’s, their 10th anniversary doppelbock was well done, big and malty with a hint of alcohol warmth. We had it back in February on a trip up to Sussex County with friend of the blog Mark Haynie, who covers New Jersey beers for Mid-Atlantic Brewing News.

Old Chub or just plain chubby?

The economy has tanked. Godfather Part III sucked. And beer makes you fat.

Yep, all true. Sadly, even that last one.

But Don "Joe Sixpack" Russell has the skinny on beer calories and why big beers can make you bigger.

His latest column is worth your time and may have you chewing the fat over a pint. Just try to keep the discussion, not the beer, light.

AC beer fest: meh

It’s Saturday and Sunday (with a VIP beer judging tonight), and we’re of two minds about this thing. We’ve been to the first three but we'll skip the fourth annual edition of the AC beer fest.

For our tastes, it’s just too big, and it if last year was a measure of the direction the festival is heading, it’s getting slovenly. A drunkfest. We’ll opt instead for lunch at the Tun Tavern and a pint or two of locally brewed, then hit Firewaters inside the Tropicana casino.

And if you’ll pardon a sort of drawn-out analogy, this festival has become like being in on the ground floor of a great band, watching 'em rise, win critical acclaim, release one or two commercially accessible albums and a few successful tunes, and BAM! ... they’re playing arenas, you can’t get tickets like you used to, and the lines to get in run longer than the Nile.

Except with the AC beer fest, the long lines at the turnstile have always been there, and there are sundry other issues the promoters have never quite bothered to solve.

We will say this, at 35 bucks for an advance ticket, AC is still an OK buy, comparatively speaking; tickets for day of event are 45 bucks, and the Saturday evening session has sold out. We should also give AC some props for drawing beers that the Philly Craft Beer Festival couldn’t this year (although there was some inside baseball going on with the Philly event, so for instance, Troeg's was missing). But honestly, a good liquor store has all of the beers at these fests anyway, making for few surprises for the taste buds.

Which leads to the next point: If you’re new to craft beer and better beer, you’re likely to have a good time in AC, despite the painfully long lines. It's not much of an event for discriminating tastes looking for something special or interesting. We’ve been to three of them, groused about the issues of the first, patted backs for good some changes in the second, but saw the third just get too sloppy. Ultimately that’s bad for good beer’s image, we say.

Then there’s this: With these big festivals coming year after year and few changes to distinguish them from one year to the next, you have to wonder if they’re starting to see their up and over on the evolutionary chart, in jeopardy of dying off in favor of something more refined, adapted to the market, times and discerning tastes.

Brewers (the ones who actually make the beer and are indispensable) are more than a year beyond being pissed off about being taken for granted and asked to give away the beer or swap it for booth space. Who could blame them? They pay too much in taxes, rent and raw materials to be enabling someone else’s vision of box office gold. And as a lot of brewers have been saying lately: The ice guy gets paid, so pay us.

Bottom line: AC beer fest, plenty of beer, a lot of it great, and some folks will like it. But for our tastes meh. We’re thinking these days, smaller, more intimate events – especially ones paired with foods chosen specifically to complement the beers – are the way to go.

Meanwhile, brewpub Pizzeria Uno (Metuchen/Woodbridge, located along Route 1) is holding its second cask ale event on Saturday, March 28.

Brewer Mike Sella is still putting the finishing touches on things, so we can’t tell you the lineup yet. However, the previous one in September featured casks from Climax, Chelsea Brewing, Captain Lawrence Brewing, Troeg’s, Weyerbacher, and, of course, your host, Uno,

There was no cover, and it was pay as you go, meaning you bought a full pint of beer. And if you can’t make it on the 28th, swing by on Sunday, because the casks will be there as long as there’s something in them to pour.

Recommendation: If you don’t already have a ticket to AC, save your money, wait a week and hit Uno’s. Why? Because it’s cask ale, a great way to enjoy beer, and you’ll get full pints. Plus, Uno has good bar food. It’s definitely the better deal. And if you think you still need to see all kinds of brands and spend some more cash, there’s a Joe Canal’s packaged goods store on Route 1 just a stone’s throw from Uno. Practically every brew on the AC lineup is in their cold box, and some great ones that aren’t.

A little longer (hope we say this only once)

Some fast notes on Iron Hill coming to Maple Shade …

The projected opening of this May is now looking like July. Iron Hill put out a release today with the change.

No problem. Good things, like their Pig Iron Porter, are worth waiting for.

Iron Hill also announced Chris LaPierre will be the head brewer at their sole New Jersey location.

Chris is a South Jersey native and has been head brewer at the West Chester, Pa., location for the past six years. Welcome home, Chris.

It's going to be a good summer.

Beer Wars

We saw this highlighted on Destination Beer, Tom Eagan's blog. And on the docu's Web site, you'll notice the screenings nationwide on Thursday, April 16.

Some of this message is a broken record, points that have been made over and over. But there's nothing wrong with putting it all under one banner. (Anyone see the news last week that AB InBev's profits were down 95 percent?)

While we're going down this road, why not toss out the beer-themed AT&T commercial that's been airing the past few months:



When you think about it, that's another reason for AB to be concerned, Madison Avenue calling on craft beer to sell phone services. Shows you how deep craft beer has worked itself into popular culture.

Anyway, the screen grab we included here has the New Jersey theater locations for Beer Wars. (Click on it to enlarge. The second column on the left just denotes the metropolitan area.)

So have a party; raise a glass to celebrate and support our side of the fight.






And now, after talk of making beer, how could you not close with the Rolling Stones' "Salt of the Earth?

Well, almost all about bock

Quick correction: No maibock at today's Ramstein open house. Look for maibock at the April 11 open house.

Maibock was on the marquee back when the planning was coming together in the late fall. But it had to be pushed to the April date.

There still will be the eisbock, the star of today's open house kickoff. And there will be Double Plantinum Blonde and the wheat doppelbock. And of course Ramstein Classic Wheat and Amber Lager.

And we're blogging from High Point at this very moment. Hope to see you.

Reminder: All about bock

Here’s one you don’t want to miss: High Point kicks off its 2009 season of open houses at the Butler brewery on Saturday (from 2-4 p.m.).

And it’s a bock moment for sure: mai, eis, doppel wheat and Double Platinum Blonde.

The wheat doppelbock came out last fall, so Saturday is a day for that brew to stand in good company with the debut of Ramstein Maibock and Ice Storm eisbock.

They’re both popular beers, big favorites among Ramstein fans. Bring your growlers but expect a line of like-minded people snaking out of the brewery entrance.

Ice Storm was a hot ticket at the Philly Craft Beer Festival a week ago (more on the festival at the Naval Yard in a catch-up post next week).

One festivalgoer practically parked himself by the Ramstein stand and came back for seconds, thirds and fourths of Ice Storm. Probably wished he could have sat down with a pint.

If you like Ramstein Blonde, one of the brewery's flagship beers, then you’ll probably like its bocked-up sister, Double Platinum Blonde, twice as much. Like the eisbock, it did brisk business in Philly.

Poor and stupid?

PubScout Kurt Epps gave us a heads-up on this one, the reason why liquor and wine were targeted for tax hikes in the next state budget, but not beer.

Kurt relayed some of a New Jersey 101.5 radio broadcast he heard, pointing out that the hosts said the state treasurer’s reason for beer being excepted was because beer drinkers are poor and stupid (to be clear: poor and stupid are the hosts’ words).

We haven’t listened to 101.5 since its former Jersey Guy jock Craig Carton picked a fight with Dick Codey by mocking the then-acting governor’s wife over her battles with depression. But as with a lot of talk radio, there is an anything-goes, rile-up-the-public style of discussion, even if it means being boorish. So yeah, poor and stupid. Wow.

But more realistically, The Press of Atlantic City did quote Treasurer David Rousseau in Thursday’s editions on the reason for no beer tax hike. Here’s the snippet (it's apparently from some media availability):

• “We wanted to protect what we believed was the middle-class and lower-income people's, you know …” He then stopped and said simply, “We'll leave it at that.”

Here's 101.5 audio of Rousseau. And here’s the whole Press story, which is a follow-up to Gov. Corzine’s budget address, a localization of elements in the budget, notably the liquor and wine tax angle through the eyes of those affected.

We’re going to give the treasurer a little bit of a pass for what seems like a foot-in-mouth comment, that we as beer drinkers are wage slaves who live at the bottom rung and drink a cheap beverage as we go about our miserable existence at our miserable station in life. That’s really a complete dumb-ass thing for him to say, since a sixpack, or even a fourpack, of craft beer can run you over 10 bucks these days, depending on the style.

So we say to Mr. Rousseau, our esteemed treasurer: Man, are you out of touch. And we won’t leave it at that. Let us once again provide the link to Eric Asimov’s New York Times article from a couple years ago, that our beer ain’t the beer of the 1970s and ’80s college days, meant to be bought on the cheap and swilled like we’re a bunch of plebeian idiots with nothing else to do. Nope, it hasn’t been that way for well over 20 years nationally, and for a decade and half, New Jersey has been part of the craft beer movement.

But to be sure, by knocking his comments we’re not asking for our brewers to have to pony up higher taxes and decide whether consumers should share the pain in passed-on costs. Actually, we feel lucky. Truly. We had to deal with higher prices last year because of hops and grain shortages (the latter’s increase stemming from some ill-conceived, government emphasis put on corn as a biofuel. If Rousseau knew anything about beer, he could have said, “Beer drinkers already had to accept higher prices last year because of a spike in raw materials costs. Let's give them a pass.”).

So, we do, on many levels, appreciate the break on a beer tax hike – for now anyway, since a budget presented in March isn’t a budget passed in June. But if Trenton truly has a long-range plan in mind for digging New Jersey out of its financial quicksand (and judging by the repeated failures to put us on sound footing, there isn’t a plan, since the governor’s budget message seems to be the same year after year, as does the Legislature’s reaction), then lawmakers would make New Jersey more business friendly.

For brewers, that means a few things that we’ve been carping about in this election year, and learned from discussions with a few of our state’s taxpaying microbrewers. Chief among them is the fact that the state would collect more in excise and sales taxes if breweries were allowed the freedom to sell unlimited quantities retail (like wineries can) to people who stop by the breweries for tours. You could also toss in there the freedom to sell a couple of pints per person for on-site consumption during tours. Right now, as we’ve noted, the limit is two sixpacks or two growlers per person per visit, and small samples – only a couple of sips – are allowed to be served to visitors.

If brewers could sell more, then that’s more sales tax collected, more money in the state’s purse. The trickle-down effect is, when brewers sell more, they end up brewing more to meet demand, and therefore pay more in excise tax. It’s win-win. And before anyone wants to make the argument that breweries would be competing with retail outlets and against their own distributors, well no they wouldn’t. The breweries tend to be located in places that aren’t exactly shopping centers. So their foot traffic is far less. And they generally charge more per sixpack than liquor stores, and they really don’t want to become nightclubs (they just aren’t set up for that).

The point remains, however: Why deny the potential to collect more in sales and excise taxes (even if it's a modest amount), without having to raise either tax rate?

Modernizing the beer regulations means another thing: Letting brewpubs hold production brewer licenses, and production breweries hold pub licenses, so long as they meet local ordinances and get the blessings of their host towns (and have the capital to pull it off, since getting a consumption license is onerously expensive).

Brewpubs right now, as a lot of us know, can only make beer for on-site consumption, or for takeout. The beer must be purchased at the pub. You won't find it at a liquor store. It makes more sense to let them brew and sell to both their bar patrons and diners, and to distributors, who would sell it to their liquor store accounts, who then offer it at retail. It’s worth pointing out that some of the pubs are brewing below their capacity, because they can only sell to people who walk through their front doors. That’s lost revenue to those businesses and the state.

So we ask, why shouldn’t Basil T’s in Toms River be allowed to keg off beer, sell it to a middleman, who gets it on tap, for instance, at the Blue Claws stadium in Lakewood? Or let the Tun Tavern do likewise and have its beer sold on tap at the Atlantic City Surf’s stadium? There never seems to be a credible answer for why they can’t. The same goes for production breweries, no good answer why they can't hold pub licenses and get into the restaurant/tavern business with their product (it’s allowed in Pennsylvania, and seems to work just fine there.)

The state’s arcane and archaic rules continue to cost it revenue, sadly at a time when Gov. Corzine is sparring with state worker unions in a pick-your-poison debate over furloughs and layoffs (12 days unpaid furlough vs. cutting 7,000 jobs) and scrambling to come up with revenue to balance a budget that seems to grow more unbalanced as the economy tanks harder.

No one is so naïve to think that beer is the magic bullet here. But over the long haul, more beer brewed and sold means more revenue for the state. That's easy math. And fairer rules could translate to more brewers. And more revenue in taxes and fees.

And we’ll leave it at that.

Exit to ale

If you read Lew Bryson and Mark Haynie’s New Jersey Breweries guidebook, you’d know that Flying Fish was planning a special beer series to bottle a little bit of Jerseyana. Specifically, the brewery planned its own take on the time-tested NJ Turnpike "what exit" humor.

Now, at last, the path to new beer has been paved, and you can take Exit 4 with a drive to the packaged goods store. (We picked up three of the bomber bottles last week at a Canal's in Marlton, but haven’t had a chance to try it yet.) And if you’ve got tall tales about the Turnpike or videos, FF has set up a Web site where you can share them.

Exit 4, by the way is Mount Laurel (or Philadelphia/Camden Aquarium, if you’re looking at a toll ticket), right down the road from the brewery in Cherry Hill. Besides being the back of a green FF shirt with the numeral depicted in bottle caps, Exit 4 is also an American turn on a Belgian trippel. As FF points out, the choice reflects the brewery's long history of turning out Belgian styles (i.e. their dubbel, grand cru and farmhouse ale).

This beer series poses some important questions. For instance, what happens if you miss the exit? Probably can’t buy a bottle with E-ZPass, right? Guess there’s no chance of it being poured at the Walt Whitman rest stop, huh? And what’s the next exit after Exit 4?

The answer to the last question is: You get to help decide with your tales and videos.

Updates from River Horse & Boaks Beer

A quick post with some updates (no more tax talk for a change).

We caught up with Glenn Bernabeo from River Horse last weekend at the beer and barbecue festival at WXPN in Philadelphia (a shout out to the Pobutkiewicz brothers, Dave and Russ, for sharing a surplus ticket).

Between pours of RH Belgian Double Wit and a new beer with molasses, Glenn gave us an update on what’s been going on at the Lambertville operation. (Some points he made confirm plans we’ve noted in the past. Also, sorry for the photo quality; iPhones are cool, but a digital SLR camera they are not, especially in low light.)

If you liked RH’s double IPA, Hop-a-lot-amus, it’s coming back around in bottles. Soon. RH released it draft-only back in the fall. Look for the next iteration, with ramped-up hop aroma, to hit the shelves in April (that’s when their Summer Blonde Ale comes out as well).

In early May, RH will release another Brewer’s Reserve, this time a rye hefeweizen, aptly called Hefe-rye-zen (we think that’s how it’s spelled, or something close). RH’s Brewer’s Reserve series has done well for them, notably their first one, Belgian Double Wit, which debuted a year ago and quickly earned a spot in the regular lineup. One of the more recent reserve series beers, an oatmeal milk stout, was quite popular, too; it’s scheduled to come back in October.

Also returning is Dunkel Fester, a big hit of a dark lager that was draft only last year. It’s in bottles in August (a long wait for Fester and the stout's return, but it will be worth it; trust us.) Along the way, you’ll see pumpkin spice in Tripel Horse, Glenn says.

And here’s a cool one, draft-only, but damn, seems like when RH says draft only, things end up available in bottles pretty quickly afterward. Glenn says the brewery is observing Philly Beer Week (it starts this Friday and runs through the 15th) with Dubbel Honey Weizenbock. It's been specially brewed for PBW. You can try it at the Philly Craft Beer Festival at the Cruise Ship Terminal at the Navy Yard this Saturday, or at the Fair Food/White Dog Foundation Brewer’s Plate food-and-beer pairing on Sunday, held this year at the Penn Museum (at U Penn, of course), a popular spot for beer functions, to say the least.

Here’s RH’s tasting notes on the Lenten wheat bock: Munich and caramel malts up front, rounded out by orange blossom honey, clocks in at 7.5% ABV. We're looking forward to it.

Meanwhile, we also caught up with Brian Boak of Boaks Beer/Boak Beverage yesterday.

If you recall, Brian contracted with High Point Brewing in Butler to brew his flagship Russian imperial stout, Monster Mash (10% ABV), and a lineup of Belgian beers. Monster Mash and the Belgian dubbel Two Blind Monks (7.4% ABV) will be at the craft beer fest and the Brewer’s Plate, plus PBW bar events, including the Grey Lodge, on Monday and Tuesday.

To be sure, Brian’s runs a small operation, relying on High Point to work his beers into their brewing schedule wherever they can. That's not necessarily an easy thing, since High Point also does contract brewing for the folks who own the sister restaurants of Trap Rock.

Brian's found a lot of success with his beer in eastern Pennsylvania and expects to be selling his beer in the Pittsburgh area in May or June. Not bad for a guy who has had hand-labeled case after case of bottles and hauled keg after keg to his Pa. distributor in his white Boaks Beverage van.

And there's a change on the horizon for him. By mid-April, a 30-barrel fermenter that Brian had custom-made in China (for about 19 grand) is expected to be installed at High Point. That will give his brews some much-needed dedicated fermenting space. Pretty cool for him, we say.

Dodging a bullet – for now

A $7 billion hole in the state budget, and some of the suggested ways to fill it for now include higher taxes on liquor and wine.

That’s what The Star-Ledger is saying today in a sourced story that headlines the solutions with another tax hike on people pulling down $250,000 a year or higher. (That was done by McGreevey about 5 or 6 years ago).

But what we care about is beer, and it looks like beer dodged a bullet for now. But bear in mind that these fixes are for the fiscal 2010 budget, which has to be in place on July 1st with spending and revenues evened out.

So, yeah, beer is safe. For now. But the Legislature won't push this through until June, so higher taxes on beer could still get tucked into that. Just have to wait and see.

And speaking of beer and tax revenue, we tried to find out just how much our microbrewers and brewpubs generate for state coffers via fees and taxes. If you recall, we filed inquiries under the state Open Public Records Act. It was a logical approach, and we asked about New Jersey wineries, too, to create a comparison.

However, we only got half an answer from the New Jersey Treasury, and that was for wineries, expressed as gallons produced for each year from 1996 to 2007, and a multiplier of 70 cents per gallon (yes, Treasury was making us do the math). So for example, in 2007 (a big year for Jersey winemakers) 204,290 gallons were made, multiplied by 70 cents per gallon (damn, that’s a steep tax, but as a finance mind we talked to over the weekend says, “Wine sells for more per bottle”). The math comes to $143,000 for '07, and that’s just a state alcoholic beverage tax tied to production. There’s still the sales taxes the wineries collect, which, alas, is a figure we don’t have.

Ditto for beer. Here’s why ...

• The Division of Taxation has informed this office that they do not differentiate New Jersey microbreweries and brewery/distributors from out-of-state breweries. Therefore, we have no records responsive to your request.

What the state is saying is, they don’t break down entities and revenues paid per entity for their internal reporting, meaning distributor Hunterdon Brewing – and all they beer they sell – gets lumped in with say, River Horse brewery for all the beer they make in Lambertville, which gets lumped in with the next brewer (say Cricket Hill), which gets lumped in with the next wholesaler, and so forth. (The alcoholic beverage tax for beer, according to Treasury, is 12 cents a gallon, or $3.72 a barrel – the 31-gallon unit breweries usually deal in).

Treasury didn’t say they couldn’t tease out the state’s craft brewers and brewpubs to provide a figure. They can and would for a processing fee – and here’s where things stall – of about $3,000, paid by the filer of the OPRA request (to wit, us). And that sum is just a guess on Treasury’s part. And here’s why: No one has ever asked for the information, so all of the computer scripts to capture the data would have to be written and run by the folks working at Treasury, in addition to doing their normal data processing jobs.

So (in Soup Nazi voice), no beer figures for us! However, Treasury did say about 20 million gallons of beer were produced or transacted wholesale in New Jersey in 2007, generating over $2.3 million in alcoholic beverage tax revenue alone. (Most of that figure, undoubtedly, comes via Budweiser in Newark). Again, this doesn’t include sales taxes on beer sold by packaged goods stores, or the mere two sixpacks or growlers breweries can sell per person per visit.

But all is not completely lost. According to figures that Jersey breweries reported to the Brewers Association, the Colorado-based national trade organization for craft brewing, Garden State microbrewers produced 26,376 barrels for 2007. That comes to just over $98,000 in alcoholic beverage tax revenue for the state.

A few caveats, though. Not all craft or pub brewers in the state belong to the Brewers Association (just like not all cranberry producers think the Ocean Spray cooperative is a swinging deal; the brewers have their reasons). Also, the figures from the Brewers Association exclude Pizzeria Uno (as do not publish), because they’re a restaurant corporation that gets kind of batty even if you just want to take a picture of inside their lone US brewpub (in Edison). Additionally, the figures include estimates from the smallest of the small brewers, i.e. companies that produce their beer under contract with other brewers, such as Boak Beverage in Pompton Lakes (20 barrels, by the way, was their estimate).

So, getting the figure from the New Jersey Treasury folks would have been far better, as far as firm, audited numbers go.

Nonetheless, beer means revenue for cash-strapped New Jersey. Of course it’s not going to wash away the red ink and make it so state employees aren’t going to get robbed of 12 days’ pay (furloughs). But Trenton should look at the long-range picture and support the industry, help grow it.

And that, as we’ve been arguing this year, means updating the stifling regulations for brewers, and, like the bullet dodged right now, hopefully skip raising the existing beer taxes.

BeerAdvocate revisited

New issue, cleaner look following the retooling. Gone is that crappy newsprint that soaks up ink and ruins the sharpness and contrast of any image printed on it.

To their credit, the Alstrom brothers took readers' complaints seriously and let only a single issue exit their confines with that grimy, cheap-looking makeover. Good job. Thanks, bros. Enough said there.

One more item from BeerAdvocate (for the record, we do subscribe): A call to boycott some beer festivals. The Alstroms stage beer festivals, so they legitimately have room in which to press a point, or points in this case.

Their chief gripes: festivals that don’t buy the beer from the breweries; festivals that hide behind the premise of charity event (unless all proceeds go to charity); fests that charge booth rentals; and festivals that extort free beer by conditionally waiving said booth rentals.

We’ll add a couple of points to the litany: big festivals that are drunkfests and big festivals that shamelessly have crappy food concessions.

Drunkfests ... No matter how bad some groups want to paint an image of drunk driving fatalities in our state, New Jersey, according to the research arm of the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, ranks 47th – near the bottom of the stack – for DUI fatalities per 100,000 people. And for the record, DUI is, as Mr. Mackey would say, is bad. Mmm’kay? But that stat is good (comparatively speaking, which is what a state-by-state ranking reaches for).

So bacchanal beer festivals … they’re bad: They sully the image of beer, which, thanks to the craft beer movement, has been successfully distancing itself from the sophomoric, frat boy image. It’s probably impossible to make that break completely, but there is a growing separation. Beer has won respect. And if orange juice isn’t just for breakfast anymore, then good beer isn’t for jerkoffs.

So why gather the products of 55 breweries under one banner and roof and tell the crowd to go nuts in an afternoon session and an evening session? Drunkfests suck. They’re bad for image, bad for business.

Crappy food … There’s a lot of attention given to beer and food these days. Food’s a natural fit, and we’re not talking hot dogs, either. Real dishes by passionate chefs, some exotic, some with fancy names and diacritical marks over letters in their spellings. If people want cheap-shit food sold at concession, then let them go to any professional sports event or concert. Please don't burden good beer with bad food.

Boycott? BeerAdvocate urges its followers to boycott festivals that fall under list of shortcomings they highlight. That's an individual's call, and admission price and recession may take care of that this year. But over the long haul, the more likely scenario is promoters who have no incentives to offer are probably going to watch their business model blow up and encounter difficulty in attracting breweries to participate.

This far into the craft beer movement, brewerania souvenirs don’t do the same business for brewers – everybody has a T-shirt and hat – so having a festival booth isn't too exciting; plus, brewers' brands have long been out there, so the exposure is not what some organizers would like to boast.

The Alstroms are right. Buy the beer, back the brewer, give them something back. Hell, the bands don't play for free, so why should the real stars on the marquee get nothing for their trouble?

Bottom line, brewers are businesses. Treat them like they are. And festival patrons, they are consumers. Respect their dollars earned and promise something value-added, something besides quantity.

More grist for the mill

Yet more on recession and the beer, liquor and wine industry’s power to raise money.

Time has as story about blue laws, and poses the question of whether the national economic crater we sit in, widening as we gaze at computer screens right now, means the end to those mindless restrictions against selling spirits, wine and beer on Sunday.

Battle lines are drawn, to be sure. Blue laws don't go down without a fight. But you can’t escape the logic of allowing Sunday sales, more so if you’re say, Connecticut, and watching tax revenue go to another state (in their case, New York). It's a thought that follows economists’ point with stimulus cash: better it be spent locally, at a your Home Depot, to weatherize your house, than on a flat-screen TV made in China.

Anyway, this is grist for the mill in our state because the handful of our craft brewers we've spoken to would love to be able to kick in some extra sales taxes they collected, if state regulators would only update our arcane and archaic regulations governing production and sale of malt beverages. (They’re sort of analogous to blue laws, even if not conceived for the same reasons.)

That goes for production brewers, for which we again say let them sell unlimited retail like wineries (and let them open brewpubs, too, if they want to pop for the expense of location and licensing); and for brewpubs, for which we say let them have access to the open market and put their products in packaged goods stores and other bars willing to take them on.

Doing so puts revenue in state coffers and lets brewers boost sales (and production, too, for which they pay other taxes).

It may just make the difference between protracted recession and faster recovery.