'Untraditional for a traditional brewery'

High Point Brewing will soon roll out the 2010 version of its Ramstein Oktoberfest.

Followers of the Butler brewery know the märzen speaks to German traditions of noble hops and a decoction mash for a rich, malty beer. And in a growing Ramstein tradition, the draft-only festbier will be debuted at the brewery's September open house (Sept. 11 this year, 2 to 4 p.m.).

But sometimes tradition can use a little standing on its head, like the West Coast turn High Point took with its draft-only golden lager, another malty Ramstein brand that holds the No. 2 spot behind its top-seller Blonde weiss beer. (The golden lager is brewed as Ghost Pony lager for the Harvest Restaurant group across North Jersey. Charlie Schroeder, brewmaster at Trap Rock, part of the Harvest chain, makes a house version Ghost Pony for the Berkeley Heights brewpub.)

For High Point's Aug. 14th open house, Revelation Golden Lager was jazzed up with a load of Centennial hops left over from a homebrew contest the brewery co-sponsored with The Office Beer Bar & Grill. (High Point scaled up the winning pale ale recipe and brewed it for The Office's several locations.)

"For a long time, we've been known as a brewery that makes very malt-driven beers that are traditional in the German way of making beer," says High Point owner Greg Zaccardi. "I guess what we did a was something very untraditional for a traditional brewery."

Greg explains the late-summer open house feature this way:

"I took an immeasurable amount of Centennial hops and put it into a keg ... then we filled it up with Golden Lager." The citrusy Centennials are "very untraditional for a German beer. It was a total redesign on the aroma and flavor of our traditional lager."

At the open house, unfiltered versions of Revelation – with and without the Centennial hops – were on tap for the monthly brewery tour-takers.

A few diehard Ramstein fans made the grapefruit-hop face upon tasting the West Coast version, but the brew still found favor among the crowd.

"I think it was a big surprise for everybody, including myself," Greg says. "We got a number of people interested in trying it; we sold a number of growlers. I thought it was a great way to explain to people in taste terms what hops can do to beer."

FOOTNOTES: Pictured up top is Ron Clark of Oakland, who makes the obelisk-like taphandles for High Point.

A shout-out to Chuck Kady (left) of Wayne, who sported a Kentucky Ale T-shirt (the brewery is located in Lexington, Ky.).

Chuck was three months beyond a pass through the Bluegrass State, where he visited his brother-in-law, who's stationed at Fort Knox and lives near Brandenburg, Ky.

Moonstruck

MillerCoors is looking to gin-up its craft beer holdings by creating a division dedicated to that enterprise. Read all about it here.

Why is this happening?

Because even in the dismal economy we're all enduring right now, there's a taste for variety, and we'd argue that bland beers have offered no comfort. Yet the craft beer labels do. And as the Brewers Association has pointed out, craft beer sales are up 12 percent for the first six months of the year, while overall beer industry sales volumes are down almost 3 percent from the same period last year.

Mega-brewer MillerCoors has picked up on not just that but the fact that its own labels in that market segment – Blue Moon and Leinenkugel – have performed well.

The Blue Moon portfolio is a veritable brand slate of lunar phases. Besides the Belgian white that is Blue Moon, there's Honey Moon, Harvest Moon and Full Moon, all satellites of planet MillerCoors, which has seen its core labels Coors Light and Miller Lite go flat as far as sales are concerned.

Is this a small step for MillerCoors, or a giant leap into a craft beer street fight? We'll just have to wait and see.

It's worth mentioning, though, that some of those brands under MillerCoors control are transition beers and have let Bud, Miller and Coors drinkers take flight from their old mainstays and go a little deeper toward fuller-bodied beers and different styles. The more adventurous drinkers keep climbing toward the revved up IPAs and other exotic craft beers, especially, we've noticed these days, the younger beer drinkers, the folks with no real or memorable attachment to the labels their parents and grandparents stocked the fridge with.

Stay tuned.

Latvian link

Beer-Stained Letter gets a mention (more like a link) from a Latvian beer blog.

Credit lies in video, the stone beer piece featuring homebrewer Maris Kukainis of Cherry Hill. Maris is of Latvian descent and did a stone beer with a ancestral slant.

The blog Labs Alus, which means "Good beer" in Latvian (or so says the Google translator site), embedded the video with a link to BSL under a heading Latviešu akmeņu alus no ASV, which translates as Latvian stone beer from US.

Kinda cool.

Brewer Chris Sheehan talks Port 44 beer

Brewmaster Chris Sheehan took some time from his brewing of a red ale to chat this morning about the just-fired up brewhouse at Port 44.

The former beer-maker at Chelsea Brewing in New York City offered some observations about getting started in his new digs in Newark and teased to some brews Port 44 patrons can expect.

From Chris:

• Gold Finch ale, brewed Aug. 6th as Port 44's inaugural house beer, is expected to be ready for tapping Friday, Aug. 20.
  
• That first batch will be a little stronger (6% ABV) than planned, since the efficiency of the brewing equipment is still being figured out. Making adjustments accordingly is all part of the process when dealing with a new setup.
  
• Gold Finch ale is named for New Jersey's state bird.
• Renaissance Red was being brewed today. In the coming days, a stout and an American-style wheat beer will be brewed.
• Down the road, look for a wet-hopped IPA-styled brew, Catskills Harvest Ale, done with freshly picked hops grown in upstate New York. The Cascades, Fuggles and other varieties were grown by Chris' family (including mother and sister) and friends in Cooperstown, Franklin and Delhi. The brew will be a variation of the one often made for Chelsea Brewing.

So how does Chris feel about being the first brewer in decades to be making beer in Newark that's not for Budweiser, which as most folks know is now owned the Belgian-Brazilian conglomerate AB-InBev?

"Damned proud," he says. "I tell everybody we're the only American brewery in Newark."

Port 44 in Newark is now brewing

For the first time in years, there is beer being brewed in Newark that's not coming from Anheuser-Busch.

After a long, frustrating wait and an accompanying share of anticipation, Port 44 Brew Pub has begun making beer.

Port 44, New Jersey's newest brewery and the second Garden State brewpub to come online in a little over a year, now has an inaugural light ale in the fermenter, and plans call for another day of brewing on Wednesday.

"The good news is, we're up and brewing," owner John Feeley says, adding that regulators signed off on Port 44's licensing on July 28th.

After months of renovation at the 44 Commerce Street location, Port 44 opened for business in late April, standing beers from guest breweries on the bar for patrons, while the owners continued to navigate the sometimes choppy waters of securing the licensing that would allow them to make their own ales.

A grand opening is planned for this Thursday, but again guest brews will be featured. Alas, the brewpub's license was not issued in time to have house-made brews ready for the event.

Feeley says Port 44 will follow up the grand opening with some sort of bash to herald the brewpub's entry into the Garden State craft beer scene.

Newark was once a big player in the brewing industry, but Prohibition (1920-33) was a death knell for a number of the city's beer-makers. Industry consolidation in the years after Prohibition's demise left Budweiser as the last brewer standing in Newark. (Pabst shut down its Newark plant in the mid-1980s.)

Until now.

Meanwhile, over the past year, New Jersey has seen its brewing landscape reshaped with the addition of the two brewpubs and a production brewery.

Iron Hill in Maple Shade dragged the state out of brewing dormancy in July 2009 when it became the first new Garden State brewer since the bar-restaurant Krogh's tucked a 5-barrel brewing system into its confines in Sparta in 1999. (For the record, contract-brewed beers also emerged in this time.)

Last spring, New Jersey Beer Company in North Bergen began turning out a pale ale, stout and abbey single as its flagship brews.

And now Port 44 boosts New Jersey count to a combined 19 production and pub brewers since craft brewing arrived in the Garden State in the mid-1990s.

Congrats, Peter Kennedy

Bloomfield homebrewer Peter Kennedy, notable for the Web site Simply Beer and his beer prowess in general, gets his 2010 crowning achievement saluted this Saturday during the awards presentation for the New Jersey State Fair homebrew competition.

Peter's Sorachi Patersbier was named 2010 Best of Show during the July 31st fair judging. The grand prize, if you recall, is the winning recipe will be brewed and put on tap at Krogh's brewpub in Sparta. Krogh's is the longtime sponsor of the contest, which is coordinated by the homebrewers club Sussex County United Brewers and Alchemists (SCUBA).

Peter recaps the experience of his first homebrew contest victory in a blog post on his site.

Now in its 14th year, the 2o10 edition of the State Fair homebrew competition marked the first time the event was sanctioned by the American Homebrewers Association and the Beer Judge Certification Program. The contest attracted 162 entries from not just Garden State homebrewers, but New Hampshire, New York and Pennsylvania as well.

Also at the 1 p.m. awards presentation at the Sussex County fairgrounds, SCUBA will conduct a homebrew demonstration.

Lastly, a shout-out to SCUBA member Ken Sharrock for forwarding the contest results. The categories and winners appear below.

Here's to your health

Homebrew rules that suck

What do New Jersey and Oregon have in common regarding homebrewing?

Laws that essentially say you can't take your homemade beer to your club meeting, friends' homes, etc. That's because your beer creations are supposed to be consumed only at the premises where they were brewed.

Sucks, doesn't it? (And yeah, we've groused about this before.)

In the case of Oregon, a hop-producing state with a reputation for good craft beer, it really does: The annual state fair's homebrew competition – a 22-year tradition – got iced this summer because someone discovered the rule. (Read more here.)

New Jersey's state fair homebrew contest was held July 31st as planned, like it was last year and years before that. No hitches. The same goes for Big Brew Homebrew Day observances that unite homebrewers in a day of communal brewing at an expressed location (like the backlot of a homebrew supply shop,, club member's home, or even a brewpub parking lot). That's most likely because in New Jersey's case, the permit limitation apparently goes unenforced, as does the obligation of obtaining the $15 permit itself.

Some folks, however, do bow to the requirement and plunk down their $15; others don't, for a number of reasons, including the fact they don't know the regulation exists. Still others are more defiant, arguing the state has no business telling them what they can do with some hops and the same ingredients that go into making bread, let alone charge them 15 bucks to enjoy a hobby that is essentially cooking.

While it hasn't happened, it's not far-fetched to think that New Jersey's regulators wouldn't ever take a harder line regarding homebrewers. You certainly hope that doesn't happen.

Yet, until the rules are changed – ideally by eliminating the permit completely or at a minimum dumping the language about where the beer may be consumed – Garden State h0mebrewers risk running afoul of the rules.

Just what that means is anyone's guess. But who really wants to find out?

East Coast Brewing, Part 4

East Coast Brewing is now licensed by federal regulators, and the folks behind the brand expect their contract-brewed lager to be in distributors' hands later this month.

That's from John Merklin, who says the first production run of the Point Pleasant company's Beach Haus pilsner was finished in the early hours of July 29th at East Falls Brewing in Rochester, N.Y. (East Falls is the maker of Genesee Cream Ale).

"You can’t punch the smile off our faces at this point!" John says via email. Aug. 23rd is the target date for getting the beer to the wholesalers.

John founded the company with Brian Ciriaco as East Coast Brewing. However, they'll be doing business as East Coast Beer Company, the name you'll find on all labeling and branding efforts. The shift was a nomenclature adjustment undertaken to appease regulators.

A pre-Prohibition pils, prototype batches of Beach Haus tasted reminiscent of a Vienna lager, a little deeper in character and bolder than the typical pils.

FOOTNOTE
Hops: Mount Hood and Horizon at 42 IBUs; ABV: 5.5%.

Two guys walk into a liquor store ...

It's one of those well-stocked discounters you typically find along a Jersey divided highway like Route 1 or 73, or say just off Route 287, like in Boonton or somewhere.

The two guys are in their mid-20s. They plant themselves in front of the cold box for a few minutes, eying the various craft brews on the shelves, mulling a selection. They touch a sixpack, stop, then reach for another.

They plainly can't make up their minds. Too much to choose from. Life is good in a world of plenty.

This actually happened, Friday in Southern Ocean County, a place in New Jersey that's not exactly at the fore of the craft beer renaissance. Yet the selection is healthy, well beyond Guinness and Sam Adams.

But the point is, similar scenarios play out over and over these days at liquor stores where the staff is seasoned in the new world order of beer: Southern Tier, Southampton, Founders, Climax, Cricket Hill, Brooklyn, Dogfish Head, Victory, Troegs, Sly Fox, Otter Creek and Wolaver's, Rogues, Terrapin, Flying Fish, Ramstein, River Horse, Lost Abbey, Bear Republic, Ommegang, Yards ...

So, when the Brewers Association put out mid-year figures this week that said dollar sales for craft brewed beer jumped 12 percent in the first half of 2010, compared to 9 percent growth during that same period last year, and that the volume of craft brewed beer sold grew 9 percent from January through June of this year, compared to 5 percent growth in the first half of 2009, well, that was cause to celebrate.

And honestly, it's a moment to stop and think of those two 20-somethings who hovered over craft beer section at the liquor store, trying to make up their minds in that world of plenty (and 10-dollar sixpacks).

As a generation, a demographic, they have enjoyed a tremendously wide selection of brews since the day they could legally drink beer. As such they're the ones helping to power the uptick in sales, eschewing brand loyalty, their parents' beer, and following curiosity amid the vast sea of choice. (OK, so it's also said that in a down economy, people drink more. That figures into things, too.)

Anyone who took up homebrewing back in the early 1990s and kicked Bud, even Heineken, to the curb, remembers having to put up with explaining the new beer he was drinking to his old guard friends who reckoned beer was a straw-colored, everyman beverage that shouldn't be too fancy. (And god forbid that new brew had a settling of yeast in the bottom of the unopened bottle. That didn't translate at all.) Blame it on the fact that, for baby boomers, Bud, Miller and Coors were, by and large, the benchmarks for beer. Not homebrews, nor microbrews.

So, coming back to the original premise: The surge in craft beer sales and volume reflects a handing off of the baton to another generation of beer drinkers, a younger set that enjoys something its older brethen with need for flavor had to wait 20 years for.

Interest in better beer, variety ... It has become the rule, rather than the exception.

FOOTNOTE:
The U.S. now boasts 1,625 breweries — an increase of 100 additional breweries since July of 2009 — and the highest number in 100 years. A century ago in 1910, consolidation and the run-up to Prohibition had reduced the number of breweries to 1,498. (Source: Brewers Association)

Artisan's Oktoberfest and Ramstein kegs

On a hot summer afternoon on the last day of July, brewer Dave Hoffmann was turning out a fall seasonal beer at Artisan's Brewery and related this item:

The Toms River brewpub's 2010 Oktoberfest is set for Friday, Oct. 8. (That date is a correction from what we previously posted. Beer writer Kurt Epps, who also serves as emcee for the event, wasn't available for the original Oct. 1 date, so Artisans moved things to the 8th.)

Artisan's (now into its eight month removed from its former name Basil T's) draws a big crowd with this multi-course beer dinner, of which, as you can guess, the house-brewed fall Märzen (which Dave was working on) is the centerpiece.

Dave says he's putting Artisan's Oktoberfest beer on tap on Sept. 18, the same day that the 2010 Oktoberfest kicks off in Munich. (In the past, he has waited a week or so.) This year, by the way, marks the bicentennial of Germany's Oktoberfest, which as we all know originated as the commemoration of the nuptials of Crown Prince Ludwig and Princess Therese of Saxe-Hildburghausen.

Meanwhile, up in Butler, the folks at High Point Brewing are gearing up for the debut of the 2010 edition of their Ramstein Oktoberfest. The 2009 version of the brew scored the top rating from BeerAdvocate, and it's annually been a hot-ticket seasonal for the brewery.

As is its tradition with the Oktoberfest brew, High Point will tap a ceremonial oak keg during its September open house and brewery tour. That's set for 2-4 p.m., Saturday, Sept. 11. By the way, next Saturday's August open house (2-4 p.m. Aug. 14) will feature an imperial pilsner that's worth the trip to Butler. Bring your growlers.

Also, last month High Point signed on with keg-supplier MicroStar to gain greater control of its draft beer operations. It's a key business step and probably best explained this way: Say you own a brewery and you own all your of kegs, and you have to wait for returns to fill new ones. There isn't always a happy balance to what goes out and what comes back for cleaning and filling, so signing on with a supplier ensures kegs are available to get beer to the marketplace and keep business on track.

High Point relies heavily on its draft beer side, since the brewery puts only three of its many beers in 12-ounce bottles (Blonde, Classic Wheat and Winter Wheat), even though it has plans to begin bottling some seasonal brews. Consider, too, that the brewery's business was up 30 percent last year. Given those factors you can see why striking a deal MicroStar matters.

Cheers.

That new Iron Hill tank

Call it a birthday present to the brewery and another canvas for the artistes who work there.

Even before Iron Hill was throwing that one-year anniversary party last month in Maple Shade, the folks there were doing something for the next year and beyond, as well as giving the two guys who create the beer – head brewer Chris LaPierre and assistant brewer Jeff Ramirez – more leeway to practice their craft.

A 30-barrel fermenter was installed on the penultimate day of June, muscling up the brewpub's capacity by about 25 percent. (Iron Hill opened with six single fermenters and a double; the new addition gives them two doubles.)

More tank space, yes, but Chris sizes things up a little differently.

"I don't really look at it as a boost in capacity though. It would certainly boost our capacity if our goal were to crank out as much beer as possible," Chris said via email today. "It's more about making it a little easier on Jeff and I to keep up, and more so about making it possible to brew more specialty lagers and slow-fermenting beers."

Like a brace of brews fresh to Iron Hill's Maple Shade digs: The Cannibal (Belgian golden ale) and Saison (Blegian farmhouse), both national gold medal winners for Iron Hill that need two months' fermenter time. "That's why we haven't brewed The Cannibal or Saison in this location until now," Chris says. "The new tank is what made those beers possible."

In the run-up to the 2010 Great American Beer Festival (Sept. 16-18 in Denver), The Cannibal and Saisaon will get tapped next Wednesday along with two other brews, Caprice (American Belgian ale) and Hopfenweizen (Bavarian wheat), all of which figure into Iron Hill's GABF entries for this year.

Contests aside, you might think it's the sign of a red-hot business to be expanding before the first anniversary. But, again, there's a business logic at play here.

"We usually undersize our breweries by a bit when we first open, figuring it's easier and more financially sound to buy and install a new tank if things are busy, than to sell and remove one if its not," Chris points out. "Also its much better for morale to install a new one than take one out!"

Turtle Stone Brewing, Update

Location, location, location.

It's a holy grail for businesses, and it's also what Turtle Stone Brewing, the South Jersey brewery on the drawing boards, is working to get its arms around right now on its way toward joining the ranks of New Jersey brewing enterprises.

Some recap:
Turtle Stone is the brainchild of Ben Battiata and Becky Pedersen of Cumberland County. The two have acquired a refurbished brewhouse and some fermenters in a dash to bring their vision of a second production brewery in South Jersey closer to reality. (Flying Fish in Cherry Hill is the other production brewer.)

In a perfect world, we'd be drinking Turtle Stone's stout and honey blonde ale right now (an earlier target launch date was last spring; but that fell out of reach after a site in Vineland that Ben and Becky had their eyes on was sold before they could get a jump on it). But remember: location, location, location.

Ben says the site they have been flirting with in Vineland's industrial park the past several months may not be the best fit in the long run, when you consider growth.

Specifically, the site isn't a clean match for the brewing equipment, posing the issue of having to do a lot of interior work to bring things up to par, only to potentially outgrow the space sooner than later.

So Ben and Becky are making sure they've done the best possible site search, and that now includes possibilities in downtown Vineland (nearby Millville was also in the mix, we seem to recall). Ben says he'd like to be able to buy a building to house the brewery; the banks they've gone to for financing have expressed a preference for that, too.

So for now, their pub system brewhouse is still in storage in Oregon, while the accompanying 15-barrel fermenter and bright tanks wait in Vineland at that industrial park site that has long loomed in the picture. (Also, the brewery's business logo is getting an overhaul, Ben says.)

And their eyes are on the fall.

Ben's optimistic more pieces to the mosaic will be added, and that their vision of a brewery will not only emerge clearer, but take several more steps closer to becoming the next New Jersey brewing enterprise.

NJ Beer in bottles

New Jersey Beer Company is extending its reach, 12 ounces at a time.

Since mid-July, the North Bergen brewery, New Jersey's newest production brewery and the first since Cricket Hill opened in 2002, has been bottling the beers it launched with during the spring.

Those brews would be Hudson Pale Ale, Garden State Stout and 1787 Abbey Single.

Founder Matt Steinberg says the new bottler from Applied Bottling (in British Columbia) is small, cranking out about 15 cases an hour, which means such packaging operations get done frequently to build inventory supply.

And extend, of course, New Jersey Beer Company's market reach.

"The biggest thing that bottles open up is the off-premise markets, but we won't see evidence of that for a few more weeks," Matt says. "It also enables retailers to take a chance on our beers more easily because it doesn't involve taking another beer off tap to put ours on."

Like a lot of brewers, Matt's preference is for draft beer. But marketing trumps that, and thus, six packs. "You absolutely must have it to sell the quantities of beer that we'd like to sell," Matt says. "However, I'd certainly rather package, sell, and drink draft beer."

Iron Hill first anniversary fete

Some scenes from Iron Hill-Maple Shade's first anniversary party/mug club event.

Mug club gigs at Iron Hill are great to begin with, but throw in an anniversary and you bump things up considerably.

Some special shout-outs to:

• Suzanne Woods from Sly Fox Brewing across the Delaware, and many thanks to her for the brand-spanking new advance can of SF Oktoberfest. Yes, we're getting closer to that time of year.

• Evan Fritz and family (that's future mug clubber James, 9 months old, in the pic at left). Evan coordinated the Big Brew Homebrew Day back in May that was held behind Iron Hill's building.

• Mark Haynie, New Jersey columnist for Mid-Atlantic Brewing News. Always good to run into another champion of New Jersey beer.

• Brian Pylant, who walked point on judging for the Iron Brewer contest sponsored by Iron Hill. Brian loves to talk beer and if you check our archives, say back to March 2008, you'll see Brian doing just that in the video from Triumph's real ale festival that closed out the inaugural Philly Beer Week.

• John Ahrens, of the Brewery Collectibles Club of America. John notes there's a BCCA canvention (yes, canvention) set for Sept. 8-12 in Valley Forge, Pa.

• Bob Ritchie, whose Indian name is Runs with Beer, or so his T-shirt says. Bob's a supporter of the blog, and it's always a great pleasure to meet those who take the time to check out the posts here and offer tips/ideas for posts.

• Tiffany Warrick, a server at Iron Hill who supplied the photo of the freshly done ice sculpture, beautifully cut by IH kitchen staffer Richard Glodowski. Richard carves ice as a side gig, and his work was certainly a showpiece for the day; Tiffany's a can-do table host and made a clutch save with the photo she offered.

• Iron Hill co-founders Kevin Finn and Mark Edelson, and brewers Chris LaPierre and Jeff Ramirez (all picture in photo at top), four people who make IH beer possible.

Cheers.

Portrait of Prohibition

For a while now, Victory Brewing across the Delaware River has trumpeted April 7th as a festive occasion, a moment to dance upon the grave of Prohibition and its crash 77 years ago.

Lo these many years hence, and amid the national craft beer craze, the folks over in Downington, Pa., have turned the demise of Prohibition into what is ultimately, after all is said and done, an annual marketing campaign, served with a shot of history, some special-occasion throwback-recipe beers, and release parties at bars whose locations are kept secret (sort of), à la speakeasies. "All citizens are urged to honor the day with a Victory beer" goes Victory Brewing's sloganeering.

April 7, 1933, of course, is the date upon which legal – albeit weak (3.2% alcohol by weight) – beer returned to the steins and mugs of US citizens. And it was the break from the starting gate toward ratification that December of the 21st Amendment, which essentially took a Sharpie and wrote Oops in giant, fat letters across the 18th Amendment, that action itself an unprecedented event.

Call it the Volstead Act, the Noble Experiment or the Terrible 13. But, really, whatever you call Prohibiton (1920-1933), just don't call it over and done with, since it left a lasting imprint upon American culture.

If you want to gain that understanding, peel back the many layers to what made America go dry and really dig into an issue that was seismic (yet has often been distilled into jejune retellings), then check out Daniel Okrent's Last Call, The Rise and Fall of Prohibition.

A fresh, in-depth account of the era, Last Call is a perfect book for craft beer enthusiasts, the kind of folks whose thirst for better beers runs parallel with their appetite for knowledge, their need to delve deeper.

Okrent graciously fielded some quick questions via email this week for a Q&A here.

BSL: Why do we as a culture harbor an oversimplified, even romanticized view (i.e., gangsters and speakeasies) of Prohibition? Is it truly because of the cinematic retellings and because, as history, it’s served to us in a shot glass when to really understand it, it calls for a pitcher?

DO: What most Americans know about Prohibition was delivered in abbreviated, romanticized, and dumbed-down packages – i.e., in Hollywood films and television shows. The Untouchables bears as much a relationship to the reality of Prohibition as The Flintstones has to the reality of the Stone Age.

BSL: We were once truly a country of irresponsible drinkers ... how does that shape our attitudes toward legal drinking today?

DO: I'm not sure it does; our historical memory is awfully weak. In 1830, the average American over 15 years of age drank the equivalent of 90 fifths of 80 proof liquor annually; today, we drink barely a third of that. Comparing the two eras is almost impossible.

BSL: Prohibition’s effects go far beyond the three-tier system of legal booze under which we enjoy a cocktail nowadays. Given that, what’s the most dramatic or central thing from it that continues to touch Americans' lives today?

DO: It's probably something as simple as the mixed drink. During Prohibition, the quality of illegal liquor was so dubious that it became necessary to dilute the goods with tonic, orange juice, ginger ale – anything that would mask the wretched taste of the booze itself. The other: men and women drinking together. The pre-Prohibition saloon was a men-only sanctum; the Prohibition era speakeasy was open to all comers, and really introduced mixed-sex social drinking to much of America.

BSL: Does Prohibition represent the pinnacle of government interference? And if that’s true, then why don’t we hear it used (or see it widely used) as an example to argue against government interference. For instance, you don’t really hear Republicans ripping on Democrats right now, saying their ideas will be as meddlesome, troublesome and ultimately fail like Prohibition did.

DO: I can't think of a greater intrusion into the lives of the average Americans than Prohibition. But you don't hear politicians citing it today because it was so extreme, and such a failure. Its current political relevance appears most vividly in the arguments over marijuana legalization, such as the ballot measure Californians will be voting on in November.

BSL: Does today’s Tea Party movement and the forces that surround it mirror any elements of the Prohibition movement? Are we witnessing similar political skirmishes and class wars and encountering similar personalities driving the debate?

DO: There's some similarity, primarily in the us-against-them nature of the political battles – they're not just about specific issues, but really about who is going to control the country. On the other hand, the Prohibitionists succeeded because, unlike the Tea Party, they confined themselves to a single issue. The closest analog today would be the National Rifle Association, which doesn't care what a politician thinks on any issue except gun control. And I believe that unrelenting focus is why the NRA is the most successful, in their own terms, of today's political organizations.

About Daniel Okrent
A writer, editor and baseball historian, Okrent is credited as the originator of Rotisserie League Baseball. He's the author of Nine Innings; The Way We Were: New England Then, New England Now; Great Fortune: The Epic of Rockefeller Center; and the collection of his New York Times columns as Public Editor #1, a look back at his stint as the Times' first ombudsman, when he was called upon to help repair the newspaper's credibility following the Jayson Blair plagiarism/fabrication scandal that bubbled up at the Times during the spring of 2003.

Iron Hill Maple Shade, a year later

Iron Hill will mark the first-year anniversary of its Maple Shade brewpub on Saturday with a fitting soiree that runs from 1 to 5 p.m.

That's brewer Chris LaPierre in the video above, shot June 26th during the Garden State Craft Brewers Guild festival. Below is what Chris put out in his email notice to Iron Hill devotees and mug club members about Saturday's happenings:

As usual we'll show our appreciation with a complimentary buffet from 2-3 p.m. and raffling off a slew of prizes at 4 p.m. As for the beer, (can't forget the beer!) we've got a lot of special stuff saved up for you. ... we'll be tapping our Anniversary Ale (Sour Cherry Belgian Dubbel), Christmas in July (our Winter Warmer that's been aging in a used Bourbon barrel since the holidays), and vintage kegs of English Strong Ale and Flemish Red. I've even got a special cask for you (I haven't yet decided whether to tap the last firkin of Dark Situation or the last pin of our Bourbon Quad).

Follow this link to see what it was like on that inaugural day of business when Iron Hill opened its first location in New Jersey and became the first new brewing enterprise in the Garden State since Krogh's up in Sparta jumped into the game in 1999 with a 5-barrel system.

Iron Hill's reputation with its eight locations (spread among Delaware, Pennsylvania and New Jersey) is one of great beer. But its backstory is about three Jersey guys who had to leave the Garden State to pursue their vision just to be able to return to their home state with that vision. (Are you listening Gov. Christie? IH's saga concerning high-cost, commerce-unfriendly New Jersey is not unique.)

But the expansion has been rewarding.

The Maple Shade location has become one of Iron Hill's busiest (are you sorry you spurned them like you did, Sagemore plaza in Marlton?), drawing a lot of beer enthusiasts from throughout the South Jersey region. And that's happened despite the rather confounding interchanges with Routes 73 and 41 that lead to the brewpub.

Iron Hill's success says something else about South Jersey: That it truly was looking for another player in its beer scene.

And South Jersey scored big time.

Centennials in 2010

Plenty of cones on the Centennial bines that are doing well this season. (Photo taken this morning.)

But alas, for third-year plants, this summer has seen one mound woefully stunted and another sort of sputtering. The remaining two mounds have fairly robust bines and a decent amount of cones.

Also, this year marks the first appearance of some unwanted visitors – Japanese beetles. The folks at Rutgers said a couple of years ago that if your plants don't have pests, just wait, the bugs will find them.

And so they have.

There's stone in that beer

Here's a video project that arose from Homebrew Day back in May.

While doing an interview for the Big Brew video of the Barley Legal Homebrewers gathered behind Iron Hill brewpub in Maple Shade, Maris Kukainis of Cherry Hill mentioned he planned to do a stone beer as an homage to his Latvian heritage.

Enough said. We'll be there.

If you're familiar with this age-old European process (the late great Beer Hunter Michael Jackson did a segment on the style whilst in Germany) and its origins, then you understand why it's intriguing.

The super-hot stones, when immersed in the wort, push the liquid over the hump into a rolling boil. The technique was relied upon back when some breweries used wooden kettles, which were unsuited for a direct flame. Hence, a work-around, one that imparted signature caramel and smoky flavors into the beer. (Check out the video below, by the Woodbridge-area homebrewer group WHALES. Club members used a wooden barrel as a kettle for their take on the style.)

To a soundtrack of Latvian folk tunes playing on an iPod, Maris brewed his version of stone beer using river stones heated over a hardwood fire. He bittered it with Styrian hops and the hop-predecessor mugwort, and tossed in some crushed juniper berries for good measure.

On a third dunk of hot stones, the wort was boiling, and the air around kettle filled with a combination maltiness and smokiness. (The stones retrieved from the wort wore a veneer of caramelized sugar.)

Maris split the kettle volume into two batches for primary fermentation. We have a follow-up call in to him to check on the fruits of his labors from that day in mid-May.

Cheers.

East Coast Brewing, Part 3

By now, the folks at East Coast Brewing had hoped their contract-brewed pre-Prohibition lager would be on store shelves.

But John Merklin and Brian Ciriaco have found the industry regulators to be a little fussy.

So the launch of their Beach Haus brand pilsner has been pushed to next month. You could hear the frustration in John's voice this afternoon as he spoke from the company headquarters in Point Pleasant. Beach Haus' launch was supposed to happen in June.

Federal regulators, he says, raised some flags about the corporate name (the feds wanted it clearer that East Coast will be contract brewing) and squawked about some fine print and other minor details regarding the label for the pilsner, the prototypes of which – made on a 15-gallon hobby system – tasted reminiscent of a Vienna lager, certainly deeper in character and heartier than your typical pils. (For the curious, the beer will be brewed with Mount Hood and Horizon hops – 42 IBUs – and weigh in at 5.5% ABV.)

So the upshot is this: John and Brian say they've addressed regulators' concerns and have a July 26th brew date set with Genesee Cream Ale-maker High Falls Brewing in Rochester, N.Y., with whom the two Jersey shore guys (they live in Ocean County) struck a contract-brew deal. (In a world not foiled by regulators, that brew date would probably be the top news here.)

If all goes to plan, John says, Beach Haus pils will launch around mid-August.

In the meantime, he and Brian have been developing some ales to eventually roll out under the Beach Haus banner.

And as for their pils, well, the two will tell you that August is still certainly beach weather.