It doesn't always happen

For the amount of space they give it – think mid-size supermarket and half the dairy case – Whole Foods in Middletown/Red Bank (Monmouth County) does a stellar job of stocking craft beer and imports (lots of Belgian brews).

That you can buy beer and groceries under one roof and through a single checkout lane is great unto itself. Not to mention, it underscores the union of quality beers and good foods. (Alas, the closest Whole Foods to us is Marlton/Cherry Hill area, and they don’t sell wines and beers. That makes the spin up the Garden State Parkway to Middletown, about 20 minutes longer than Marlton, more worth while.)

And here's the thing: Whole Foods, as is their part of their mission, highlights products with local ties. Beer included, in this case River Horse and Flying Fish (wish they carried Cricket Hill, Climax and Ramstein, too). They also pointed out New York brewers (i.e. Brooklyn, Southern Tier and Blue Point) and Pennsylvania beers. A nice, logical radius, there.

Maybe it doesn’t seem like a big deal that a beer retailer would steer you to the local brews , but you can’t always count on it. Even at the stores that have aisle upon aisle of brews, shelves flagged with Rate Beer scores and staff who’ve tried practically everything they sell. It just doesn’t always happen.

So way to go, Whole Foods. (Now just move that “seasonal” sign away from the Hopfish or put a true seasonal there in its place.)

The benefits of ale

Here’s where good beer does good things ...

Come Sunday (Jan. 18), New Brunswick’s brewpub, Harvest Moon, will be buzzing as crowds flock to George Street for the fifth annual Jimmy D fundraiser.

It’s a big event that salutes some hard-to fill boots lost by the New Brunswick Fire Department and honors a legacy of putting others first.

Harvest Moon donates a portion of the proceeds from every pint of Jimmy D’s Firehouse Red to the Children’s Burn Camp of the Connecticut Burns Care Foundation, an organization dear to Deputy Fire Chief James D’heron, whose memory the event pays tribute.

D’heron died after saving 15 people in a September 2004 house fire.

Over it's history, the event has raised nearly $50,000 for the charity, and the Irish red ale is so popular it occupies a taphandle at Harvest Moon year-round.

See more details here. Click on "News from the Moon" at the bottom left of the page.

Iron Hill: Something to look forward to

We’re told the work on a New Jersey location for Iron Hill brewery/restaurant continues.

In a beer conversation last month, we heard the building on Kings Highway in Maple Shade has been gutted, giving IH’s designers/planners/work crew a clean canvas on which to create a stylish brewpub.

A new face in Jersey, as we’ve said before, is a big deal for a state where regulators hamstring brewers with rules not found in neighboring states, like restricting brewers to be production operations and sell to distributors, or hold a brewpub license and make beer for on-site consumption. But never those twain shall meet in the you-can-only-be-one-or-the-other Garden State.

Boxing in brewers like that is part of the reason Jersey poses such rocky terrain for new enterprises. But we digress.

So yes, Iron Hill opening in May 2009 (the target date they’ve specified) is highly anticipated.

With that in mind, as an indicator of what you can expect from topflight Iron Hill, here’s a glimpse of some special bourbon barrel draft beers they’ll serve at their seven locations spread between Delaware and Pennsylvania throughout February. (All month, each location will spotlight two house-brewed beers that celebrate this style.)

Featured bourbon barrel aged beers will include:

• Bourbon Porter, Iron Hill’s award-winning Pig Iron Porter features roasty malt and pronounced bourbon flavors with a vanilla aroma, served on nitrogen tap.
• Bourbon Russian Imperial Stout, a Great American Beer Festival medalist, distinguished by complex malt character, balance, and distinct bourbon and vanilla flavors.
• Bourbon Barley wine, intense caramel-malt sweetness and aroma balanced with distinct bourbon and vanilla flavors.
• Bourbon Tripel, a traditional Belgian-style strong ale with complex aroma and flavor of plums, spice and bananas, with a balanced bitterness.
• Also: Bourbon Wee Heavy, Bourbon Baltic Porter and Bourbon Dubbel.

Makes you wish they were pouring in Maple Shade right now.

Maibock update/hop prices

Upon checking back with Cricket Hill Brewery on maibock for this spring ...

Owner Rick Reed says it's still up in the air, but odds are the crew there in Fairfield (Essex County) won't brew one for 2009. Just the way it is.

Meanwhile on another note, Rick mentioned the spike in hop prices is retreating. You'll recall we're paying more for beer in general these days because of the hop shortage/price jump that started working its way into the system in late 2007. (Surging barley prices had something to do with the higher beer prices, too.)

But Rick shared some figures from supplier Hop Union on Friday. He says contract prices for the 2008 crop range from $17-$19 per pound, dipping to $14-$17 per pound for the 2009 harvest. It gets better for 2010, $10 per pound.

Rick also noted availability of varieties looks better, too.

Price drops on anything are good to hear. But when you're in the throes of a recession like we are, well it usually points to some other things, too. It's hard to say exactly how it will play out for the consumer, but for now, take it at face value.

Animal magic

Here’s something to put on your radar: A spring craft beer festival at the Turtleback Zoo in West Orange.

This is very much still in planning stages, but a Friday evening in late May is being targeted, says pointman Bryan Flynn, a member of the Turtleback’s board of trustees and a former sales rep for Blue Point Brewing (Long Island).

A few things continue to be worked on and a brewery lineup still needs to be set. Bryan says organizers want to capitalize on the trend of paring beers/breweries with food/restaurants (think Savor, that food-and-craft brew event kicked off last year in Washington, D.C., by the Brewers Association, or closer to home, the annual Brewers Plate event in Philadelphia).

This is exactly the direction beer events in New Jersey need to go, especially when you consider the push to get the beer-drinking public to view craft beer and fine food as a natural combination. (Plus, there’s a reason Eric Asimov of the New York Times wrote a piece headlined “Overcoming a Frat Party Reputation.” That was two years ago, and it’s still on the Times Web site, not the paid, database archives.)

New Jersey sorely needs an event that can both showcase the finer points of craft beer and raise the bar for Jersey beer festivals in general. The dominant festival right now is not the Garden State Craft Brewers Guild event, but the Atlantic City beer fest, which has sadly, over the course of three years, turned into something akin to a drunkfest. (A harsh criticism, yes, but it's true.)

So a Brew at the Zoo event holds a lot of promise for the state's beer image. Organizers hope to draw brewers from six or seven states and potentially some brewing industry luminaries. Like the beer and food trend, an event at Turtleback Zoo would also capitalize on a wave that unites zoos and beer festivals as fundraisers or ways to boost attendance. (Zoos that have partnered with beer include Baltimore; Denver; Columbus, Ohio; and Louisville, Ky., to name a few.)

Cool Jerseyana item:
The Turtleback Zoo’s black bear exhibit simulates a living room with a view of the outdoors, which is pretty much the natural bear viewing experience for residents of northwest New Jersey who quite often glimpse bears ambling through their yards.

NOTE: The artwork above is something we created; it's not from the folks trying to put together this festival.

Mulling maibock

Too soon to talk about spring beers?

Not if it’s a business decision, a brewery meeting topic.

We caught up to the folks at Cricket Hill Brewery on Monday, checking in to see what will follow their Paymaster Porter as the next seasonal. (FYI, Cricket Hill now bottles all their seasonals, putting them in 12-packs.)

Maybe maibock, says Rick Reed, but there are some points from the brewery’s distributors to consider before striking that mash.

Go west to Pennsylvania, and CH’s distributors there will make a funny face at the suggestion of pushing maibock; at the shore here in Jersey, the distributors are lukewarm to the idea, more concerned about summer beers than having spring brew on the shelf.

The best chance for Cricket Hill's reprising its maibock would come from a commitment from their northern distributor for 150 cases, which is possible. (FYI: Cricket Hill last brewed a maibock in 2007, and the beer, a helles, was among their offerings at the Guild festival on the battleship.)

Rick says the brewery will have a game plan nailed down by Friday. Stay tuned.

Meanwhile, Cricket Hill’s hitting the festival trail this month, Blue Point Brewery’s 5th Annual Cask Ale Festival on Jan. 24th. (Get details here.) Joining the Blue Point festival lineup comes as Cricket Hill cracks the Long Island market (Nassau and Suffolk counties).

Praise be cold

Here’s a reason to champion a tumble in temperature: eisbock.

And there’s only one reason to bring that up: High Point Brewing’s highly anticipated (draft only) eisbock is in the pipeline.

We spoke to Greg Zaccardi just before Christmas about morphing some Ramstein Winter Wheat Doppelbock into eis. Greg said that a batch of the doppelbock (9% ABV) was finishing out so it could be kegged off, then sent to the big chill to turn the available H2O into an ice core, off which the brewers will draw the malty, now alcohol-richer eisbock. (The most recent incarnation clocked in at 12% ABV; that beer was a surprise treat back in August and quickly pounced on at a brewery open house).

How soon a 2009 Ramstein eisbock happens depends on Mother Nature providing a reliable arctic blast, the kind that turns a lake or pond into a hockey rink. Seems like the weather’s trending toward the sustained below-30 degrees air temperature that’s needed for the conversion. So for now, it’s a waiting game.

But if you want a date to bank on, the folks at High Point expect the eisbock to be available by the second Saturday in March (the 14th). That’s when brewery open houses resume following the winter hiatus. In fact, you can pretty much expect High Point to bock your socks off that day, since their maibock is scheduled to debut then, too.

Here’s another heads-up: Since a portion (about 25 percent) of each keg’s 15 gallons must be sacrificed (as in turned to a discarded slush) to create the eisbock, the supply is obviously tighter than other High Point brews. And the beer has developed a quite an interest among High Point’s draft accounts. What all this means, as fans of this beer well know, is that if you’re not fortunate enough to have Ramstein eisbock on tap at your local bar, then you and your growler should make plans to line up at that first open house of 2009.

Meanwhile, High Point’s Blazing Amber, a draft only Vienna lager, could be under glass this year. Greg’s giving serious consideration to broadening High Point’s bottled lineup with the amber. Stay tuned.

The beer’s name is a nod to the spectacular 1957 inferno at Pequanoc Rubber Mill, a blaze that was visible 100 miles away and drew an offer of help from the NYFD.

2009

Happy New Year.

Drink Jersey beer.

No kidding, have a beer brewed in the Garden State. It's good for ya.

Carol of the Beers

Garmin's not the only one making something commercial out of Carol of the Bells.

This version is performed on harp, picked up as some royalty-free music (odd how royalty-free music is only free after you buy a license to use it.) By the by, one of the funniest takes on this Yule song came from Saturday Night Live in the early 1990s, the vocal part sung by a stressed-out son as The Carol of Intimacy on the Dysfunctional Family Christmas album: "Leave me alone! Please go away! I'm doing fine! Just get away!

Our idea to incorporate a beer motif was easier said than executed. The four-note drone was simple enough to set a new lyric to – Christmas is here, drink Jersey beer – but things got a little dicey with the part just before Merry, merry, merry, merry Christmas refrain. No rewrite we came up with off the lyrics seemed to fit the tempo. (Trans-Siberian Orchestra has nothing to worry about.)

Oh well, what we have is close enough. Just don't try to sing along without a brew.

Yuletide is here, drink Jersey beer.

Hops & Hippos

Another new brew from River Horse.

Hop-a-lot-amus, an American double IPA, rolled out earlier this month as a draft-only beer, the fifth new offering from the crew in Lambertville.

We jetted up to the brewery in southern Hunterdon County on Monday for a sample.

We don’t review beers – too many people out there already do that, and like Lou Reed sang, “Does anybody need another (fill in the blank)?” – but here are some quick observations:

• Dense, creamy head, citrusy hop taste, piney hop flavors in the finish, with some malt flavor occupying space in the middle.
• Not a lot of hop in the nose, and the folks at the brewery say they’ll shoot for some more aromatic when they follow up this initial 30-barrel run.

Still though, the story here is a big, rich American IPA. So if you’re a fan of hop bombs, as this historically British style has become defined these days in the US, you’ll find something here to enjoy.

By the way, the hops are Perle, Cluster and Cascade as a finish, and the ABV comes in just south of 8%. A couple pints into this brew, you’ll feel the alcohol, but along the way, you really won’t taste it. The warmth hides behind all those hops.

River Horse is on a roll these days. Hop-a-lot-amus (credit co-owner Glenn Bernabeo for the name) comes amid the brewery’s well-received hybrid oatmeal milk stout (released as the third offering in the RH brewer's reserve six-pack series around Thanksgiving), and ditto for draft-only Dunkel Fester, which got snapped up fast early last fall to the brewery’s pleasant surprise.

And all of that came on the heels of a wildly successful Belgian Double Wit, the first new brew in ages from River Horse, which was more or less backpedaling, withering even, until Glenn and Chris Walsh bought the brewery and, you can pretty much say, rescued the place from closing.

By the by, as we noted in a previous post, the Wit, along with RH’s Imperial Cherry Amber, took home gold medals from World Beer Championship competition. (Despite the award and respectable enough sales, the cherry amber, because of some logistics in dealing with the fruit, will get a hard look before the brewery decides whether to reprise it.)

Speaking of awards, Dunkel Fester and RH Lager, tweaked this year into a reliable kellerbier, recently won silver medals from WBC. Like we said, River Horse is on a roll.

NOTE: If you’re a fan of the Double Belgian Wit (7% ABV), it’s coming back as part of RH’s regular flight of brews, available in six-packs at the brewery in a couple of weeks. It will be on store shelves at the start of March.

Scouting around

A quick and incomplete survey of the hosts of Christmas Taps … If you’re still in the throes of holiday shopping and actually going to malls and outlets, this information may help.

• Basil T’s in Toms River (across from Ocean County Mall): Dave Hoffmann has two holiday beers flowing, a raspberry and molasses brew, something new to Dave’s recipe catalog. It’s not quite a winter warmer, but it tastes pretty good, and at 4.5% ABV, you can have a couple and still sound coherent talking to the sales rep about that discounted flat-screen TV.

Speaking of winter warmers, Basil’s second seasonal is Old St. Nick (6.8% ABV), a beer Dave has made in the past and does at the behest of Steve Farley, Basil’s chef, whose palate tends toward Samuel Smith’s Winter Warmer. We had both beers, and if we’re backing up pints, Nick gets the call. That flat panel can wait until the 26th, when the price may be lower yet.

Christmas Eve is usually a time when you stay closer to home, unless you don’t mind being branded a procrastinator. But here’s a reason to step out on the 24th: Dave has a doppelbock coming on at Basil’s that day. Have lunch, relax, take a growler home.

One more brew coming soon: A straw-colored hoppy ale that’s a twist on Dave’s cream ale.

Meanwhile at his day job in Roselle Park, there’s doppelbock rolling out of the doors at Climax Brewing next week. Dave’s got bock in his genes, so you can set your watch to this one, it’ll be spot on (7.8% ABV).

ALSO: Hoffmann Helles is ready, and the porter recipe Dave dusted off last year for the first time in about 10 years is back this year as draft only. It’s a 5.5% brew with a tawny head that beckons. It has found a following in Pennsylvania bars, with New York and Jersey waking up to it. Dave brewed just 10 barrels, so if you’re near a bar that makes room for Climax tap handles, hurry.

• JJ Bitting in Woodbridge: Cloves, nutmeg, cinnamon, vanilla beans … sounds like a holiday mix. Bitting brewer August Lightfoot spiced a brown ale (5.5% ABV) that fits a pint glass and a growler jug. But variety is the spice of life, and August is pouring a chocolate cherry stout, too, so it sounds like a two growler tour at Bittings. Hey, why not, it’s the holidays.

Making for a trifecta on the taps in rotation at Bitting is Hop Garden Pale Ale (6% ABV). Let the name be your guide; it’s also on the handpump.

Coming soon: WHALES Imperial IPA. If you follow Bittings, you know this brew’s the scion of the Woodbridge homebrewers group. It’s about two weeks from being sighted on the port bow. August also has his Blackjack Oatmeal Stout in the pipeline and Barley Legal Barleywine, a 10% ABV brew that says sip first, ask questions later.

• Pizzeria Uno (beside Woodbridge Center mall): Coffee Stout, a 5.8% brew to revv you up before you shop.

• Trap Rock Restaurant & Brewery (near Short Hills Mall): A fireside beer – Willie's Winter Warmer (6.2%). Three varieties of crystal malt and a dash of spice to curl up with after fighting the crowds.

• Tun Tavern in Atlantic City (near The Walk outlet shops): Orange peel, cocoa, raisins and star anise in a Belgian brown: It’s Tun Noël, jump for the joyeux Tun Noël on the 18th. Using the same yeast Flying Fish ferments its Abbey Dubbel with, brewer Tim Kelly did five barrels of this 9% ABV ale, with an eye toward kegging off three barrels to put up for next year.

In the meantime, the Tun has a Vienna lager still pouring, a brew that returned from its debut in fall 2007. This year’s edition is a little hoppier, more attenuated than the inaugural batch.

Waiting in reserve: Tun Dark, a dunkel-like lager that Tim took home a bronze medal with in North American Brewers Association competition last summer.

Calendar items:

• High Point Brewing in Butler has an open house on Saturday (12/13), the last one until March. Their Winter Wheat Doppelbock makes the visit worth your time. Alas, it’s unlikely they’ll have the eisbock on Saturday.
• Gaslight Brewery & Restaurant holds its annual Victorian Christmas Dinner on Dec. 17th. The brewpub has more details at 973-762-7077.

Christmas beer soundtrack

Yeah the economy is in reverse, the R-word was just used for real the other day, and Detroit’s Big 3, like Wall Street, was back in the cash soup line that formed at the doors of the US Capitol.

The retrograde certainly makes enjoying the holidays quite a challenge. But the bounty of great Christmas and winter beers on the shelves and brewpub taps can still lift your spirits, or at least give you a reason to tipple this season, if the economic cratering hasn’t already driven you to drink.

But beer is about more than just aroma and taste. It’s about other senses, too, whether it’s conversation or taking in the arts while you imbibe.

With that in mind, here’s a short list for a holiday/winter beer soundtrack, a collection of tunes – gems from Christmas past to be sure – suitable to trim trees by and sip those big, hearty ales.

Polka, polka
Think you don’t like polka? Check out Brave Combo, the Texas ensemble that ingeniously has fused a number of music styles (polka, samba, cumbia, ska) for nearly 30 years, and polka-played some rock standards (Purple Haze) with a straight face. Their score for the Yule is hip-cool:

• Christmas in July … An up-tempo number that opens with the economy in a slump, and the president, who calls Santa up, knows just what will pick things up. Yep, it’s Christmas in July. (Lyrics here). Hey Mr. President-elect, your next Cabinet announcement/newser going to feature St. Nick?

• Must Be Santa ... You’ll be singing along before this 2 1/2 minutes of accordion-fired call-and-response is over, especially if your wassail bowl has one of those 12% brews in it.

• Santa’s Polka … “Santa don’t get cold when he dances at the old North Pole-ka.” Nope, he don’t.

• Jingle Bells … A double-timed, instrumental version of the secular standard that was copyrighted under the title “One Horse Open Sleigh” 150 years ago. Finishes as quickly as it starts for an apt turn upon the well-worn. Let Babs Streisand plod through all the verses.

Tchaikovsky, anyone?
• Nut Rocker … Sometimes a starchy, classic melody yearns to breathe and cut loose. Think Nut Rocker, B. Bumble and the Stingers’ twist on Tchaikovsky’s March of the Wood Soldiers from the Russian composer’s celebrated Nutcracker ballet. Nut Rocker topped the British pop charts 40-plus years ago, while hitting 23rd in the US. It’s a quirky tune, instantly recognizable, but ends too soon. Still, the rumbling, bouncy piano lines alone justify the space on your iPod. Those bombastic prog rockers Emerson, Lake & Palmer, jumped on the Stingers’ hit at the start of the 1970s, with Keith Emerson banging out the keyboard lead on clavinet. Go with the Stingers' version, though.


Tin drums for Christmas
• Soca Santa … Find your palest, lightest Christmas beer and pair it with this catchy, sunny number by soca/parang artist Machel Montano. “Soca Santa don’t want to ride no sleigh, in a big-time Toyota galavanting all day!”

Whither the weather
• Baby, It’s Cold Outside … It doesn’t mention Christmas in the lyrics, but no matter, the legendary smooth crooner and Rat Packer, Dean Martin himself, put this classy duet on a holiday LP. (Sadly, Dean checked out of this mortal world on Christmas Day in 1995.) A standard from the 1940s, anyone’s version is worth a listen.

Get your mojo working
• Good King Wenceslas … Mojo Nixon was a little like Frank Zappa – irreverent, bawdy lyrical social commentary – only Zappa’s inner musician was a serious composer and virtuoso guitarist and way more stylish than the psychobilly Mojo. Still, it’s worth having Mojo Nixon & The Toadliquors’ rendition of Good King Wenceslas. La la la la la la la/la la la la la la.

Speaking of kings
• Blue Christmas … Yeah, looks that way with every RSS feed that’s filed. But we got beer and things to listen to, Elvis, so it’ll be all right.

Happy Thanksgiving & beer with the bird

Cheers, prosit, sláinte and salut.

Thanks to everyone who availed themselves for video shoots over the past months, or those who opened their brewhouses for interviews, chats or photos. And thanks for the visits to the blog.

No doubt today’s a day for fine food. And beer. Here are some highlights off our menu:

Warmup: Brie and puff pastry, with River Horse Lager and a bottle of gose that’s been on hold for a week or so.

Salad: Organic toasted hazelnut and shredded carrot salad, with Weyerbacher Harvest Ale in the glass.

Main course: Fresh organic turkey marinated in Jim Beam, orange juice and molasses then roasted with an orange stuffing. Side of organic Gruyère au gratin potatoes. Ramstein Winter Wheat Doppelbock and Tröeg’s Mad Elf to sip.

Dessert: Homemade organic chocolate crème pie, Samuel Adams Chocolate Bock.

Best wishes to all.

Drink your milk (stout), Part 2

A quick follow-up on River Horse’s new Oatmeal Milk Stout …

It’s robust, with a smooth but dry finish, nice body. For a milk stout, it’s not too sweet, but then again, it’s half oatmeal stout, so that makes sense, as far as the shared marquee and balance go.

Here’s the backstory on the beer's origin, from a chat with Jeremy Myers, RH’s assistant brewer.

Craving some stout lately, and having a free day in a holiday week, we went through half of the just-purchased sixpack, from lunch to dinner: one fridge cold, the second about 45 degrees, and third near 50-55.

Here’s our advice: Let the beer stand, warm up just enough, that’s where it really rounds out, and the sweetness gently unfolds, gets kind chocolaty and roasty. And for a beer that clocks in at 6.7% ABV, you really don’t notice it being on the bigger beer side.

We tasted one of the pilot brews of the stout back in October. Comparing then to now, the pilot seemed silkier, but this incarnation has a better overall balance, tastier.

As noted previously, this brew marks a triumvirate with RH’s brewer’s reserve beers. And it’s worth pointing out, too, that RH brought home World Beer Championship gold medals with the other two in the series, Double Belgian Wit and Imperial Cherry Amber.

Is there a hat trick in the making?

Drink your milk (stout)

This just came out, the third installment in River Horse's brewer's reserve series.

We got a sneak taste last month at the brewery's Oktoberfest, just before it was scheduled to be brewed. It's in the glass now, going pretty good with a spicy chicken dish for lunch.

More words to come.

Joy to the wort

Yes, Virginia, there is a Samichlaus.

It exists not just as a single, cheerful, grand beer, annually brewery-gifted to the masses at Yuletide, but in the hearts of everyone who welcomes the moment to throw arms around old friends and clasp hands, meeting in the pub at Yuletide.

Alas! How dreary it would be if there were no Samichlaus. It would be as dreary as if there were no alehouses at all. There would be no friendship bonds made ’round pints and banter, no laughter, no cheer to make tolerable this existence. We should have no pleasures, except in Sports Center and widescreen TV. The forever light by which camaraderie fills our world would be extinguished.

OK, enough of that, before the literary license gets revoked. And apologies to Francis Pharcellus Church, the longtime-gone New York Sun, and Don “Joe Sixpack” Russell, whose account a couple years back about touring Austria’s Castle Eggenberg Brewery, home to the actual Samichlaus (Swiss-German for Santa Claus) beer, opened with a turn of phrase upon Church’s classic editorial.

The point is, Yuletide fast approaches, and regardless whether your elves are Mad, breaking Bad, Seriously Bad (even Criminally Bad), or Santa’s showing his Butt, you’ll find no truer cheer than to celebrate the holidays and friendship over a pint of beer.

Mulled, honeyed, fruited or just brewed extra rich and alcohol-robust to bring a warming smile, ’tis the season for these beers, and Don, already a renowned beacon for all things malt and hops, is lighting the way again, as our beer fridges become nothing short of advent calendars.

Don availed himself last week for a chat about his latest book, Christmas Beer: The Cheeriest, Tastiest and Most Unusual Holiday Brews, and talked about the inaugural Yuletide beer festival at the University of Pennsylvania Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, set for the Saturday sandwiched between Christmas and New Year’s. (FYI: Don's a co-organizer of the festival.)

Yuletide beer guide
Three years in the making, Don’s latest beer treatise is the product of world travel, sampling the products of brewing traditions that date back nearly two millennia. If Joe Sixpack’s Philly Beer Guide was Don’s spring equinox (released last March), this book is the winter solstice, and bound to be enjoyed for its capturing exotic, unusual, or one-of-a-kind beers in a single, handy volume. (The book’s available through Don’s Web site, or Amazon, but we say support the beer scribe – buy directly from him.)

Christmas and beer, perfect together?
Absolutely, Don says. Christmas beer isn’t a definable style, yet it embraces an impressively wide variety of flavors. And when it’s beginning to look a lot like Christmas, there’s a celebratory mood in which people try new things and want to enjoy fine foods. Beer owns a place amid that terrain.

Plus, Christmas beers are special in that many have interesting backstories, lore or cultural ties. Take for instance, Anchor Brewing’s Yuletide offering, Our Special Ale, its commemorative, dated labels and secret recipes that ensure each year’s edition is unique unto itself. For sheer pop culture, think Ridgeway Brewing (South Stoke, England) and Seriously Bad Elf, banned in two states (one being Connecticut, thankfully not New Jersey), for the red speck on the label that, upon close inspection, is Santa Claus in a reindeer-hauled sleigh.

Beer folks are good folks
Some of the most cherished friendships are struck over beer. But sometimes, because of the everyday and pressing commitments of family and work, those friendships get revisited only at Christmas. Don mentioned forging such friendships at a brewpub in tiny hamlet in Norway.

The festival
Yes, Virginia, Philadelphia is earning yet more stripes as the best beer city going. While the lineup of 50 US and international Yule brews and winter warmers is still being worked out, the Dec. 27th festival promises to say Fröliche Weinacht and Joyeux Noël, as easily as it does the Dickens-like wish of Merry Christmas.

You’ll encounter some familiar brews, notably Tröeg’s Mad Elf, an 11% ABV cherry and honey Belgian-style strong ale to which Don gives supreme props (we say, for a beer with such warmth, this is surprisingly easy-drinking brew; but it’s a sipper, of course, not a chugger). But you’ll want to keep your taste card open because the event does promise variety.

Among Jersey beers, look for the yeast-spicy Flying Fish Grand Cru Winter Reserve and possibly High Point’s Ramstein Winter Wheat Doppelbock, a rich and chocolaty beer that finishes with hint of raisin. Or River Horse’s Belgian Freeze (if Don’s online column about his favs for the Yule season can be taken as a measure of how the fest list might shape up).

Don will give a talk at a VIP session of the festival (tickets are premium priced but include complimentary copy of his book, an hour of sampling, a three-course lunch and Christmas beer rarities).

In a recessionary time, the ticket prices may seem expensive, but we’re willing to say it: Christmas comes only once a year. And, hey, c’mon, it’s beer.

The W’s

• What: Christmas beer fest.
• When: 1-4 p.m., Dec. 27th (VIP admission, 12:30 p.m.).
• Where: UPenn's Museum of Archeology and Anthropology, 3260 Spruce St., Philadelphia.
• Wallet: $75 in advance, $90 day of; VIP session, $125 in advance, $150 at door.
• Web site: www.phillybeerfests.com.
  
  

At last, Harvest Ale

This was worth the trip.

Almost three months ago, Weyerbacher Brewing, Easton, Pa., came out with a harvest ale that brewers there had dosed with Nugget and Cascade hops grown by owners Dan and Sue Weirback on their Lehigh Valley farm.

It’s the hops-growing project we video-chronicled back in August, an intrepid endeavor that now lets Dan and Sue add “agri-consultant/hops specialist" to their resumés, should any other craft brewer tempted to sow the soil seek some how-did-you-do-it advice.

Fount of ideas
Weyerbacher is a brewery that doesn't stand in one place too long. And planting an acre of hops fits their explorer identity. They have a flight of brews you'll always find on the shelf, but they love to push new ideas and styles, dressing up their packaging with artwork that's reminscent of the LP record's early 1970s era, when album cover artwork was as expressive and expansive as the music.

Their harvest brew, as far as the label goes, doesn't exactly follow that arc, but then this was a brew that depended on Mother Nature to do her part, namely allow that acre of nurtured hop bines to produce enough cones in a first-year growing season. So early on, it was a gamble whether there would be a beer at all, and hence a simpler label, compared with, for instance, the drama and intrigue of Insanity, Prophecy or Heresy. But isn't harvest time an inherently simple moment anyway?

A 6.2% ABV India pale ale, the brew met those freshly picked, still wet, hops in the hopback, in the limited run brewed for release in the Pennsylvania-only market.

Happily, and thankfully, Dan saved us a case, which we picked up yesterday. Indeed, it was worth the wait. Tasty, citrusy hoppy, kind of resinous, almost chewy, but above all, a quaffable beer, two bottles downed upon arriving home.

Sometimes when you have a beer that’s all about hops, you’re temped to keep swirling the glass to kick up the aromas. This one is definitely that kind of swirler, but the pleasure is in churning up some foam, taking a bite of that, and following with a hearty swig.

The backbone is definitely IPA, with some maltiness on either side, and some bitterness in the finish that’s neither harsh nor overwhelming. But the beer’s more earthy-complex thanks to the fresh hops added for a signature flavor, straight from that hand-picked harvest on that August Saturday afternoon.

Next up
Dan says they're now working on Fireside, a 7% ABV brown ale with 10% smoked malt, just enough to rauch things up for the snows of January, but not too much that you won't reach for another. Where there's smoke, there's Fireside.

State of beers, Part 2

Here’s an update on Hometown Beverages, from the phone conversation we had Monday afternoon with Chris Curylo, who formed the start-up company with Bob Selsky.

A couple of Brooklyn guys relocated to Little Silver (Monmouth County) and who happened to become friends during a softball game, Chris and Bob spent a couple of years exploring the Jersey beer landscape as the legwork to their forthcoming rollout of a trifecta of lagers aimed a folks shy toward EBS's, IPAs, power-hopped double IPAs and monastically ordinal (dubbel/tripel) Belgian ales.

They’ve done some localized marketing, but this weekend’s Poconos festival at Split Rock will be the true debut of Hometown Beverages' beer. Next month will see the session brews available in bottle, then draft in January. Eventually, Chris says, the company would like to borrow a page from Sly Fox and Oskar Blues and put the beer in cans.

Plans also call for the contract-brewed, state-named lagers – Jersey, an amber at 4.7% ABV; Pennsylvania, gold, 5.1%; and New York, reddish, 5.7%; to be soon followed by a lighter brew, Hometown, a 3.9% lager. Chris declined to specify the contract brewer until the beer is on the shelves (such information is usually fine print on the label anyway). When asked to ballpark a comparison flavor profile, for say New Jersey Lager, Chris says Yuengling may come to mind for some people.

(FYI: Hometown will only have Pennsylvania and New Jersey Lager at Split Rock; Chris also says the company has struck a deal to take New York Lager to Port St. Lucie, Fla., for the Mets’ spring training and fantasy camps.)

Bio info
At 43, Chris is lawyer with a penchant for riffing and power chording down the neck of a cherry red Gibson SG, the classic double-cutaway axe that Eric Clapton slow-handed on Cream’s Disraeli Gears and Pete Townshend windmilled with the Who. (Forget Angus Young, we’re rooted in the ’60s). Also in his 40s, Bob enters the beer business from a marketing background.

Unlike a lot of beer venturists, Chris and Bob aren’t coming to market by way of their kitchens, homebrewers dreaming of taking successful recipes beyond family and friends. They're two guys who enjoy the pleasures of craft brew and other beers; Chris notes he even enjoys the strong beers. But he says that when he and Bob surveyed the landscape, they felt a beer you can start the night and finish with wasn’t to be found.

Hence, their foray into easy-drinking lagers – bigger than Bud but still less strident than Sam Adams for instance – produced under the banner Hometown Beverages, a nod to traditional values of neighborhood and community. A pushback against extreme beers? Not at all, says Chris, simply an alternative to big beers and the sometimes challenging yeast-inflected flavors of some craft styles.

Undaunted where others failed
When craft beer really got rolling in New Jersey in the mid- and late-1990s, other folks had similar ideas: Long Beach Island Wheat Ale, brewed by Hoboken Brewing for the short-lived Shore Brewing out of Harvey Cedars on the north end of LBI; Jersey Premium Lager Beer, a brew contract-produced at the Lion in Wilkes-Barre, Pa., aimed solely at the New Jersey market, nowhere else. (That beer, as Chris stresses, is not related to Hometown's lagers.)

Those enterprises went down in the subsequent industry shakeout that also saw the vanishing of Mile Square (Hoboken production brewer), Cedar Creek (a tiny Egg Harbor City brewpub), Red Bank Brewing (lager production brewer), Joe’s Mill Hill Saloon (tiny Trenton brewpub; the bar remains in business) and Joshua Huddy (a Toms River brewpub named for the Revolutionary War militia captain hanged by a mob of British loyalists near Sandy Hook). And there were others.

But Chris and Bob are confident their two-year preparation and some grass-roots marketing will better position them in the region’s very competitive beer scene, one that longtime Jersey brewers can tell you is unfriendly to the point where a California beer can get Garden State shelf space faster than locally produced brews.

Next month, they're letting you decide.

Hometown Beverages Company facts
Employees: 10.
Offices: Route 71 in Manasquan, with mail drop in Oceanport.
Portfolio: Four lagers, including a light brew.
Eventual plans call for opening a brewery in New Jersey.
Web site: www.hometownbeverages.com

State of beers

The ranks of New Jersey beer producers is growing.

Add to your list Hometown Beverages, based in Oceanport (home of Monmouth Park racetrack, which hosted the Breeders Cup last year).

We have a call in to Chris Curylo, one of the founders, who was in meetings today in New York with partner Bob Selsky. We hope to talk to Chris later in the afternoon.

Chris and Bob hail from Little Silver – a small Monmouth County train stop town along NJ Transit's North Jersey Coast Line. Here's the backstory on their foray into Jersey beer.

According to an email from Chris, their plan is to launch their contract-brewed tri-state lagers – named New Jersey, New York and Pennsylvania – in December. And on the Nov. 12th post at MyBeerBuzz blog, we saw Hometown Beverages was among the breweries listed to be at the Split Rock festival in the Poconos this weekend. (NOTE: Split Rock's brochure doesn't list Hometown Beverages, but there's no telling when it was produced or if updated.)

Semper Fi, Part 2

Here are additional photos from the Tun Tavern and its salute to the US Marines' 233rd birthday. Here's the direct link to Photobucket.