Another one in development - update

Looks like the brewing of craft beer is returning to Ocean Township in eastern Monmouth County.

Followers of New Jersey-brewed craft styles will remember Ocean Township as the home base of Heavy Weight Brewing, the Tom Baker enterprise that earned acclaim for artisanal beers like the imperial porter Perkuno's Hammer, Lunacy Belgian golden ale and Cinderbock lager.

Tom shuttered the brewery in 2006, pulling up stakes to cross the Delaware into Philadelphia, opening the brewpub Earth Bread + Brewery in the city's Mount Airy section a couple years later.

But now entrepreneur Michael Kane says he's signed a lease for space in Ocean Township to house Kane Brewing Company.

Back in the spring, Michael had his eye on a site a few miles south in Manasquan, winning some favor among town officials but encountering flak from some ill-informed town residents who stridently opposed the proposed venture.

Hence he opted for another site where he could brew the line of Belgian and American ales envisioned in his business model.

Meantime, Michael's in the process of setting up a Web site and working on licensing and procuring equipment.

Märzen chronicles, Book III (or yet again)

Oktoberfest is a short season, but the beer that distinguishes it from other fall observances deserves a lot of mention.

So here's some more, specifically, a spotlight on a couple of interpretations of the style that are worth your stein and leisure time.

It just went on tap at Uno Chicago Grill & Brewery in Metuchen a few days ago, and the Oktoberfest that brewer Mike Sella turned in this season is richer than Warren Buffet and more enjoyable than watching Jon Stewart riff on Glenn Beck's chalkboard, kabuki histrionics.

In fact, it's also a taste of two seasons: Clocking in at over 7% ABV, the beer has all the signatures of Oktoberfest but a middle flavor and coppery color that hints at doppelbock.

Mike's brew is also proof that you can take an ale yeast and bend it to a lager will. He used an American ale yeast and fermented at 58 degrees. If you didn't hear him cop to that, you'd never know it. (Yeah, other brewers have done this, too, but sometimes you still get that ale nose in the beer. Not here, Mike's is malty and lager-clean.)

Not quite a hundred miles down the Garden State Parkway from Uno, Tim Kelly set up the Tun Tavern in Atlantic City with some of his finest work since taking over as the brewer there in 2007.

Like Mike's fest beer, Tim's 6.6% ABV, noble-hopped Oktoberfest will have you time-traveling to March. By your second round, you'll swear you've poured a Maßkrug of doppelbock. (Honestly, that second glass will feature a middle flavor quite reminiscent of Salvator. And by the way, Tim did use a lager yeast.)

Tim's an ambitious brewer and has turned in some interesting Belgian styles for the Tun (a brown he made a couple Christmases ago tasted great at yuletide, but a filled-to-the-rim growler of it we aged until February became a really superior beer). For his first try at an Oktoberfest at the Tun, Tim reached for toasty melanoidin signatures and attempted a decoction mash.

"I'll never do that again," he says, with some self-deprecating humor.

The beer was fine. But problem was the Tun's brewing system isn't set up to do decoctions. Tim (with the help of Flying Fish head brewer Casey Hughes, as we recall) used buckets to ladel a portion of the grist from the mash tun into the kettle to be boiled, then back into the mash.

A regular five- or six-hour brew day thus grew by more than a couple of hours, a noble effort for a payoff that could still be attained by infusion mash means and some Munich and aromatic malts, as his efforts this season ably demonstrate. (That's not a swipe at decoction; try High Point's Ramstein fest beer to taste what decoction can do.)

Look for Tim's Oktoberfest at the Central Jersey Beer Fest on Saturday. Or better yet, head to the Tun. And Uno.

Woodbridge, Belmar & Iron Hill's F.red

Turnpike Exits 4 and 11 figure big into the beer picture on Saturday, but the day has nothing to do with the Flying Fish Exit Series beers theme-brewed to those numbers.

Exit 11 on the turnpike is Woodbridge, where the 4th edition of the Central Jersey Beer Fest runs from 1-5 p.m. About an hour's drive south, in Maple Shade off Exit 4, Iron Hill brewpub will be hand-bottling and making available for sale some well-aged Flemish red ale.

On top of that, there's a worthy beer gig at the Shore where more Jersey beers will be poured.

Woodbridge
Parker Press Park, along Rahway Avenue, just past the bend in Main Street, is once again the location for the JJ Bitting brewpub-sponsored Central Jersey Beer Fest. From its debut in 2007, this has been a charity event, and this year's proceeds will benefit a cancer-stricken mother of two from Woodbridge and American Legion Post 87.

Jersey brews at the event, according to organizer and Bittings owner Mike Cerami, will include brewpubs Harvest Moon (New Brunswick), Tun Tavern (Atlantic City) and host JJ Bittings; production brewer Cricket Hill (Fairfield); and Boaks Beer (contract brewed at High Point in Butler) and East Coast Beer Company (contract-brewed in New York). Rounding out the list will be beers from Brooklyn, Blue Point, Ommegang, Erie Brewing, Boston Beer, and Doc's Cider.

There will also be food vendors and live music.

Admission is $25, and $15 for designated drivers. Unlike last year, no tickets will be available at the gate (you can buy them at Bittings on Main Street).

If you were at last year's event, you may recall things got a little testy when the admissions outpaced the beer. In order to keep things running smoothly this go-round, ticket sales will cut off at 800.

The park is spacious, with plenty of shade trees. Plus you'll find picnic tables to relax and take a load off. Travel tip: There's construction planned to commence very soon on Route 9 in the area, so coming in on Routes 1 and 35 may be the best path. NJ Transit is a good bet, too, since the train station is a bottle cap's toss from the park.

Maple Shade
The folks at Iron Hill always have something up their sleeve. This time, it's a bottling party for a 9-month-old, barrel-aged Flemish Red tricked out with wild yeast and bacteria to give it a tang that's worth writing home about. (It's a pay as you go event.)

The brewpub will be tapping some F.red (5.3% ABV, 20 IBU), as it's called, while it packages the beer (made in December 2009 and stored in Beaujolais barrels since the headwaters of this year) in corked and caged 750 ml bottles, labeled, signed and numbered by head brewer Chris LaPierre (who's a big fan of sour beer styles) and assistant brewer Jeff Ramirez.

Bottles will then be available for sale at the bar.

FYI: This deep red ale is a bottle-conditioned beer, so the bottle you buy must be stored until it carbonates naturally (Chris recommends a couple of months, or even letting it mature for years).

From Chris' note to mug club members: "This will be a couple of firsts for us: our first beer available in bottles and the first time we’ve done an entire batch of sour, wood-aged beer in Maple Shade."

Belmar:
With this festival, Beer on the Pier, look for Jersey brews from Climax (Roselle Park, go for Dave Hoffmann's well-regarded Oktoberfest and his IPA) and Artisan's brewpub (in Toms River where Dave is the hired consultant/brewer), Cricket Hill, River Horse, New Jersey Beer Company (North Bergen, makers of 1787 Abbey Single and Garden State Stout), and East Coast Beer Company and Hometown Beverage. Hometown, like East Coast Beer Company, is a shore-based contract brewer. East Coast is based in Point Pleasant Beach, while Hometown, the purveyors of New Jersey Lager (as well as New York Lager and Pennsylvania Lager), is based in Manasquan and closing in on a second anniversary in the beer business.

Both Cricket Hill and East Coast Beer are doing double duty on Saturday. Newly minted in the beer scene, East Coast is a co-sponsor of the event with BeerHeads and the borough of Belmar, and just brought its Beach Haus pilsner to market (it's brewed by Genesee in upstate New York) late last month.

"We actually sold through 650 cases in three weeks. We’re thrilled; we're just starting off and we're at the higher end of expectations," says East Coast founder John Merklin. Saturday's event is part of a marketing blitz that has seen the company hit nine craft beer events or tastings in those three weeks.

John says the company has message beyond the flavor and style of its beer, a pre-Prohibition pilsner. "This is not a summer seasonal. It's regional; it's a reflection of the region ... a direct reflection of being at the Shore. The analogy I'm using is the Beach Boys, (hearing them) you know what it's like to be in California," he says.

Beer on the Pier, Belmar Marina, Route 35.
VIP Tent: 1-3 p.m
. General Session: 2-6 p.m

$40 online; $50 Gate; $60 VIP (soldout); 
$10 designated drivers. (A portion of the proceeds go to benefit the Monmouth County Foodbank.)
Food from 10th Ave Burrito, Mr. Shrimp, Crab Shack, Jacks Tavern, Federico's Pizza.
More info (732) 681-2266

The region

As goes New York City and its environs, so goes New Jersey ...

New York's third annual Craft Beer Week begins Friday. Find details here.

Cheers.

Singles scene

Some Jersey singles (top shelf) mingling.

Meanwhile, this is worth a read. And this is curious. (They're from news feed at right.)

Wurst case scenario

For a moment, set the märzen aside.

Because there's also plenty of hearty food rolled into this 2 1/2-week thing called Oktoberfest.

And you don't have to be in Münich to find it.

Try Toms River for some of that Old World flavor.

Detlev Barsch's business, D.A. Barsch German Butcher Shop, is tucked inside in brown, single-story building along Route 9, in the northern part of town where used car dealerships practically outnumber the people.

(Incidentally, for beer in Toms River, it's along Route 9 that you'll find the more well-stocked packaged goods stores, not busy, main-drag Route 37 into Seaside Heights.)

German food is Detlev's life; the butcher profession is a family affair, going back to when he lived in Oranienburg, Gemany, just north of Berlin.

“We had a sausage factory with 150 employees … we had our own store and our own delivery trucks," Detlev says, his voice gently seasoned with a German accent. "I learned my profession in Germany. In competition, I was the best butcher in all of Berlin in 1968; I was No. 3 in all of Germany, and my mother was the only female master butcher for 15 years in all of Germany."

Detlev, 62, has been plying his profession in New Jersey for decades (he came to the US in 1970), and many people remember him from the German butcher shop in Forked River (Lacey Township), about a half-hour drive south of Toms River.

"I started off with the whole family in Forked River. In the '80s, I sold the business to my brother (Wolfgang), then I started my own business on a dairy farm in upstate New York. I had a butcher shop there, Hamden German Butcher," he says.

A flood in 1996 pretty much devastated Delaware County, New York, and Detlev returned to New Jersey, working for his brother for about 10 years. He opened D.A. Barsch 2 1/2 years ago.

Standing behind his shop counter, he flips the calendar page from September to October. The Saturdays of the months are marked with catering orders. Predictably, this time of year is busy, and finds his shop lining up area retirement villages, German-American clubs and anyone else planning a fall fest event with bratwurst, knackwurst, sauerbraten, schweinshaxe, potato pancakes, red cabbage and other traditional German and European foods.

But Oktoberfest has gained an even wider reach as a time to entertain.

"The younger generations that spent time in Europe, they just throw a party for their friends and want to make it an Oktoberfest," Detlev says.

Märzen chronicles, Book II

Dave Hoffmann probably brews more Oktoberfest beer than any other brewer in New Jersey.

With turns at two different breweries – his own Climax brewery in Roselle Park and as the hired brewmaster for Artisan's brewpub in Toms River – Dave has churned out barrel after barrel of the fall seasonal, tailoring the brews for different markets.

Across North Jersey, the beer made under his Hoffmann lager label is a rich, hearty brew like the seasonal German imports his dad, Kurt, enjoyed years ago; the version Dave just put on the taps at Artisan's is quite malty, too, but dialed back just a notch. (That's Dave pictured at last year's fest dinner at Artisan's. This year's is set for Oct. 8th)

In either case, Dave hews zealously to his German heritage, making true-to-style märzens – "not much bitterness, not much hop flavor but very toasty, very caramelly" – that you can't get these days from the deutscher breweries known for creating the style in the first place.

"A lot of the Oktoberfests coming out of Germany, they don't even resemble Oktoberfest," Dave says. "I don't know what the hell they are, some kind of generic fest beer. It's not really true Oktoberfest beer.

"They're not orange any more; they're straw-colored because most of the breweries got away from brewing traditional Oktoberfest beers. Me, as a German and as a brewer, I feel I have to brew it according to the style definitions."

And brew he has: 36 barrels made around mid-summer at Climax were sold in a week. Another 12 barrels will be ready the first week of October, kegged off and bottled in 64-ounce growlers. (By comparison, Dave brewed 28 barrels of Oktoberfest last year, and production at Climax Brewing is up 40 to 50 percent so far this year.)

"I could have sold another three tanks of Oktoberfest if I had them. For some reason this year, people are into Oktoberfest beers, and they're flying out the doors."

German beer is in Dave's DNA. The son of an immigrant father and mother born in the US to German parents, Dave (who's fluent in German himself – "If I spoke German to you, you'd never know I was American," he says) remembers his dad's stock of Spaten, Dinkelacker and Mönchshof. When Dave started homebrewing 20-something years ago, he mimicked those brews to help satisfy his dad's thirst for a taste of back home.

"Whatever seasonals those breweries made, that's what was in the fridge," he says. "That's what I got weaned on. That's what I drank. I know what the Oktoberfest tasted like 25 or 30 years ago because I drank 'em, because my dad had 'em all the time."

ELSEWHERE
Just for the f*cking hell of it.

Fall classic

Some scenes from High Point Brewing's 2010 Ramstein Oktoberfest debut on Saturday. Video was shot using an iPhone.

Port 44 and Hizzoner Corey Booker

Some video footage of Port 44 Brew Pub's grand opening about a month ago.

Nice to see Mayor Booker supports craft beer. (And FYI, the footage was shot by the city)

Now, respectfully speaking, do us a real favor, Mayor Booker, and patronize Port 44, become its friend. Here's why: Maybe someone else will think of Newark as good spot for a brewpub.

After all, Newark used to be home to lots of breweries.

Märzen chronicles

When you flipped the calendar page from August to September, you probably reset your palate from summer beers to something chewy and malty.

Never mind that there are pumpkin ales on the shelf right now. Märzens – Oktoberfests – are the beers that remind you that fall is the best season of the year.

And with this style, New Jersey interpretations aren't to be ignored. In fact, you'll find some exceptional ones made in the Garden State, in North and South Jersey. Over the next couple weeks, you'll see them highlighted here.

First up is High Point's draft-only Ramstein Oktoberfest. The Butler brewery's oldest lager brand has developed a substantial following over the past decade and earned a top rating on BeerAdvocate. The 2010 version debuts this Saturday at the brewery's September open house (from 2 p.m.-4 p.m.)

Like all but one (Revelation Golden Lager) of High Point's 11 beers, its Oktoberfest is the product of decoction mashing, an Old World brewing method whose origins predate thermometers and its goal aims to maximize efficiency in the conversion of grain starches to sugars. But the process also creates malty flavors that are rich and memorable.

"It's the difference between sauté and quick blanch," says High Point founder Greg Zaccardi.

The brewing process, in which a portion of the grain is pulled aside, boiled it, then returned to rest of the mash, takes longer than the infusion-mash methods other Jersey brewers use to make great beers of their own. Decoction also costs more in crew time and utilities.

"The finished product is worth it. We hope people get it, and I think they do," Greg says.

As a business, High Point was born a wheat beer company, and the decoction process was more suited to producing those styles. "Our brewhouse was custom designed for wheat beers," Greg says.

Over time, the brewery shifted its emphasis from wheat beers to embrace other styles, including pilsners and Vienna lagers. The brewery's Oktoberfest was originally tailor-made for a now-closed German restaurant in Atlantic Highlands in Monmouth County.

The Ramstein märzen quickly outgrew those beginnings, and the 140 barrels brewed this season – with an early start in June instead of July like past years – reflect a 30-plus percent increase in production from last year.

"It's draft-only, and it sells out draft-only," Greg says. "The way our brewery is set up, packaging draft beer is better for everybody, for the brewers, for the brewery, for the beer drinkers, for the distributors, for the retailers. We don’t at this point have a need to bottle it. It’s a short season … Fresh beer from a keg is great for Oktoberfest."

www.beerstainedletter.com

An update on the site housekeeping:

There are now three ways to find us in cyberspace: www.beerstainedletter.com, www.thinkjerseydrinkjersey.com and of couse, the URL that started it all, www.beerstainedletter.blogspot.com.

There are more changes coming down the pike as BSL heads toward its fourth year on the Web. The use of the new dot-com addresses, as simple as it seems, is important. And simplicity really is the key.

Thinkjerseydrinkjersey has a certain ring to it, a catch-phrase flavor (and a mantra if you ask us); beerstainedletter has always been the name of the blog, a word play upon tear-stained letter.

But blogspot has always seemed rife with incoherence, a foreign sound (ever try to tell someone over the phone that your Web address isn't simply www-dot-name-dotcom but rather www-dot-name-dot-blogspot-dotcom?). The change was way overdue.

But now done.

Cheers.

Nice cans

An event note: Brewerania collectors have encamped at the Valley Forge Convention Center in King of Prussia, Pa., to show off their latest discoveries and swap stories and mementos regarding all things beer.

Members of the Brewery Collectibles Club of America have been at it since Thursday, bringing with them about 1 million beer cans, plus coasters, openers and lighted signs.

You can join their gathering this Saturday for the general trade session, from 10 a.m. to 3 p.m. (There may be a small admission charge; the convention center is located on North Gulph Road, and of course there will be beer to drink.)

The BCCA has been holding these canventions going on nearly 40 years now – the first was held in St. Louis back in 1971 when a couple hundred members gathered at a Holiday Inn and showed off their wares from their cars.

This year's soiree coincides with the 75th anniversary of canned beer, which many a can collector knows hails from Newark and the Gottfried Krueger Brewing Company. The BCCA has held a series of commemorations for its canonized container that culminate at this year's canvention.

Dot com'n soon

In the coming days, Beer-Stained Letter will be accessible as www.beerstainedletter.com.

Why the change? It just makes sense.

In the world of Worldwide Web indexing and getting noticed, dot-com does better than blogspot at marking the spot. After the change is made, you'll still be able to find the blog at www.beerstainedletter.blogspot.com.

To be sure, this is just some housekeeping. But down the road look for some more changes at how Beer-Stained Letter provides original, premium – written and video – content about New Jersey's craft brewing industry.

Cheers.

'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