Pa. beer rules force Iron Hill to retool Mug Club

A popular brewpub customer rewards program is being forced to end, thanks to beer industry regulators in the Keystone State.

The 11,000 members of Iron Hill's Mug Club got an email on Monday informing them that decisions by alcoholic beverage regulators meant the brewery-restaurant chain would have to end the 10-year-old customer loyalty program at its nine locations.

At issue, among other things, is the awarding of points to club members upon purchases of beer.

That practice is being stopped immediately for beer, but will continue for food. Under the program, those points would accrue, and credits (i.e. 25 bucks off your next Iron Hill tab) were awarded at certain thresholds.

Monday's email, signed by co-owner Kevin Finn, says the mug club is being revised to meet regulators' concerns. Iron Hill is exploring its options and expects to offer a replacement program this fall.

"Whether we agree with these decisions or not, or why after 10 years the Mug Club has become an issue, is not up to us to decide," Kevin says in the email. "What is important is finding a solution quickly and doing what’s best for our most loyal customers. We want to comply with all the laws and regulations in the states we operate, but our primary focus is providing guests handcrafted beer, creative food and attentive service."

Kevin also outlined other key changes being put in place while Iron Hill recasts the program:

    •    We will no longer accept new members during this transition.
    •    Current members due for renewal will have their memberships extended until the new club is active.
    •    Current members will receive 500 points immediately. This is our gift for past loyalty and patience during this transition.
    •    Members can continue to drink from the Mug Club mug, but must pay the same price as non-club members, an additional 50 cents over the current price of a pint. The free 8 ounces of beer that Mug Club members received was another major issue for the regulators.
Customers who signed up for the club paid a fee and were given a dated souvenir 24-ounce ceramic mug to take home and were served their beer orders in the same types of mugs during visits to Iron Hill.

Thankfully, it wasn't a heavy hand from New Jersey regulators that forced the changes. But since Pennsylvania's Liquor Control Board threw the cold water on the party, Iron Hill is checking rules for the Garden State and Delaware, the state where it was founded and has its home office.

"Officially, it is currently the PA LCB, where we received a letter," co-owner Mark Edelson says by email, responding to some questions about the club changes. "Since all states have liquor laws that prohibit some types of 'enticements,' we are verifying what the other states say. But regardless, 70 percent of our Mug Club is in Pennsylvania, and the logistics of running different deals in different states would lead to a nightmare trying to keep things straight, especially as it pertains to awarding points and checking points online."

Mark continues: "Specifically in Pennsylvania, the regs clearly state that you cannot serve a larger portion of beer without a proportional increase in price. Thus, filling the mug at the pint price is specifically illegal.

"Awarding redeemable points for the purchase of alcohol is considered an 'enticement' to purchase alcohol and is therefore illegal. Although redemption of an earned award on alcohol is NOT illegal.

"Charging a fee for joining the club in which you can get discounts not afforded the general public is also considered and "enticement" and is therefore illegal."

Iron Hill has six locations in Pennsylvania, two in Delaware and one here in New Jersey, in Maple Shade. A 10th location is projected to open in Voorhees in Camden County around the end of this year or the start of 2013.

Between a laugh and a beer

A funny thing happened along the way to this Saturday's Brew Ha Ha beer festival and comedy show at Six Flags Great Adventure: What it takes for a brewfest to grab your attention changed.

Or at least, is continuing to change. Evolving.

Stay tuned to see if it's a trend with legs. But in a year that has seen the calendar undeniably crowded with more festivals (some well attended, others not so), it does seem like some of the winds steering consumer traits are actually shifting.

Simply having a lineup of brews and breweries for a given Saturday (backed up with some basic musical entertainment and stadium food), then doing some carnival-barking online, in print and on radio to call the masses, in the long run, isn't going to cut it. Competition is tight and growing tighter for the 45 or 50 bucks that festival-goers pony up for three-plus hours of unlimited sampling.

You gotta offer folks who are the craft-beer drinking public more for their money (especially in a sluggish economy), whether it's a distinct theme (Iron Hill's annual Belgium Comes to West Chester springs to mind) or some attractions to complement the beer.

Which is what's going on with the Brew Ha Ha event at Great Adventure: roller coasters, a food buffet, a comedy show, and of course, beers (50) from top names (30, including Stone ) in craft brewing. It's a mix of recreational fun and summertime foods that embrace beer.

And speaking of the beer, the lineup includes Garden State breweries whose labels are synonymous with the first wave of Jersey craft beer (as in the mid-1990s, i.e. Flying Fish), and the newest members of the brewed-in-Jersey family (Carton, Kane and Tuckahoe).

Festival-goers will get to vote on their favorite Jersey-made beer. Also, the comedy show bill features Floyd Vivino, aka Uncle Floyd, a guy who's no stranger to Jersey craft beer – Uncle Floyd once paid a visit to High Point Brewing in Butler.

Organized by TotalBru's/beerheads.com's, Brew Ha Ha is the company's biggest festival yet to be held in New Jersey and the third, large-scale event it has staged in the region this year.

Chris DePeppe, the guy behind TotalBru, is a seasoned hand when it comes to putting on festivals. He co-promotes the annual Philly Craft Beer Fest with Starfish Junction, and two years ago Chris launched Beer on the Pier in Belmar.

Last March, he helped stage the Beers on the Boards food-and-brew event at Martell's Tiki Bar in Point Pleasant Beach, a festival distinguished by featuring foods prepared with some of the beers served. Aside from the beer, of course, you can take that as one of the dividing lines between an average festival and one worth your time.

"As we move forward, events have to have something else," Chris says. "Having a cool venue is huge, (plus) good music and a buffet."

Chris' latter comment refers to the Brew Ha Ha event. But, as more promoters pack festivals aimed at the masses onto the calendar, it's a point that applies across the board.

Beer festivals have been around for decades. The Great American Beer Festival in Denver was started 30 years ago. (The Great British Beer Festival is even older.) The Garden State Craft Brewers Guild has been holding its annual festival for 16 years now; the Atlantic City beer fest, perhaps the state's largest, has been around for seven. Furthermore, upscale food and beer pairings have been around a while, too (think SAVOR in Washington, D.C., for one.)

In the mid-Atlantic region, back in the 1990s, festivals helped craft brewers, whose industry was new to the region, reach beer drinkers and helped build brands. Fests were much more novel then vs. now, and the formula of a lot of beers (U.S. craft and import), plus live music and food (usually concession fare of some sort) appealed to a wide cross-section of palates.

With the GABF being the big exception, that's not so much the case anymore.

Craft beer is popular on its own these days, and craft brewing, as an industry, has outgrown the need to use festivals for branding. Brewers years ago became choosier about which festivals to attend and send staff (who are on the clock, by the way).

And broadly speaking, these days, festivals (again, the GABF being an exception) are more attractive to newcomers than seasoned beer drinkers. Again, that's a generality, not a hard rule. But Chris says the fresh faces interested in craft beer are indeed the market. But there is, he notes, a need for some balance, to also appeal to seasoned veterans.

"New consumers is what industry needs, but what drives things is beer ambassadors," Chris says, referring to to those veterans, people who know and talk about good and interesting beers and steer others to it.

And that makes having some themes or attractions (beyond just music, multiple bands, by the way) to complement the beer lineup more important these days.

Next stop, governor's desk

Vote tally, 39-0

Greater freedoms for New Jersey craft brewers, and the subsequent benefits for their followers – beer drinkers, now come down to a tough-talking, über Springsteen fan who has in the past shown support for homebrewing and craft beer.

Just exactly how Governor Chris Christie will act on the legislation handed off to him on Monday remains, of course, to be seen.

But the Garden State Craft Brewers Association, the industry organization that backed the bills, is optimistic that the governor will sign the bill, endorsing changes to the rules that brewers say have hemmed them in since 1995, the headwaters of the beer renaissance that has seen New Jersey brewery ranks since swell to two dozen.

Still, as the legislation enters this final phase, the opposition that has trailed it upon its introduction earlier this year isn't going away. The powerful New Jersey Restaurant Association is likely to seek the governor's ear and appeal to him to veto the bill, renewing its complaints that the proposed regulatory changes fly in the face of the three-tier system governing alcoholic beverages.

The association contends the changes would diminish the value – think six and seven figures – of licenses that bars and restaurants hold to serve beer, wine and liquor.

So, supporters of craft beers brewed in the Garden State will just have to stay tuned. But there are some significant things to consider.

Coming on the heels of Saturday's 16th annual guild beer festival aboard the USS New Jersey, Monday's Senate action sent the craft brewing bill to Governor Christie with a 39-0 vote; last Thursday (June 21), the Assembly gave its stamp of approval, 64-13.

Those wide vote margins should play to the guild's favor with the governor's office. And the economics of giving the state's craft brewers a freer hand command attention as well.

For instance, as with the opening of its Maple Shade location three years ago, Iron Hill brewpub projects it will create 100 jobs when it opens its second New Jersey pub in Voorhees around the end of this year. (Iron Hill has nine locations spread among Delaware, New Jersey and Pennsylvania.)

Under the current craft brewing regulations, brewpubs are cut off after two establishments (and thus Voorhees would theoretically cap the number of jobs Iron Hill could create in the state). But the measure (A1277/S641) passed last week and Monday would allow brewpubs to operate up to 10 establishments and sell their beers through distributors.

Outside Senate chamber, after the vote

(The legislation also would allow production breweries to retail beer to tour patrons for consumption on and off-site. Right now, the most you can buy upon touring a New Jersey craft brewery is two six packs or two growlers. If the governor signs the bill, that would retail limit would become a 15-gallon keg.)

Additionally, and this is perhaps a reflection of the continued vibrant national market for craft beer, some of the Garden State's newest breweries, specifically ones launched last (Cape May Brewing, Carton and Kane Brewing), have added assistant brewers, sales staff or tasting room employees on their payrolls, all before crossing the threshold of being in business a full year.

Meanwhile, Flying Fish Brewing is on the verge of launching its new $7 million automated brewery in its new home of Somerdale. (Last October, Lieutenant Governor Kim Guadagno paid a visit to Flying Fish.)

So with that those circumstances as a backdrop, all eyes turn to the governor, an outgoing guy known for batting down critics, tough talk at town hall forums he's held across the state, and his preference for taking in a Bruce Springsteen concert over prepping for a campaign debate.

To his credit, the governor signed legislation in January to dump a 20-year-old state regulation that obligated homebrewers to obtain a permit to make beer in their backyards and garages. In May 2011, he also signed a proclamation declaring the second week of that month Craft Beer Week in New Jersey, to coincide with a national observance.

Again, stay tuned. A new era of craft brewing in the Garden State is closer to reality than it has ever been.

Guild bill passes Assembly, 64-13

Tote board from Assembly vote

With a favorable Assembly vote in their pockets, New Jersey's craft brewers are now turning their attention to a Monday state Senate session and scheduled vote on companion legislation that would give those brewers more leeway in marketing their ales and lagers to Garden State beer enthusiasts.

Lawmakers in the Assembly on Thursday voted 64-13, with one abstention, to pass legislation to modernize New Jersey's craft brewing regulations, a long-sought change to the rules under which the state's combined two dozen production breweries and brewpubs do business.

Members of the Garden State Craft Brewers Guild, which developed the legislation with the help of lobbyists from the Kaufman Zita Group, are optimistic for passage in the upper chamber. (As many Jersey beer drinkers know, the guild is umbrella group that represents most, but not all, of the state's craft breweries.)

The Senate version of the bill has key bipartisan sponsorship from Republican Sen. Tom Kean Jr. of Union County (home to Trap Rock brewpub and Climax Brewing) and Democrat Sen. Donald Norcross of Camden County (home to Flying Fish Brewing and the planned Iron Hill Voorhees location). If passed by the Senate, the legislation would go to Governor Chris Christie for his consideration.

However, even with the tailwind that the legislation is now enjoying, the guild is renewing an action alert, again asking beer enthusiasts across the state to call or email their senators and urge them to vote yes on the bill. (The guild has posted a link to the state League of Municipalities so beer drinkers to find their legislators.) The state's restaurant association has been a staunch opponent to changing the brewery rules, complaining the proposed rewrite would erode the three-tier system under which alcoholic beverages are produced and sold.

Heading into Thursday's session, the guild had expected votes in both the Senate and Assembly. However, the legislation did not make it onto the Senate's list of bills to be considered for a vote.

And, when the bill came up for a vote in the Assembly, it wasn't without some surprises: Assemblyman Anthony M. Bucco, an early sponsor of the bill, was among a bloc of Republicans voting no that also included Assemblymen Alex DeCroce and Jay Webber, whose legislative district includes Butler, the host town of High Point Brewing.

(If you've ever been to a Ramstein beer open house, then you know that High Point Brewing enjoys a lot of support from local elected officials, including some who have swung the mallet during the ceremonial oak barrel tappings.)

Bucco and DeCroce were joined in dissent by  Republicans from the Shore area: Monmouth County Assembly members Sean Kean, David Rible, Amy Handlin, Caroline Casagrande, and Mary Pat Angelini; and Ocean County Assembly members Brian Rumpf and Diane Gove.

In fact, Republicans accounted for all of Thursday's 13 no votes and the lone abstention, from Assemblyman Ronald Dancer. (Despite opposition from that particular group of Republicans, the bill did pass the Assembly with bipartisan backing.)

And like DeCroce, Assemblywomen Angelini and Casagrande voted against craft breweries in their districts: Carton Brewing (Atlantic Highlands) and Kane Brewing (Ocean Township) and Basil T's in Red Bank; while Assemblywoman Donna Simon's dissent was a vote against newly licensed Flounder Brewing in Hillsborough.

Metaphorically speaking, the Assembly's vote, and recent affirmative Senate committee votes on the bill, represent a tectonic shift in Trenton's attitudes toward craft brewing, a small, but now-growing, industry the Legislature had largely ignored and even rebuffed when it came to the industry's prior pleas for a rule rewrite that would make the Garden State competitive with its neighbors Delaware, New York and Pennsylvania.

Until lately, the most craft brewing ever got from Trenton, after lawmakers authorized small-batch brewing back in the mid-1990s, was a millstone of a rule hung around the industry's neck: a regulatory change a few years ago that made it difficult for production brewers to cut loose distributors they had entered into agreements with.

But as craft beer and the craft brewing industry raised its profile nationally over the past few years, the legislative climate in New Jersey has grew more favorable. The measure just approved by the Assembly, and to be taken up by the Senate on Monday, would allow brewpub owners to operate up to 10 establishments and to sell their beers through wholesalers – essentially enabling beer drinkers to get those brews at places other than the pubs.

Right now, the only place you can get an Avenel Amber is at J.J. Bitting in Woodbridge; the same thing goes for Ironbound Ale (Iron Hill in Maple Shade) and Leatherneck Stout (Tun Tavern in Atlantic City). As many beer drinkers know, if you enjoy those brews, you must go to those brewpubs to get them.

For production brewers, meanwhile, the legislation would allow retail beer sales to tour patrons for consumption on and off premise, a change that means going beyond the sip-size samples and two-six pack/two growler limit that have been the customary practice in the Garden State for practically all of the 17 years that craft brewing has been going in New Jersey. (For instance, the legislation would allow people to buy a keg – 15.5 gallons – from the brewery.)

The legislation's sponsor, Assemblyman Craig J. Coughlin, a Middlesex County Democrat, sized up the proposed regulatory changes as some key help to small businesses, and as a way to bring New Jersey in line with the national craft beer trend – a $7 billion industry that finds craft beers enjoying unprecedented popularity. (For whatever it's worth, Middlesex County is home to three brewpubs – Harvest Moon in New Brunswick, J.J. Bitting, and Uno Chicago Grill in Metuchen.)

"Like much of the rest of the country, New Jersey is experiencing a craft beer brewing renaissance," Assemblyman Coughlin says. "The appeal of these regional beers is making microbreweries and brewpubs tourist destinations. To help these small businesses capitalize on their newfound popularity, we need to update the state's antiquated laws regarding microbrewing."

Said co-sponsor Patrick J. Diegnan, another Middlesex County Democrat: "By making these changes to our brewing laws, we can help better promote New Jersey's existing breweries and attract new brewers looking to make their mark on the world of craft beer. This is good for economic development, job creation and our state's tourist industry."

Guild legislation gets 2 more OKs in Trenton

Legislation that would give New Jersey craft brewers a freer hand when doing business on Monday cleared two more committees, passing the state Senate Budget and Appropriations Committee without comment, but again encountering opposition from the state's restaurant association before a corresponding Assembly panel.

Though less vociferously than during Senate and Assembly committee hearings held in March and earlier this month, the restaurant association cited the three-tier system in renewing its complaints against the legislation.

The three-tier system was put in place after the repeal of Prohibition, requiring producers to sell through wholesalers, who sell to retailers, who in turn sell to consumers. The system was set up to prevent abuses and ensure competition, but critics say it has had a countereffect in the era of craft brewing, with small producers being denied access to markets.

(Washington State is the only state in the country where producers can sell directly to retailers. The three-tier system also gets blamed by critics for adding to the cost of beverages bought by consumers.)

The bills (S642 and A1277) put forth by the Garden State Craft Brewers Guild, the umbrella organization that represents most of New Jersey's small-batch brewers, would allow brewpubs to own up to 10 establishments (the current limit is two) and sell beer through wholesalers, and allow production breweries to sell beer to tour patrons for on- and off-site consumption.

The restaurant association maintains the legislation turns production breweries into bars and package goods stores. The organization has complained that allowing brewpubs to exceed two establishments is also an erosion of the tier system.

Nonetheless, the bills were advanced by both appropriations committees with a dozen votes from each panel, clearing the way for votes by the full Assembly and Senate. When those votes could take place isn't immediately known.

Monday's vote was largely housekeeping on the part of the Legislature since the bills would also raise the ceiling for the amount of beer that brewpubs and production brewers can make, and that has a bearing on the state budgeting process and potential revenues (i.e. fees and taxes).


The vote was also the second time this month that the legislation got a thumbs-up from lawmakers. Ten days ago, members of the Assembly's Law and Public Safety panel gave the bill the green light. A similar committee in the Senate approved the bill in March.

A talk with Iron Hill's Mark Edelson

"Where we'd like to be long term," says Mark Eldeson, one of the founders of Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant, "is opening one a year for the next couple of years. We'd like to double our size in 10 years. That's what it's going to take."

The subject is Iron Hill's plans for another restaurant/brewery, it's 10th, this time in Voorhees, 10 miles south of the brewpub company's first New Jersey location in Maple Shade.

It's a Monday night in early June, and Mark's ensconced at the corner of the bar. A pair crutches propped up behind him lead your eyes to the left foot he injured during a recent soccer-coaching mishap. A healthy-size crowd swarms the bar area around him, turning out for the brewpub's release of Spéciale Belge, a smoky amber ale brewed in Belgium last March by Brasserie DuPont's Olivier Dedeycker, with Iron Hill's Maple Shade brewer, Chris LaPierre, and Marlton homebrewer Vince Masciandaro, lending a hand to the makers of the storied Saison DuPont for the one-off Belge brew.

The beer christened Philly Beer Week 2012, on the preceding Friday, at the 10-day event's Opening Tap ceremonies. But having it on tap at Chris' home base still makes for a marquee night among local beer enthusiasts.

After sampling a pint of Spéciale Belge at the bar and greeting some well-wishers, Mark retreats to a quieter back dining area to talk about that 10th brewery-restaurant, to open toward the end of this year (or early 2013) in the Voorhees Town Center, the former Echelon Mall partially razed and reborn as a cityscape – a wide thoroughfare lined with trees, street lamps and retail shops topped with townhouses.

Mark and partners Kevin Finn and Kevin Davies, all three New Jersey guys, founded Iron Hill in Delaware the mid-1990s. The three have turned the brand into a vibrant tri-state enterprise, a standout name in the beer worlds of Delaware, southeastern Pennsylvania and southern New Jersey.

Announced in late May, the Voorhees location will be the third to open since Maple Shade started pouring beer in 2009. Iron Hill's ninth location opened in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia back in January. (Some folks will remember the continued efforts by Iron Hill open in New Jersey and that the Maple Shade location came about when prospects dimmed for a site in Barrington in Camden County.)

Followers of Iron Hill, Mark says, will find the Voorhees brewpub familiar: the signature murals by artist Jeff Schaller; the menu of appetizers, bar pies, sandwiches and dinners; the flight of house beers – pale ale, porter, and Vienna lager – backed up with Belgian ales and other creative and seasonal brews that have earned the company national recognition.

On those topics and more, Mark fielded a half-hour's worth of questions, offering some insight to what drives Iron Hill and how the über-hot craft beer market these days poses some special challenges for brewpubs.

Beer-Stained Letter: Talk a little bit about how you arrived at Voorhees for your 10th location.
Mark Edelson: Most of the stuff we've looked at in New Jersey has been South Jersey, obviously in that Philadelphia sphere. We dabbled in Monmouth County and northern counties ... I think we want to get a foothold in one area of New Jersey first, so South Jersey is (pauses) ... We have such name recognition within the Philadelphia area. Before we opened here in Maple Shade, we had a ton of name recognition, which I think we wouldn't have had in northern New Jersey. We want to continue to bolster that ...

We actually had the Barrington deal going before we even set foot in Maple Shade. That just slogged on forever, and this deal came up. We're always looking for stuff and just waiting for deals to break loose that make sense. We were looking at the Voorhees deal for a while – same thing it started to break loose and made sense.

BSL: What were some of the considerations for it and the proximity to Maple Shade?
ME: We look at it in terms of Is it too close to existing locations? We do a lot of ZIP code survey, so we pretty much know statistically where our customers are coming from. Although New Jersey has been fantastic for us, the radius of this location, Maple Shade, is very tight. Voorhees being not that far away, we don't think we're going to rob any of the business from Maple Shade.

When we first were considering South Jersey, all the naysayers were talking about how, both South Jersey and this particular site (Maple Shade), being off the (main track) ... It wasn't on (Route) 73; it was in flex space ... It was Who would ever find this? and How could we do well here? because there was a restaurant that did so-so here for a couple of years.

And you know what, we stuck with the numbers and the demographics, and they came right through for us. People didn't blink at finding us here. I think we'll find a similar experience in Voorhees as well.

BSL: The building you're going into in Voorhees, a little background about that.
ME: It used to be called the Echelon Mall ... It's now called the Voorhees Town Center. It was completely renovated. They renovated the old Echelon Mall. They razed about half of it, and built was its now called kind of a town center concept, where you have kind of a main street of retail. This one is mixed use, so there's condos ...  It's nice; it's new space. The demographics there are terrific. We've got Haddonfield, Voorhees itself ... We are right off the PATCO line. It makes it a lot easier for people to come in and out of Philadelphia to visit us, at least Center City people, which could be great.

BSL: With craft beer, the market continues to be really hot. Which model, brewpub or production brewery, appears to be more to the forefront of the growth trend?
ME: We're in the restaurant business, and we really wax and wane with how restaurants are doing. Of course, having craft beer as something other restaurants can't deliver right on site, that's our niche; that's the differentiator for us, having an onsite brewery and all the great beers we have.

Other great restaurants near us won't necessarily have a great restaurant and great brewery in it as well. Craft (beer) doing well helps us. But I can't say we track exactly with craft beer, we track more with the restaurant industry. But having craft doing so well right now is really helping us on the brewery side. 

BSL: In terms of bringing a brewery online, to give people a general idea of what it costs, what are we talking about in terms of expense?
ME: These days it takes us – with all the costs involved – $350,000-$400,000 to install, to get it all in there, and then the cost of operating. Some of the fights that we have politically here in New Jersey, that brewpubs have an edge over everybody because they make their beer so cheaply. That's such a myth. Anybody that's in the business will tell you, you plunk down 400 grand, that depreciation is rather expensive, and then when you really look at the costs, if you're really paying a (brewer) well and using the right ingredients and stuff like that, and then at the end of the day, it's costing you as much as it would to bring it in in keg, the craft beer.

Our belief is, it's not a cost issue, again it's a component that we can deliver. It's great beer that we control. It's a part of what we do, the onsite, the fresh, all of that, because we sell way more beer than a standard restaurant will sell; 22 to 25 percent of our sales are beer. We do 75 percent food, so there's no doubt we sell a lot of food. We're like most restaurants, but the beer component of other restaurants is much smaller, at least half, and then you've got liquor and wine in there as well. And we sell a fair amount of liquor and wine.

BSL: So then what's Iron Hill known more for, the beer or the food?
ME: Depends on who you ask. There are customers who join our mug club who never drink beer. Our mug club is our loyalty club; the moniker mug club is because we give out a mug. It's really a loyalty club ... I would say we've been wildly successful with our beer, especially in national awards, and whatnot. I think you can make the case that in a lot of circles, certainly, we're very famous for our beer. But certainly with our customers who live close by, it's the food. They love the beer, but they're not going to go out and drink beer every night. But they are going to go out and eat every night. Our business is driven by the kitchen. There's no doubt about it, and the beer thrives because of a thriving kitchen. I don't know that if we didn't have a great kitchen that the beer would drag the kitchen along.

I think that's where you run into issues in the industry that people aren't focused enough on the food. People in the beer business shouldn't get into the restaurant business. You need to be focused on both aspects. And people in the restaurant business shouldn't get into the beer business ... They think it's this moneymaker, and they lose heart and they pay a guy bare minimum and don't give him the money to order the ingredients he wants. And then you're not making great beer, you know. You're making adequate beer ... At the end of the day, people are going to come to us because we're a really good restaurant, and then they're going to realize how good the beer is, and they're going to drink a lot of the beer.

BSL: In the three years the Maple Shade location has been open, there have been some really unique beers to come out of here, and they've been driven by the customer base. It's safe to say you'll be looking for the same out of Voorhees?
ME: It's interesting, because when the brewer goes in, he's got to weigh what he likes personally vs. what the customers like, or what he thinks the customers want. That's always a debate we have. There's always a personal bias – even I have a personal bias. The advantage of being in a brewpub situation is that your customers, you can look 'em right in the eye. They'll tell you want they want.

Chris LaPierre with Vince Masciandaro

Right now, everyone wants hoppy beers. Everybody does, no matter where you go; that's all they want to hear is about hoppy beers. I swear, if you put IPA behind half our brands, they'd double the sales, without blinking. That's just how crazy it is. And the new varieties of hops coming out, it's an interesting dynamic. And admittedly, we've been slow to that punch. We want to brew a great variety of beers, and we want to be balanced with that. We have a hard time keeping up with keeping so many hoppy beers on tap. You just don't want to come in and have six hoppy beers on ... we want to introduce people to our whole palette of flavors. So that's what the brewer has to balance.

BSL: Being an Iron Hill location, people can expect the flagship beers like Ironbound Ale, Pig Iron Porter ...
ME: Sure ...
BSL: ... and that component of Belgian styles.
ME: And there's five of those, and tonight we've got 17 beers on tap. Generally, Chris carries 14 to 15 beers on tap. For a brewpub, that's difficult ... We used to be the eight-beer brewpub. We realized that that is not the future, that with all the beer bars popping up that can put 30 beers on that are outstanding and world-class by picking up the phone and ordering it, then we better do something new. We made some changes in our philosophies and our approach to it and some equipment changes that allow the brewer to sustain a bigger variety ... We've gotten some comments from some customers here in New Jersey that they love, as a brewpub, how many beers we have on tap, because of the variety they walked in to ...

BSL: So reading that scenario correctly ...
ME: It's hard for us to compete. They (beer bars) could kick our ass.
BSL:  So breweries at the pub level should all be taking notice, should be thinking along that line?
ME: Absolutely. You walk into a brewpub and there's six beers on, people are going to walk out these days. Gordon Biersch, their big thing is five great German beers. And they're digging their heels in on that. I gotta tell you, I disagree with that. That is not what people want. They respect the quality of those beers, but people (say) I've had this one. It's great beer and all, but give me something more. They've got one new seasonal; the brewer's allowed one seasonal. We're the opposite – we've got five and the brewer is allowed seven or nine more. But you know, it drives (our brewers') energy and creative juices, too.

Guild bill clears NJ Assembly panel

Iron Hill's Mark (on crutches) after hearing

Garden State craft brewers won another round in Trenton when a bill to modernize the rules under which they operate cleared a second key legislative panel on Thursday.

The Assembly Law and Public Safety Committee advanced the bill, A-1277, by an 8-2 vote, handing the state's craft brewing industry the prospect of the measure landing on Gov. Chris Christie's desk before the end of year, or possibly even before the Legislature takes a summer break at the start of next month.

A Senate version of the measure cleared a corresponding committee in that chamber in March by a unanimous vote.

Despite that, it's not a straight shot toward getting the bill posted for votes by the full Senate and Assembly. The legislation must now go through an appropriations committee (a circumstance tied to the fact the bill would increase production ceilings for craft brewers). However, based on the current momentum – and despite dissent by two lawmakers – the bill is unlikely to get held up, supporters say.

The two Assembly committee members who voted against the bill on Thursday, Republicans Sean Kean and David Rible of Monmouth County predicated their reservations on fears that new freedoms the bill would grant brewers would come at the expense of taverns and restaurants with bars. (Incidentally, Monmouth County is home to three craft breweries, though not in the Kean and Rible's 30th district. But East Coast Beer is, and the folks behind the Beach Haus brand are planning a brewery in New Jersey. Still, there is this: Distributor Ritchie & Page, which acquired Bud purveyor Crown Beer a while back, operates out of the 30th district.)

The lawmakers' dissent drew from arguments laid out to the committee by lobbyists for the tavern and restaurant groups, who complained the bill would undercut the value of bar owners' licenses at a time when some owners are struggling in the economic downturn. Additionally, the lobbyists said, the bill attempts to side-step long-established rules and practices for the state's alcoholic beverage industry.

That aside, Thursday's committee action indeed represents sea change for craft brewing in New Jersey.

Since the mid-1990s, when craft brewing was first sanctioned by the Legislature, the state's small-batch brewers have been hemmed in by regulations that left them at a disadvantage compared with brewers in neighboring states.

That's a reason Iron Hill brewpub, founded by a trio of New Jerseyans, got its start in Delaware and likely why Triumph Brewing in Princeton, an early pioneer of craft brewing in the Garden State, opted to expand in Pennsylvania rather than in New Jersey.

Other long-time craft brewers in the state could be counted on to utter the refrain that if they had known New Jersey would prove to be so difficult for doing business, they would have looked across the Delaware River to start their breweries.

Over the years, attempts to make the rules more business-friendly often had trouble finding a sympathetic ear in Trenton.

But this time, efforts to level the playing field – spearheaded and shaped by the Garden State Craft Brewers Guild, the trade group that represents most but not all of the state's microbrewers and brewpubs – have gained traction as craft brewing's profile and fortunes have risen across the country. (Nationally, craft brewing is a $7 billion a year industry.)

Essentially the legislation would put New Jersey on par with Delaware and Pennsylvania.

Production brewers would be allowed to retail kegs (half barrels, quarters and sixtels) directly to the public and serve more than just small samples during tours, for which the breweries could charge. Currently, production brewers are limited to selling only two six-packs or two growlers to tour guests and often provide the beer samples for free. However, under the bill – and unlike in Pennsylvania – production breweries would not be allowed to serve food, a concession made for the sake of bars and restaurants.

For brewpubs, the bill would boost the number of locations that can be held by a single owner from two to 10, and allow brewpubs to distribute their beer through wholesalers. That means beer drinkers would be able to get their favorite Gaslight or Trap Rock beers at a packaged goods stores, instead of exclusively at those brewpubs, as is the case now.

Until last month, New Jersey only had one brewpub owner that ever maxed out the licensing, Basil T's in Red Bank, which owned a second location in Toms River before spinning it off several years ago. (The Toms River location kept the Basil's name until changing it to Artisan's a couple years ago.)

In May, Iron Hill brewpub, which owns a location in Maple Shade in Burlington County, announced it had signed a lease for a second store in Voorhees in Camden County, with a projected opening around the end of the year.

Before the Assembly committee, Mark Edelson, one of Iron Hill's founders, pointed out that unless the law is changed, the Voorhees location means Iron Hill, which owns eight other locations spread among Delaware and Pennsylvania, would be legally finished investing in New Jersey.

Assembly panel to hear guild measure*

The call list

Legislation put forth by the Garden State Craft Brewers Guild that the organization says would level the playing field under which New Jersey's small-batch breweries operate continues to wend its way through Trenton.

And as summer nears, the prospects for Jersey-brewed craft beer are growing sunnier: Some of the opposition to the legislation has softened or gone away.

Despite that, the path isn't completely clear for New Jersey's craft brewers.

State lawmakers on Thursday are expected to take up the measure, A-1277, that would enable the state's beer drinkers to buy their favorite brewpub beers at packaged goods stores and buy beer directly from production brewers for on- and off-premise consumption. The Assembly's Law and Public Safety Committee is scheduled to meet at 2 p.m.

Essentially, the legislation would put New Jersey on par with its neighbors Delaware, New York and Pennsylvania, where brewers enjoy a freer hand as far as dealing directly with consumers and operating brewpubs.

For example, those states allow brewpubs to also be production breweries and sell beer through distributors. Think Sly Fox and Victory Brewing in Pennsylvania and Dogfish Head in Delaware. Production breweries in those states can also sell their tour guests full pints of beer.

New Jersey, however, restricts brewpubs to selling their beer only at their locations, and limits brewpub owners to owning only two establishments. Production brewers are now limited to giving guests who tour their brewery small samples; the current rules also restrict production breweries to selling up to two six-packs or two growlers to the public. Additionally, brewpubs cannot hold production licenses, and production brewers cannot also own brewpubs.

That's why, backers of the legislation say, New Jersey's behind-the-times regulatory climate could continue to cost the state business, tax revenues and jobs: If the rules are friendlier across the Delaware and Hudson, why open up in the Garden State?

As it did successfully back in March, when the legislation was heard by a Senate committee, the Craft Brewers Guild issued an action alert, calling on craft beer enthusiasts to reach out to members of Assembly committee and urge them to vote in favor of the bill. (See the accompanying chart of the committee members. Note the email addresses are not clickable.)

“By Wednesday, June 6th, please contact members of the Assembly Law and Public Safety Committee to let them know you support the legislation as a craft beer consumer and ask them to vote yes on the bill,” the guild's action alert says.

If the committee approves the measure, it would advance to the full Assembly. (The Assembly speaker would decide if and when to post the measure for a full vote. The same thing applies in the Senate; the Senate president decides on when a full vote would be held.) If the measure is approved by both houses of the Legislature, it would then go to Gov. Chris Christie for his consideration.

Christie has shown some support for craft beer and the state's craft brewing industry, issuing a proclamation last year to acknowledge American Craft Beer Week, and this year signing a bill that freed homebrewers from an obligation to get a permit to make beer in their backyard.

The guild's action alert doesn't come without some concerns.

The Senate version of the measure cleared that chamber's Law and Public committee with a unanimous vote on March 5, but not before a parade of opponents – lobbyists for alcoholic beverage retailers, restaurants and the state's beer wholesaler organization – appealed to the panel to vote it down.

The wholesaler organization has since been appeased by some craft brewer give-backs (i.e. no self-distribution for brewpubs) and is no longer standing in the way. Meanwhile the industry group that represents alcoholic beverage retailers in New Jersey has also softened its opposition, forgoing objections it made in March.

However, the state's restaurant association continues to oppose the legislation, specifically allowing production breweries to sell pints to people who stop by for tours. It's quite likely the restaurant group will renew its opposition before the Assembly committee. But it's unlikely the guild is going to give up that part of the legislation.

During the March 5 Senate committee hearing, opponents complained the measure would further what they call an erosion of the three-tier system, the regulatory system for alcoholic beverages that inserts a layer – i.e. wholesalers – between brewers (distillers and vintners, too) and consumers as a way to prevent producers from directly marketing to consumers and controlling markets.

Guild members pointed out that the three-tier system was designed to prevent large producers from muscling out smaller ones, thereby lessening competition. 

In the decades since the 1933 demise of Prohibition – the three-tier system was born out of repeal of the 18th Amendment to the US Constitution – the wholesale network has come to favor the big producers (think of the mega brewers) at the expense of smaller ones.

In the era of craft brewing, guild members say, that circumstance has translated into unfairly choking off small producers' access to markets.

Additionally, the guild argued that exceptions to the three-tier system have been made throughout the country as a way to restore some kind of a balance in the marketplace.

*Edits made to update original post.

A touch of high tech in brewing

Flying Fish, New Jersey's largest craft brewer and one of its oldest, is on pace to say goodbye to its foundig location in CherryHill in a month's time.

Elsewhere, by that July 1 date's arrival, the folks at the state's smallest and one of its newest craft breweries, Flounder Brewing, expect to have some test brews under their belt.

One of the interesting things about these evens its the fact that at both breweries, computerized touchscreen displays will be used to control the process of making beer.

For several weeks now, the custom German-made BrauKon 50-barrel brewhouse and complement of 150-barrel fermenters (not to mention other tanks) have been in place at Flying Fish's new home in Somerdale.

It's an almost-there, just a little further moment.

Yet there are plenty more signs that Cherry Hill, where Flying Fish began making beer in 1996, is fading from the landscape and Somerdale is looming larger in the picture: installation of packaging equipment is getting a lot of attention these days at the new location; the solar panels that will help power the new Flying Fish brewery are also being installed; and several weeks ago, Flying Fish closed the door to brewery tours at the Cherry Hill site.

Also, the month of May saw Flying Fish put the new brewhouse through the paces with some test batches of Extra Pale Ale, Hopfish IPA and Farmhouse Summer Ale. (Folks at Flying Fish report the better efficiency between the new brewing set-up vs. the old is rather dramatic; that will translate into less grain used per batch, which of course will save money in raw materials.)

Setting that brewing process in motion – from grain into (and out of) the mash tun to regulating fermenter temperatures, for instance – is an illuminated touchscreen control panel tucked beneath brewhouse framework.

Featuring computer icons of all the components the brewing process – the grain silos, mash tun, lauter tun, kettle, fermenter tanks, etc. – the display panel is driven by software into which the recipes, parameters and procedures for Flying Fish's lineup of ales (and down the road, head brewer Casey Hughes says there will be lagers) have been programmed, shifting the task of creating beer from the sometimes physically laborious to the feather touch of tapping glass.

But wait it gets better.

The system can be operated remotely, too. Imagine sitting at your favorite bar with a pint of Exit 8 in front of you, logging in via an iPhone to check the temperature of beer in the fermenters or the status of other tanks.

And in case you get the impression that high tech takes the hands out of hand-crafted, then guess again. The human touch starts with formulating the recipes and continues with some taste bud and olfactory follow-up on the beers produced, to ensure what was brewed turned out the way it was intended.

The automated set-up that Flying Fish-Somerdale has graduated to puts the South Jersey brewery in league with the likes of Pennsylvania brewers Troegs, Sly Fox and Victory. It's also move toward ensuring the kind of consistency the beer-drinking public would expect.

But such automation isn't always the province of becoming a bigger brewery. In a world where technology can change faster than a bar's tap handle lineup during seasonal beer releases, touchscreen control panels are available to breweries of all sizes.

Just go 60 miles north of Somerdale to Hillsborough, where the budding Flounder Brewing has a touchscreen to operate its 1-barrel Blichmann set-up. (The brewery last week got the official blessing from town officials to occupy the building; state regulators gave the green light to Flounder's license back in early March. There are still some odds and ends to take care of, but the folks at Flounder expect to begin brewing some test batches in June.)

It was engineering mistake that led Flounder to include in its game plan a $9,000 touchscreen controller made by Brewmation, a Hopewell Junction, N.Y., company. The size of the brewery's natural gas line was found to be a quarter-inch too small, a BTU drop that meant either upgrading – and incurring a potentially lengthy delay – or switch to electric, which the brewery did.

Jeremy Lees, who owns the start-up with his two brothers, a brother-in-law and a cousin, says the mistake proved to be fortuitous. All of the Flounder principals will be leading the lives of brewery owners with the full-time jobs they had before getting into commercial brewing. Anything that will ensure consistency from batch to batch is a plus, Jeremy says, not to mention that down the road, they could add remote log-in capability to their set-up to control some of the beer-making process from those day jobs – or wherever – via a smart phone.

Closeup of Flounder touchscreen

Not unlike Flying Fish.

Brewmation has been making the touchscreen controller since 2010; the company has been making control panels for craft breweries for almost 10 years, with units installed at the New York enterprises of Rockaway Brewing and Good Nature Brewing, says Kevin Weaver, a longtime homebrewer and one of the electrical engineer minds behind Brewmation. (Kevin also has his own 7-barrel brewery in the works.)

On the hot side, you need an electric set-up to be wired into the Brewmation controller (it doesn't support natural gas rigs), but it's universal on the fermentation side. (The units cost $9,000 to $12,000.)

Even for small-size breweries, the steps in brewing "screamed out to be automated," Kevin says. "That's how the whole thing started."

A Belgian sour brew from Climax

Okily-dokily, there are some new brews coming out of Roselle Park ...

Wait, that's the wrong Flanders.

Not Ned.

The Flanders coming from Climax Brewing is a brown ale, a tart-but-malty 8% ABV offering that owner Dave Hoffmann is sending out the door in 22-ounce bomber bottles as a new label in its signature series of beers.

The Flanders brown comes on the heels of a Russian imperial stout (Tuxedo)
that hit taps and store shelves in the bomber-22s this spring and will make a return in the fall. Also coming is a rebranding this summer of Climax's hefeweizen, a beer the brewery has produced for practically all of its 16 years in business.

If you know Dave, and especially his beer preferences, then a sour beer may come as a pretty big shocker. His stock in trade has always been balanced beers that hail from more familiar European traditions – ESB, helles, nut brown ale, and an English IPA, to name a few.

But when you hear the name Dave gave the beer, Incompetent Scholar, you may not be surprised that Climax is widening its style reach.

Featuring a braying jackass on the label – created by Toms River illustrator/commercial artist Gregg Hinlicky, the guy who has turned out all of Climax Brewing's label art – the name is joke-riff on beer fetishists, those geeks who like to hump the leg of beer styles (especially the less conventional styles) and prattle on about them, waxing horrific about looks, aroma, Brussels lace, effervescence, and so forth.

But there's no satire to the beer itself (but there is some pride on Dave's part, following the logic that a good brewer can make any kind of beer).  Dosed with German Select hops, the beer's meant to be, and is, an inviting Belgian brew that intentionally understates the pucker factor (read: wild yeast or pedio-infects, no; acidulated malt, yes) and side-steps the use of candi sugar.

"It's got that nice malty taste going on; there's still some caramel malts. I didn't put candi sugar in it because I freakin' hate candi sugar," Dave says. "I don't want people getting hangovers from my beer. This one you won't get a hangover from ... the alcohol comes from the malt.

"It's slightly sour, slightly tart, but it's pleasant, nice and easy to drink," Dave says.

Speaking of the hefeweizen, Dave is honoring his longtime affiliation with Gregg Hinlicky by renaming the brew, Hysterical Hefe Weizen Ale, and giving it a label that features Gregg's visage in a self-portrait caricature.

Gregg's name may be unfamiliar to a lot of folks, but some of his work shouldn't be. He did the murals for Basil T's brewpub in Red Bank and some other shops in that Monmouth County bayshore town, plus Artisan's brewpub in Toms River (which used to be a second Basil's location). He was also among the select commercial artists to illustrate Joe Camel (a mural of Joe once graced Eighth Avenue and 42 Street in Manhattan).

A longtime craft beer enthusiast, Gregg has painted portraits of brewers, including Garrett Oliver of Brooklyn Brewery and the Trogner brothers (of Tröegs fame), not to mention Dave and several others.

And now Gregg's celebrated in a beer label.

Big Brew Trifecta: 3 Q&As with Beer People

EDITOR'S NOTE: In observance of Big Brew and National Homebrew Day, Beer-Stained Letter has a trio of Beer People/Beer Life Q&A features: Talks with longtime homebrew figures – Joe Bair and George Hummel of Home Sweet Homebrew in Philadelpia – and an interview (posted Thursday, May 3rd) with Matt Brophy, the brewmaster and chief operating officer of Flying Dog Brewery who, like a lot of pros, entered the business via homebrewing ... 

Joe Bair (left) with Ryan Hansen of PALE-ALES

Joe Bair has been a part of New Jersey's craft beer scene practically since its genesis.

When Triumph Brewing opened its doors on Nassau Street in Princeton as the state's second brewpub in 1995 (the Ship Inn up in Milford edged out Triumph for the lead), Ray Disch and Adam Rechnitz quickly had a new neighbor, someone who would encourage folks to not just drink better beer, but to make their own.

At the urging of his friend, Mark Burford – then owner of New York Homebrew, but better known now as the guy behind Blue Point Brewing on Long Island – Joe opened Princeton Homebrew, turning his back on his job at Princeton University doing administrative work in molecular biology and putting his life savings on the line.

Craft beer back then was just starting to get a foothold in the mid-Atlantic region, and the annual of observance of National Homebrew Day was but 7 years old. Fast-forward to now:  The American Homebrewers Association estimates there are 750,000 homebrewers in the US, and paid AHA membership has topped 30,000.

Come Saturday, homebrewers will again gather at locations all across the country for their annual simultaneous day of brewing – the Big Brew.

As for Joe, on Saturday you'll find him at his shop, now on Route 29 in Trenton, turning out Big Brew batches of wort for the homebrew club PALE ALES (Princeton and Local Environs Ale and Lager Enthusiast Society), whose members will gather at Suydam Farm, in nearby Somerset County.

Across the state, you'll find like-minded homebrewers celebrating: North Jersey Home Brew and Sussex County United Brewers and Alchemists in Sparta; Barley Legal Homebrewers in Maple Shade; and Cask & Kettle Homebrew with the guys from Final Gravity Podcast in Montville. That's just a short list, the ones registered with the AHA Big Brew website, but there are doubtless more.

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BSL: What was it like in early on, the business of encouraging people to make their own beer?
JB: I think about that all the time – how I sold then to how I sell now. Back then, I thought the whole process to selling homebrew (supplies) was to set up some really good, slick learning thing where you show people all the stuff you need and walk 'em through, and they buy a kit. That was a good formula in the beginning.

BSL: What attracts people to homebrewing? Is it different now vs. when you first opened?
JB: Everybody is forgetting that most of the reasons why people homebrewed back then was we had shit beer. It was horrible. It was embarrassing to say you came from America. Lowenbrau and Heineken or something like it were considered fantastic. Now, those are more swill. But back then, anything but American beer.

BSL: Homebrewers, especially beginning ones, are hell-bent on making their beers better as fast as they can. It's almost like a race to get to refinements and brew a great beer. With all the information available now, are people are getting to that finish line faster?

JB: If everybody stoppped brewing because they had a bad batch of beer, there'd be no beer. Everybody's had a bad batch of beer. Hey, get used to it, Join the club ... You have to get over all these things. Sooner or later, you get really good at it, and you meet other people who are just starting and they go through the whole thing.

BSL: Do you think nowadays people hit that point of embracing and actually enjoying all of the finer brewing details, like the science stuff vs. just basic procedures, faster than say folks did back in the 1990s, when the hobby was first getting some traction around here?

JB: Right now – and it's been this way since at least around 2000 – people, instead of looking at brewing as something that's laborious, everything that they look at is interesting: Do this because it's interesting, understand this because it's interesting, which is a lot better way of doing things – finding fascination, doing things the right way, understanding things.

Most of the people around here, when they started brewing, we started them off with adding their own grains, their own hops ... and they didn't even realize it. They're being kind of pushed along in a very gentle way to start paying attention to things like temperature, to start paying attention to putting your own hops into recipe formulation, things like that, that you would not get from just opening up an already-hopped can of something.

Sooner or later you're making your own recipes. You don't have to look at any other brewer's recipes. You can make your own. You can make your own equipment. Most of this stuff is just a lot of plumbing.

BSL: Talk about some of the brewing tricks, now vs. then.
JB: I remember dry-hopping was something that people would say Oh?!?!? That was like getting out there, putting an ounce of hops in your secondary was Wow, that's advanced brewing. But now, with dry-hopping, they're saying put it in five hours before bottling it, you'll get better results than putting it in two weeks.

BSL: Hops, all the new varieties, seem to be the bright shiny object that can quickly grab homebrewers' attention these days. There's way more available to today's homebrewer than before ... 
JB: When I opened my store, Pride of Ringwood at 7.8% was the highest alpha hop I sold ... Then they came along with Centennial ... all of a sudden there's another hop, like Hey what's this, Nugget? There's always something new that comes around.

BSL: With the Internet, people can shop anywhere. But isn't a local shop -– an actual store – a nexus? People in a store talk to one another, and that creates a buzz. That's as much an ingredient in beer as barley, no?
JB: I've never heard it put that way, but yeah. It helps people to have tangible personal relationships ... that they can come in and ask 'What did I do wrong?' or 'How do you go about doing this or that?' It's very hard to translate that to the mega Internet beer supplier customers. They say go to Homebrew Talk and learn from this. You're not getting directly to somebody who knows; you have to filter out the stuff. (In some cases) you have people who've brewed one or two batches of beer in their life giving instructions to other people, like you don't need to do secondaries, or cut the tube off on the bottom of your Corny keg ... There are so many things that are out there. It tends to amplify, the Internet, some of the things that are wrong.

BSL: Homebrewers have long fed the ranks of pro brewers. What do you make of the latest industry growth wave, those polished homebrewers who went commercial by stepping into the game at the very, very small scale, like a barrel or two?
JB: Back before prohibition, there was an outrageous amount of breweries in every single town. Everything works on a big sinusoidal curve. We start at one place, it appears we're moving forward, and we go small to large, large to small.

When I opened my business, they asked me to prognosticate the future (of brewing). I said that any town that's a town will have a brewery in it. When I said that back then, people were going like, What!?!? And now I would say any community that's a community will have its own brewery. And that's the way it looks like it's going, and I think that big sinusoidal wave is back.

The big, huge mega brewers ... for a long time people were saying they're a good American company. What's the Super Bowl without an Anheuser-Busch commercial? They're on the down slope; they're not on the up. They're not even an American company anymore. They pushed this whole thing – you want beer, you drink beer – and it was one style, pale lagers. It's changing. Microbrewers are getting more and more of a share; the homebrewers are getting more and more of a share. It's not that a whole bunch more beer is being brewed, it's that a whole bunch more smaller brewers are doing it .

BSL: What's the most exciting thing about homebrewing right now?
JB: I would say the homebrew clubs. When I started PALE ALES in 1995, there weren't that many homebrew clubs. Now there's a club being started it seems like every month.

BSL: Clubs nowadays appear better organized, more ambitious.
JB: It took awhile for our club. Some people wanted to do it for charity, others peple would say, Hey, I'm here drink beer, I'm not here to do charity. There were some people who said, Hey, we need more brewing. Everybody had their own little way the club was supposed to go.

Now there are competition clubs; there are clubs that just meet at the same place, clubs that go around to all the different breweries or different bars; there are clubs that have speakers (such as) distributors, water people, the basic ingredients of beer, bar owners ... There are so many different facets to the whole thing.

Big Brew Q&A – George Hummel

George and 200 recipes

Last year, Home Sweet Homebrew, the shop George Hummel owns in Philadelphia, notched a quarter century of business, having been launched in 1986.

U2's fire was starting to become forgettable around that time, taking on a rattle and hum. Jerry Garcia was about ready to take up pedal steel guitar again after a long break from it, and Anheuser-Busch was pushing the still-bland-to-this-day Bud Light with a terrier named Spuds McKenzie. Back then, trying to find a Samuel Adams Boston Lager on tap was like trying to find hops in Coors Light, while talking Sierra Nevada on the East Coast still pretty much referred to geography.

It would be almost 10 years before the Garden State would host any of the craft brewers that are familiar now, but good beer could be found at a sort of under the radar brewery in Vernon Valley. 

A lot of things have changed on the beer landscape on either side of the Delaware since then, just about all of it for the better (except that Bud and Coors Light), and the rise of homebrewing is one of them.

George has seen a lot of those trends beer and homebrewing, and over the years has taught a lot of people in southern New Jersey how to make beer. Then how to make it better.

He recently took some time to talk to contributing writer Evan Fritz, who's also an assistant brewer with Manayunk Brewing in the Philly 'burbs, about the craft of homebrewing, beers that hit the spot, turning a homebrew recipe into gold, and a very famous shop customer.    

EF: Tell me about the homebrewing scene when you got involved with it.
 
GH: It was a very small portion of people that were homebrewing back then. Mostly out of necessity. There were just a few eccentrics really. They wanted to make  their own beer. Good beer. There was really no good beer in Philly at the time and some of these people would spend hours and hours on the phone with distributors and regional suppliers just to get something different and unique. As for the the large equipment and ingredient wholesalers, they are mostly the same as today.
 
EF: Your grandfather and great grandfather were both professional brewers. Did you ever dream of brewing professionally and following in their legacies?
 

GH: Yes and no. I had always thought about it. But frankly, I don't like making the same beer over and over again. That's so boring. I also can't stand all of the government regulations that go with commerical brewing. Homebrewing allows me to brew different beers and experiment and have fun.
 
EF: Your new book The Complete Homebrew Beer Book came out last year. Talk about some of the challenges of putting what you know into a book.
 
GH: The biggest challenge was when it hit me that I had 240 pages to fill, with 200 recipes, and at least one page of every recipe was the procedures. Do the math. It left me with about 40 pages to tell people how to make good beer at home. To overcome the space limitations, I got creative using sidebars for many recipes.
 
EF: You opened Home Sweet Homebrew in 1986. What is one homebrewing trend that has remained constant over all these years?

GH: Actually we didn't open the shop, our old friends Kurt Denke and Pam Moore did. Nancy and I took over in 1990 ... Hoppy beers. Homebrewers love hops. Simple as that. Maybe it is because it helps hide the caramelization of malt extracts.

EF: What brewing advice do you have for experienced homebrewers trying to really perfect their craft?
 
GH: Time and patience. All too often homebrewers try to rush the process and they do not allow enough time to do it right. Especially with sparging. People tend to rush through it and their gravity suffers ultimately.

EF: You've won many awards for your homebrew. Which one is most special to you?
 
GH: My most treasured prize was winning the gold medal for George's Fault in 1995 at the Great American Beer Festival. It was based on an old (Charlie) Papazian recipe. Of course, I  tweaked it beyond all recognition until it became my own personal recipe. The guys from Nodding Head (brewpub) came over my house and they loved it. They convinced me that we had to make a large batch of it. After trying my homebrewed version of it, Charlie even said it was better than his.
 
EF: You can find good beer all around the world. So what's your favorite country to drink in?
 
GH: America. I spent many years traveling the country, chasing The Dead and drinking the local beers. We've got the best beer scene on the planet now.
 
EF: Your home stands on the grounds of an old Philadelphia brewery. Was that a coincidence or did you know this was where you wanted to live?
 
GH: It was a total coincidence. It simply sounded like a cool fact when we were researching places to live in the city, near the shop.
 
EF: Why do you think homebrewing is getting so popular?
 
GH: It's a real extension to people's love for good beer. It's sort of like  cooking. People these days are looking for hobbies where they can stay home,  save money and yet still have fun. Many people use their hobby to learn more  about beer by making it themselves. It's really taking it to the next level.
 
EF: What is your favorite style of beer to brew? To drink?
 
GH: I a have a real affinity for American IPAs. I love hops and this style really lets them shine. I am also very fond of some Belgian beers and ambers that are not really too big. Malty ambers with a big hop flavor and aroma but mellow bitterness.
 
EF: Is it true that you sold Sam Calagione (of Dogfish Head) ingredients for his first few batches of homebrew?
 
GH: Yes. He actually cleaned out his local shops and headed north for a bigger inventory. He came in one day, before. anyone knew who he was, and bought several full sacks of grain, pounds of hops and about 10 packs of liquid yeast.

He was telling me he had made a pretty long trip because he had already cleaned out all of the local homebrew shops around him. I remember thinking that this guy is a serious homebrewer with a very serious hobby. Nope. He ended up opening a brewpub in Rehoboth Beach. To this day, Sam and I remain very close. People ask me all the time how I can get him to make appearances and things like that. I just tell them, I call him up and he says, "Sure. Whatever you need, George."
 

Flying Dog's Matt Brophy talks of his Jersey ties

Flying Dog's Matt Brophy

When you think about it, Matt Brophy's beer aspirations were meant to have wings.

His foot in the door to the craft brewing world was Flying Fish in Cherry Hill in the 19990s. And for nearly a decade now,  he's been with Flying Dog, taking a Denver-to-Maryland route where there's greatness in gonzo, some wild and wicked label art by Ralph Steadman, and the Hunter S. Thompson echo of the Celtic axiom "Good people drink good beer."

No shit.

But long before his pro brewer days, while he was a youth in South Jersey (by way of Pittsburgh), beer, as in brewing, found Matt. It poured from the radio as homebrewer talk, a tide of inspiration that was really a wave of ambition. Matt went with the flow.

Recently, Matt took some time for a Q&A to talk about how he got his start in brewing, his hearing the call of out West, and the Flying Dog beer culture that unleashes the hounds to come up with those cool bat-winged brews. It seems like a fitting interview to mark this Saturday's National Homebrew Day.


BSL: You're a South Jersey guy, can you talk a little about that?
MB: I actually moved to South Jersey in 1990, as a freshman in high school. I went to Woodbury High in Gloucester County, and started homebrewing when I was a junior

BSL: Flying a little bit under the radar?
MB: Yeah, I was 17 years old ...

BSL: So, talk a little about that early start ...
MB: My mother knew about it, but I think she was just happy I was interested in something. But my story starts – of course, I had been drinking beer a little, you know what we kind of refer to these days as factory beer – I was home sick from school one day and heard Charlie Papazian on Radio Times promoting his book, The Complete Joy of Homebrewing, and it really captured my imagination. I kind of learned a lot in the course of an hour about how interesting beer really is, the history behind it and world beer styles, a lot of things I just wasn't aware of.

So I went out and bought his book that same day, and I read it cover to cover in just a couple of days, and by the weekend, I was out buying homebrewing equipment. I fired off my first batch and waited, you know, two or three weeks and finally got in the bottle and waited another week or two for bottle-conditioning and had a couple of my 17-year-old friends over, and we cracked the bottles open and took sip, and it was terrible but we drank it anyway (laughs).

BSL: But clearly you were undaunted by that ...
MB: I kept trying, I kept brewing and quickly was able to improve the quality of the beer I was making. Pretty quickly after that, mostly motivated for economic purposes, I switched to all-grain brewing but also saw some other benefits once I started doing that. 

BSL: So in your youth you were marching to a completely different drummer altogether.
MB: Pretty much.

BSL: What kind of music were you listening to?
MB: We were kind of old school kids. We listened to some oldies and stuff, into some classic rock, that kind of thing, that morphed into a little more jam band kind of thing, Grateful Dead stuff. Since then it's gotten a little more eclectic but pretty traditional, at least Americana type 20th century music.

BSL: There's a common thread with jam band music and beer ...
MB: We have a beer, our Double Dog, and the way the hopping works on it, you know we start with a bittering hop and then we kind of fade into another hop as the first hop kind of fades out. So sometimes when I'm talking about the beer, I describe it as a little bit like what happens at a Dead show where some elements stick around as it morphs into something else.

BSL: Where did you get that first homebrew kit? Did you get it from the now-closed BeerCrafters, or did you go across the river (to Philadelphia)?
MB: Is it Home Sweet Homebrew on Samson in Philly? I might have gone there first. I don't remember what year BeerCrafters opened, but I remember being there, too. I think Philly was first, but pretty soon afterward I was solely shopping at BeerCrafters.

BSL: What was your very first good batch of beer, the one where you said 'I zeroed in on this, this is really, really good'?
MB: I remember brewing a pilsner. At that point I had a beer fridge going, too, and I put the carboy in the fridge and watched it – that's what's great about glass carboys, you can see the action, where with big stainless conical fermenters, you don't get to see inside ... So I put the carboy in the fridge, the temperature was probably in the mid- to upper-40s, it was pretty cool, and it had that nice fermentation. I'd check on it day after day. Those bubbles would continue to slowly rise and it finally ended its fermentation. I put it in secondary, let it lager for a little while longer and I got in the bottle. I entered it the Moon Madness competition in Pennsylvania. I don't remember how old I was at this point, I think I was 18, I remember my mom having to drive me over because I won a second place. I thought it was kind of cool winning this ribbon for a pilsner I brewed, I was particularly proud of it. I thought it was a great representation of the style; I felt that I'd followed pretty much all the traditional techniques and everything to get it to where it was. It was a little ironic for the award: I got a ribbon and a Munton & Fison pilsner kit (laughs). I just brewed a pretty good pilsner, I really don't need the kit.

BSL:  When was it that you knew this was a career, that this is what you wanted to do?
MB: It was about at that time. By the time I left high school, I knew that I wanted to pursue this professionally. I also knew I was kind of too young to really get too far into the industry. I went to Gloucester County Community College for a while, business type classes ... I was also doing some work, some carpentry stuff, installing laboratories for a little while, traveling up into Manhattan, like at NYU, and into Pennsylvania at some of the pharmaceutical manufacturers. I found it to be pretty gratifying work; I liked working with my hands, I liked being a true craftsman. I remember my observations then that anyone who's a craftsman, who's done anything for any length of time, really becomes an expert, and it's second nature to them. I knew that's what I wanted to be, a great craftsman. But I wanted to be a great beer craftsman.

I remember working with these guys and talking to them on our trips up and down the New Jersey Turnpike, telling them I was going to be a brewer. I think they thought I was full of shit. When I was 20 years old that's when I approached Flying Fish and (then FF head brewer) Joe Pedicini.

BSL: And that's where you were able to get your foot in the door?
MB: They were still kind of in the construction phases, the equipment had been dropped in place. I was sweeping floors, cleaning lines, whatever needed to be done around the brewery. It was a great experience, hanging around Joe and Rick (Atkins, the assistant brewer). I learned a lot from those guys, good-hearted, passionate people, very passionate about beer and the craft.

I felt like I was able to spend some time there to get some practical experience under my belt, to see the actual inner workings of a production brewery.

BSL: But at this time you were also eyeing some formal schooling at the Seibel Institute?
MB: I took the program there, and when I returned from Seibel, Joe Pedicini was actually leaving and Rick Atkins became the head brewer, and I became the assistant brewer. I did that for about another year, and this gets us up to about 1998. It was the beginning of 1998 when I started traveling around the country. Nothing against Jersey, but I wanted to travel around a little bit.

BSL: Get some different perspectives, right?
MB: I also wanted to immerse myself in another market that was a little more craft-centric. New Jersey at the time was – Flying Fish was one of maybe just a handful, tops, of craft brewers in the state. There was some craft brewing activity in Philadelphia. But amongst my friends in Gloucester County, there weren't too many who were interested in it, and I just wanted to change the culture I was immersed in.

I kind of did that classic road trip, traveled across the country, north, south, east, west, kind of everywhere and visiting breweries along the way, talking to brewers, taking pictures, checking out their equipment, you know, just getting some advice on what path I should take.

When I got to Colorado, I just fell in love with the state and the fact that craft beer was booming; there were a lot of passionate people out there that I met. That was half way through my trip.

BSL: Onward to the West Coast, then?
MB: Way up the Pacific Coast to Portland and Seattle and Vancouver and back down to Colorado again. That was the summer of 1998. I came back and it was probably June or something, and I told my girlfriend, 'We're moving to Colorado.' We gathered all the cash we had between us, which was probably around 3,000 bucks and we loaded up my old Volvo, drove out to Denver.

BSL: How quickly did things come together for you out there?
MB: It was one of those deals where we were getting a little worried. The cash supply was starting to get a little low and we really didn't want to have to turn around with just enough gas money to get back to Jersey. But the timing worked out just right where I got a position at Great Divide Brewing, and my girlfriend, who's now my wife, got a position at Colorado State Bank.

BSL: How long were you in Colorado?
MB: We spent 10 years there. I worked at Great Divide from 1998 to 2003, and I've been with Flying Dog since 2003. In the interim, while I was working for both these brewers, I took care of the beer for a brewpub up in the mountains called Great Northern Tavern. It was a 10-barrel system and about a 90-minute commute each way; during ski season it was a ski resort area. It would keep me pretty busy. There were stretches of time where I would be brewing mostly in Denver, or one place or another, for 27 days straight with a day off, three or four weeks straight ...

BSL: That's a pretty tough schedule. They're had to be some benefits for keeping that pace.
MB: It was really good because I was able to get some good perspective on brewing at the pub level and brewing at the production level and all of the challenges associated with both. In retrospect, it was time well spent.

BSL: At the pub level you probably got to play around a little bit with styles, like having your own canvas to paint.
MB: Yeah, it was. There were a couple standard beers. A lot of tourists come through, a lot of non-craft-centric people, so you wanted to keep something on there that was pretty friendly, but yeah, I did a lot of special beers – I'm a hop-head, a bit, so I'd play with different hop combinations and do IPAs and ESBs, did a couple of Belgian-inspired beers and just had fun with it.

BSL: Talk about how you ended up at Flying Dog.
MB: I was pretty excited about the direction Great Divide was going, but I felt that it was good to get some experience at different facilities, different beers and different production methods ... Flying Dog was just a couple blocks away. All of the brewers would just hang out: the brewers from Flying Dog would come over to Great Divide or vice versa. Just in some conversation, just seeing what the Flying Dog guys and the culture was all about, I decided to make the move a couple blocks away. I'm glad I did. I was very proud to work for Great Divide, and still am. I'm very pleased at their high degree of success and the integrity and quality of their beers. They're doing really good work these days.

BSL: But how cool is it to work at a place that has Hunter S. Thompson as a guiding light?
MB: Culturally, Flying Dog is a great place. At this point, I'm in a leadership position, with others on a leadership team. It's great to really kind of guide the company forward. For me it's being part of a team, being a part of everything that goes on with the beer, which is where I wanted to be when I was 17 years old. From that perspective, it's a dream come true.

Culturally, everybody in the organization, you know, I don't think people are waking up in the morning and going 'Ah, crap I gotta go to work.' People come in here and they're happy to be here. They're passionate about what they do, and when I get off this call, I'll probably go out and have a beer with some of the guys. And when we talk, we talk about beer; we talk about the pilot (brews) we got going. We've got Disobedience, our abbey dubbel, in the fermenter right now; we're all excited about that, we're going to do some bottle-conditioning, some 750s, you know, just kind of working on the plans, just some of the shoptalk that's associated with it.

BSL: Relocating Flying Dog to the East Coast, you were involved in that? That was a monumental project.
MB: My role was to try to maintain consistency with beers. For about two years, we produced beer out of both facilities simultaneously. It's a challenge. It gives you a new respect for the big guys who have 13 facilities around the country or around the world and their level of skill at maintaining consistency. So that was a big challenge. Part of that obviously is just recipes, part of it is the processes and how people are being trained on the equipment. It was a big project, but it was a great learning experience for me.

BSL: And just a few years ago, everything was finally shifted?
MB: It was 2008 when we decided to concentrate our operation here in Frederick. It was January 15, 2008, when the last bottles came off the Flying Dog Denver production line. I stayed there for a few more months ... we moved a bunch of the fermenters from the Denver brewery here to Maryland to increase capacity here in Frederick. Then we kind of locked up shop and I was out here in the summer of 2008.

BSL: Different geographic regions, especially east vs. west, used to mean really different palates, different preferences, especially among tastes for hoppier beers. Times have changed, of course, but by all accounts, Flying Dog's focus really transcended that nuance.
MB: It goes back to the culture of the organization and our level of passion and our preferences for the beers that we make. I speak for most of the brewers and the production guys when I say we're hop heads. So we like the IPAs, but that doesn't mean that I might not go grab a Woody Creek White on a hot day. We've got a new beer, Underdog, coming out. It's 4.7% alcohol. We're calling it Underdog Atlantic Lager. It's brewed with Golding hops, nothing too assertive from the hop end of things, but something that's drinkable but has a good hop presence for people who like hops.

There really are no meetings at Flying Dog where we say, 'What does the market need?' We kind of say, 'What do we want? What do we want our portfolio to look like?' A beer like Raging Bitch is a perfect example of some experimentation; that came up as a concept a few years back. We wanted to do something new. Well, we're Belgian fans, we like hoppy IPAs. Can we take some elements of those two types of styles and put them together as something that's going to work? After a little bit of experimentation, we felt really good about it. And in the case of Raging Bitch, it's our No. 1 seller.

BSL: What does 2012 look like for R&D at Flying Dog?
MB: This year, we've cranked up the creative process here quite a bit. We're doing this Brewhouse Rarities series. It's pretty limited, basically 100-barrel batches. (In the fall of last year) we offered anybody in the brewery who wanted to pitch a creative concept, or basically a beer, to what we call the Remarkable Beer Team, which is kind of the group I work with that manages all of the processes and creativity here ... So these guys would kind of pitch their ideas, you know why we should do it ... (For example) this guy he does his pitch, he tells us what kind of hops he wants to use, what the gravity is going to be, he's got an idea for the name, you know, the whole thing ... We had about 18 ideas; we're using about 12 of them.

There were a couple instances where some ideas overlapped so much that we kind of teamed those guys up together, but a lot of them are individual brews. So now these guys went to work at the end of last year doing their pilot brews – we have a 1-barrel pilot system – you know they do a couple pilot brews, really dial in what they want to do, scale it up to the big system, then brew on the big system ... It helps kind of spread out the creative influence – my title is chief operating officer and brewmaster, but by no means do I take credit for the total creativity that comes out of this brewery. We have a lot of creative thinkers and a lot of creative minds out there in the production world, and then our marketing team, even the administrative staff, they're all passionate about beer, and that all came together with the project (and our other new beers) coming out this year.

BSL: How many people make up the brewing staff there?
MB: We've got 13 or 14 spread out through what we call, well, the front end of production, which is the brewhouse, cellar operations, filtration and quality. Then we have about another 15 or so that take care of the kegging and the bottling ... 40 sounds about right in total, maybe 45. We just hired a canning manager because we're going to be running cans. Underdog will be our first beer in cans; we're really looking forward to that. So we're growing, more people are getting added ...

BSL: You also have a year-round oyster stout coming out ...
MB: We do. Pearl Necklace Oyster Stout. We did this as kind of a collaboration, I'd call it. We've done a couple of projects, like Backyard Ale, which was a project with Bryan Voltaggio, he has his Volt restaurant here in Frederick. So we worked with him on a beer. And the idea is that it's a learning process, we want to find partners like that – Bryan wanted to learn more about beer, we wanted to learn more about the cool shit he does with food; this guy's amazing with everything he brings to the science of food preparation and culinary skills ... So that was a great relationship. We did a collaboration with Brewers Art in Baltimore, and it was good to just work with another brewer – Steve Frasier and his perspective, he's using the Belgian malts, putting together a recipe with him. That was educational.

We approached this (Pearl Necklace) from the same standpoint. There's a nonprofit organization called the Oyster Recovery Partnership ... With the Chesapeake, over the years there's been a lot of, you know, save the bay (talk). We didn't want to come out there and say 'Hey, save the bay, and we'll contribute this,' or just have some kind of corny promotion associated with one of our beers. We wanted to dig in a little deeper and make it a little more meaningful. So I went down to Cambridge, Maryland, with a colleague from the brewery, and we visited the Oyster Recovery Partnership's hatchery. It's pretty amazing what these guys do: They take oysters from the embryonic state and grow them up – they feed them algae – then they use something called the Shell Recycling Alliance, and these guys actually bring the spent shells from all the restaurants in a few different cities in the Northeast and mid-Atlantic, and they'll use these shells as substrate for these oyster babies to attach to ... To date, I think they're responsible for half a billion oysters being added back into the bay.

Pearl Necklace, a portion of the proceeds goes to benefit this oyster recovery partnership. It is actually helping restore oysters to the bay. And if you read a little bit about osyters, you pretty quickly realize what a positive impact they have on the cleanliness of the bay. In 1850, the bay wasn't completely navigable because of the oysters in it

We also visited Rappahannock River Oysters there in Virginia. These guys have a little tasting room where they serve their oysters, and they also serve our beer. We went down there, spent a night with those guys. They took us out on their boat and showed us how to sustainably grow oysters. These guys have three different oysters that they grow, in different locations off the Rappahannock River. You learn about how the (water) salinity affects the flavor, and that's really the big difference between the oyster varieties.

So, again, a great learning opportunity, a great partnership, in this case a three-way partnership. We had the beer out in draft in November of last year, and it did really well. And that's the thing, with Pearl Necklace, it was so popular – I loved it, the production team just loved it – and we want it year-round. So we're going to make that a reality. So it will be a full-time beer available in draft and six-pack, 12-ounce bottles, and just like the original version, a portion of the proceeds from the sale go directly to the Oyster Recovery Partnership.