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A visitor to Kane Brewing Co. in Ocean Township tries a beer at the warehouse brewing area. Kane, opened in 2011, is one of several microbreweries operating in New Jersey.
(Aristide Economopoulos/The Star-Ledger)
The tap room at Kane Brewing Co., where visitors can sample some of its brews.
The promise of a vibrant craft beer industry in New Jersey finally seems to be coming to a head.
After years of lagging behind neighboring New York and Pennsylvania, the Garden State is poised for a burst of new microbreweries and brew pubs. About two dozen are in various stages of planning around the state, looking to join the 25 already in operation, according to records kept by the Brewers Association, an advocacy group.
A patriarch of New Jersey's craft brewing scene, Gene Muller of the Flying Fish Brewing Co., said he has never seen so many people vying to open up commercial breweries in the Garden State at once.
Add to that the buzz that's accompanied the newest entrants – from the Cape May Brewing Co. in Rio Grande to Kane Brewing in Ocean Township to the New Jersey Beer Co. in North Bergen – and the state soon may be awash in its own handmade, small-batch artisanal brews.
All of this reflects a small but growing appetite in New Jersey for locally brewed craft beers, like the ones that other states are known for.
And the growth is likely to continue, thanks to a recent overhaul of the state’s Byzantine brewery rules. Last fall, Gov. Chris Christie signed a measure to give craft beer makers a greater opportunity to sell to the general public.
It's impossible to say how many of today's would-be beer makers will take the leap from concept to keg, and beyond. Start-up costs and limited financing will be forbidding to many, said veteran brewer Dave Hoffmann, who founded Climax Brewing Co.in Roselle Park with his father Kurt. And recipes that don't please palates or gain reputations have little hope of surviving long-term, he and others added.
"This market is not forgiving anymore for inconsistency," said Greg Zaccardi, founder of High Point Brewing Co., in Butler.
But some of the aspiring new establishments are far along in their plans, and positive on their outlook.
Rinn Duin, a father-daughter operation in Toms River that's named for a castle in Ireland, plans to start barrelling its U.K.-styles blondes and ales in coming weeks. Co-founder Chip Town, a former mortgage banker who turned a 17-year homebrewing hobby into a business plan with his daughter after both were laid off a week apart in 2010, said he's hoping Rinn Duin will be able to start offering tours and selling beer over the July 4 holiday weekend.
Rinn Duin Brewing, represented here by head brewer Jason Goldstein (left) and co-founders Jacqui Town and Chip Town, is looking to start brewing U.K.-style beers in a matter of weeks.
"I’m not expecting to be profitable in the first year, but it’s very, very feasible that in the second year we should be," Town said. He credits two things working in his favor: time-tested recipes and a conservative business plan hatched thanks to his years in banking.
Further south, the Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant is putting the finishing touches on its new Voorhees location, its second brew pub in New Jersey after one in Maple Shade and 10th overall. Kevin Finn, president and co-founder of the Delaware-based mini-chain, said the Voorhees' spot should open by Aug. 1. But he's already thinking beyond that: the company is eying a third location, in Central Jersey, with plans to open it by the end of 2014.
Before the law passed last year, a third Iron Hill brew pub in New Jersey would have been impossible, and microbreweries like Rinn Duin were limited in the amount of beer they could sell to the public.
Change of law
BY THE NUMBERS
How far behind is New Jersey from its neighbors in terms of craft beer production? The numbers say it all:
Current number of active brewers
• Pennsylvania: 153
• New York: 147
• Delaware: 11
• New Jersey: 25
– Source: U.S. Alcohol and Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau
(TTB)
Count of breweries per resident of legal drinking age
• Pennsylvania: One for every 61,800 people
• New York: One for every 99,000 people
• Delaware: One for every 44,000 people
• New Jersey: One for every 259,000 people
– Source: Beer Institute, Star-Ledger calculations
Barrels of craft beer produced, annually
• Pennsylvania (home of Victory Brewing Co.): 1.6 million barrels
• New York (home of Brooklyn Brewery): 725,000 barrels
• Delaware (home of Dogfish Head Brewery): 180,000 barrels
• New Jersey (home of Flying Fish Brewing Co.): 37,500 barrels
–Source: Brewers Association
Now, licensed brew pub owners can run up to 10 locations in New Jersey, as opposed to the two they were limited to before. The state also lifted the cap on the amount of beer brew pubs can produce to 10,000 barrels a year.
The new law has a much more immediate benefit for breweries.
Though they aren’t bars, per se, most microbreweries open themselves to the public for a few hours each weekend, during which time they can sell a certain amount of beer as part of a tour. Before the law changed, that was capped at two six-packs per person.
The old law also prevented breweries from selling beer for drinking on the premises. Instead, they could give away four-ounce samples in hopes of enticing people to buy a couple six packs. Brewers say this proved to be little more than a money-losing chore, with the same people showing up week after week for free samples.
"You really can’t make a living giving away one beer for every beer you sell," said Zaccardi of High Point Brewing, which makes the German-style Ramstein beer.
Now, with the new law, microbreweries can sell pints of beer to be drunk at the brewery, and as much as a keg for people to take home. Brewers say this gives consumers a better reason to drive an hour or so to visit a site, and it ends the "awkward conversations" about New Jersey’s restrictive laws.
This retail channel also is much more lucrative to breweries – they get to keep the markup that gets tacked on to their product in the wholesale market. It creates a cash flow, liquid gold for brewers used to waiting weeks on end for bars and liquor stores to pay their invoices.
"The best part of the law change is it is creating additional revenue," said Michael Kane, a 36-year-old who left investment banking to found Kane Brewing in 2011. "The more we are able to do on the retail side, the more we can continue to grow our business."
Lured by the cash flow, brewers are thinking of ways to draw more people to their facilities. They are sprucing up their tap rooms and concocting exclusive brews to be savored only there.
Flying Fish, for example, is investing hundreds of thousands of dollars on the tap room in its Somerdale facility, said founder Muller. New Jersey Beer Co. is refurnishing its tasting room to look less like "mom’s basement" and more of a place where people can hang out, said Kevin Napoli, its general manager.
Kane Brewing hosts occasional events, like next Saturday's "A Wolf Among the Seas," where its brewers show off their experiments with ingredients and techniques.
And while the new law bars breweries from serving food – a likely concession to New Jersey’s restaurant lobby – at least one brewer has an idea around that: take-out menus from nearby restaurants.
Barriers to beer
Would-be brewers still face hurdles in setting up shop.
Gretchen Schmidhausler, the former brewmaster at Basil T's in Red Bank, has lined up everything for her planned microbrewery, except for one crucial ingredient: a location.
Her dream is to have a small brewery nestled in a downtown in eastern or central Monmouth County. But zoning rules often keep small breweries out of retail areas, she's finding. So her challenge now is convincing local officials that she'd make "a good neighbor."
"I look at myself as being a complement to local business. They’re going to come to see me, tour my small facility, buy beer and have dinner somewhere else," said Schmidhausler, 53, of Westfield. "The vision that I have, I would be lost in an industrial park."
Rinn Duin Co-Founder Jacqui Town pours a sample of its Trinity Smoked Scottish Ale.
The high cost and tight supply of liquor licenses is a barrier for would-be brew pubs.
It was for that reason Peggy Zwerver and Tom Baker left New Jersey after developing a cult following for their Ocean Township-based Heavyweight Brewing. Looking to open a brew pub, they were stunned by the hundreds of thousands of dollars they'd need to pay for a liquor license in New Jersey. So they opted for Philadelphia instead, with its abundant and relatively cheap licenses, Zwerver said. After opening Earth Bread and Brewery in 2008, they haven't looked back.
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"As far as the business goes, it made total sense," Zwerver said of the move.
But other forms of relief may come down the spout.
A bipartisan bill in floating in the U.S. Senate focuses mainly on craft brewers. Known as the Small Brew Act and co-sponsored by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), it proposes cutting in half the $7-a-barrel federal excise tax that brewers pay on the first 60,000 barrels they produce each year.
Muller of Flying Fish recently made the trek to Capitol Hill to promote the measure, which he said would help him expand production or hire a new salesperson. He left somewhat hopeful it could pass, even in a divided Congress.
"The only thing politicians can agree on," he said, "is beer."