Amiable medium-bodied amber lager stays nuttier than most stylistic contenders. Buttery chestnut-roasted pecan, praline, honey nut and walnut illusions override astringent hop toasting. Styptic sour fruiting underscores coarse nutty finish.
Richly viscous full body goes beyond stylistic mocha theme with its oaken bourbon-burgundy wining, coffee-roasted dried fruiting and cocoa-dried butterscotch notch. Creamy dark chocolate expectancy, sinewy molasses-smoked maple malting and luscious vanilla sweetness sidle prune-soured black cherry tartness. Tertiary blackberry, black grape and boysenberry illusions tilt Big Eddy towards sour end. Cedar-burnt wood tone reinforces caramelized brown sugar glaze.
CALDWELL’S CLOVERLEAF TAVERN COUPLES CRAFT BEERS WITH FRESH FOOD
A highly respected Caldwell watering hole since prohibition ended in the Thirties, CLOVERLEAF TAVERN has given multiple generations of northern Jerseyites a homey Bloomfield Avenue refuge. Never afraid to branch out and change direction when necessary, the busy pub went from a men-only establishment to a family-oriented neighborhood hangout by the Seventies. But Cloverleaf’s greatest achievement may have come when third generation grandson, Ryan Dorchak, embraced America’s craft beer renaissance in 2006.
A red-bricked, brown-shingled exterior with green and white awning welcomes patrons to the casual speakeasy rife with several shamrock logos. 25 taps at the right side bar serve a rapidly rotating oeuvre of handcrafted microbrews emulating from a cement-floored cellar kegorator. Dorchak takes great care cleaning the keg lines since it’s the key to running a successful draught system.
“Draught beers were meant to be an extension of the primary brewery sold in a timely fashion fresh to consumers,” Ryan obliges. “We don’t want to have any off-flavors. And getting the proper gas mix is crucial for a better tasting product. All our beers run on a 65/35 blend of nitrogen to carbon dioxide, except stouts and nitros, which run on a higher nitro blend.”
Joining the family business in ’97 after graduating from Fairleigh Dickinson-Madison with a marketing degree, Ryan became extremely passionate about craft beer. In fact, the tall proprietor educates his bar staff through an on-line certification to insure their general beer knowledge.
“I could make more money pushing Coors Lite, but I’d rather have people come back more frequently to enjoy better beers at a reasonable cost. We always have a featured craft beer for $3 going from Monday through Thursday,” he insists.
There’s also a fun syllabus for Masters of Beer Appreciation given to those who try 45 beers over the course of the season and anyone requiring higher education could land a PhD (professor of hops and draughts degree). A lover of Goose Island’s Bourbon County Stout, Sofie Saison and Pepe Nero Farmhouse Ale, Ryan claims he has never had a bad beer from Bruery, Founders or Allagash. And he recently developed quite a taste for newfangled brettanomyces-bound sour ales.
In a way, Cloverleaf developed into a ‘beer bar’ by accident. Way back in 1976, Ryan’s father had a problem with Anheuser-Busch’s service so he simply expanded the beer menu. He immediately ditched Bud’s foamy fare for Miller, Schmidt’s, Pabst, Ballantine and imports such as Becks, Grolsch, Guinness, Harp, Heineken, Kirin, Krakus, Kronenbourg, Molson and Tuborg.
Ryan affirms, “He told the King of Beers he’d carry every other beer he could get his hands on and made sure people looking for Bud would be given suitable choices.”
Many historic photographs line the interior walls of Cloverleaf, founded by George Dorchak Jr. at the tender age of 25. He acquired Caldwell’s first post-prohibition alcohol license in 1933 and stubbornly spent 40 years holding true to the antiquated local ordinance forbidding women and children from saloons. By ’42, he purchased an antique wood bar counter (estimated at 100 years old) for what was strictly a men’s bar until ’75 when Dorchak’s son, Richard, turned the tavern into a full service public house. In ’90, a sky-lit rear atrium attached to the new outdoor patio was added.
“My grandfather told my dad he’d never make money selling hot dogs and burgers. He was wrong,” Ryan snickers. “Nowadays, 40% of our sales comes from burgers since we get fresh chopped meat daily.”
A diverse crowd of businessmen, seniors, sports fans, and couples fill out the Cloverleaf this early Tuesday evening in late January. Ryan and I settle in the intimate hearth-warmed left dining area to talk. Above this expanded first floor space is a banquet room perfect for parties, receptions and business affairs.
“There’s also a self-contained smoker that has a cleaning cycle for wood chips and this week’s special is smoked pork chiquito,” he adds before noting the majority of food is fresh and made from scratch besides the fried appetizers. “People think we’re in the food business, but we’re really in the hospitality business. 68% of people who have a bad dining experience won’t tell the staff and don’t come back. With today’s social media, customers take the experience and pass it on about the venue.”
Moreover, when there were only 90 brewers in the United States in ’79, it was easier to get away with watered down product. Now, there are 2,500 stateside breweries with wide-ranging choices. Originally, Ryan was introduced to Miller High Life as a youngster. But he spit it out. That’s when he determined big brewers’ stuff was inferior.
In ’99, Ryan’s father took him to the Great American Beer Festival in Denver, where he noticed 85% of the beers served were not available in Jersey. They stopped by a mining town where Tommyknockers Brewery had a “cool vibe,” then headed to Colorado Springs-based New Belgium, where Ryan was amazed by their four beers – including the now-classic New Belgium Fat Tire Amber Ale.
That set the tone for the eager lad, whose Czech grandfather and Irish grandmother passed on a rich European heritage of gourmandizing. For St. Patrick’s Day, Cloverleaf will feature homemade Irish soda bread made from his grandmother’s recipe alongside traditional corn beef and cabbage.
In this day and age of cookie-cutter corporate establishments, drab multi-chain restaurants and compromised eateries, Cloverleaf stands out for its fertile legacy, incredible cocktail selection and appetizing American cuisine.
For St. Patrick’s Day, 2012, my wife and I took a seat at the front entrance to try homemade soda bread alongside excellent corned beef and cabbage as well as tapped versions of Jolly Pumpkin Madrugada Obscura and Ballast Point Tongue Buckler (reviewed in Beer Index). Naturally, Ireland’s Guinness Stout was the clear favorite amongst the crammed in Saturday morning crowd.
Green and white St. Patty’s Day balloons, banners and streamers crowded the entire bar and the entire semblance was attired in green shirts, pants, hats or shoes to celebrate the annual event. Ryan’s 1-year-old son, Aidan, dressed in a Celtic kilt, danced to the traditional Irish music being played by a front-windowed duo who provided bleary-eyed versions of “When Irish Eyes Are Smiling,” the piper-shrined “Danny Boy” and a rousing sing-along about a Belfast prostitute.
The city of Caldwell and Cloverleaf Tavern celebrate this March 17th holiday with utmost respect. Zach, our bartender, is attired in leprecaun garb. Even a few city cops were dressed in kilts. And the Allagash Wit my wife and I consumed before leaving a few hours later was colored green for good luck. A great time had by all.
Since May’s spring flowers have now bloomed, I decided to once again check out Caldwell’s historic CLOVERLEAF TAVERN. This time, it’s to experience MBA night – a Masters of Beer Appreciation program hosted every first Tuesday of the month to honor graduates from hosting owner Ryan Dorchak’s stylistically diversified 45-beer curriculum.
Seated next to Mario, a card-carrying MBA grad who’s now a three-time PhD major (having consumed the requisite 45 beers thrice over and earning a sturdy 26-ounce Cloverleaf-engraved stein for pint-priced beers), I decide to become a Clover Card member for $5. It’ll earn me Frequency Dollars and bonus points while consuming terrifically multifarious craft beers.
Today, the red-shirted Dorchak celebrates his 37th birthday and the place is packed to the hilt for Troegs Night. I grab a sampler tray of Troegs Dreamweaver (a grassy-hopped American wheat with German weiss-like banana-clove character), Nugget Nectar (a heightened amber ale showcasing honey-malted tropical fruits), Mighty Moose Mild (an English-styled session beer with mint-y herbal citrus spicing) and Spring Fest Helles Bock (a honey nut-grained and tart-fruited balm).
Cinco De Mayo’s just around the corner, so the bar area is decorated with hanging piñatas, a confetti-filled Modelo can, a papier-mâché green cactus with Jose Cuervo insignia and various red-green-white streamers. To commemorate the upcoming Mexican holiday, I dig into the special-priced Taco Salad while consuming a Jalapeno Margarita (with its immense peppery burn outlasting the sweet coconut frontage).
But soon I dabble with a few previously untried pale ales with noticeable biscuit-y malt spines. Fegley’s Always Sunny Pale Ale gathered dry-wooded tinder for sharp grapefruit-peeled lemon rind bittering and 21st Amendment Bitter American spread soft-hopped apricot fruiting across buttery almond nuances. Belgium’s Bockor Omer Traditional Blond retained sourdough and baguette illusions above delicate hop-spiced crystal malts.
As for Troegs Night, the packed minions showed major respect for spicy chocolate-fruited double bock, Troeganator. Plus, the 6:30 promotional raffle got everyone’s attention, especially since a 22-ounce bottle of Troegs’ rum-spiced, candi-sugared, pine-fruited Flying Mouflan Barleywine was one of the prizes.
There are now over 1,300 MBA graduates from Cloverleaf, each one having consumed the prerequisite pilsner-lagers, weiss beers, IPA’s, specialty and seasonal offerings alongside pale, brown and Belgian ales. But you don’t have to be a skilled craft beer denizen to relish the rotating line of brews convivial host Dorchak has picked to click. Besides, those who feel pinned in at the front bar could settle in at the sun-glazed back deck or private left side dining area for family or business occasions.
Instead of trying to reinvent what has become an institution for the affluent Ridgewood community, the new owners of THE OFFICE BEER BAR & GRILL simply refined an outmoded menu while continuing to bring fantastic craft beers to local minions. A veritable sportsbar (previously home to the long-gone Brass Lamp), The Office quickly earned its stripes as a reliable downtown hotspot since opening in 1995.
Located one block away from the train station, a black and red awning welcomes patrons to the green-walled, mahogany-wooded Chestnut Street landmark. Montreal-bred General Manager Hugh Cohen, who came aboard in ’99, constantly revamps and upgrades the craft beer lineup while making sure cocktail selections stay topnotch. Presently, six to eight dedicated tap handles serve standard fare and the other fifteen to seventeen tender a rotating surfeit of choice suds. Fifty bottled beers add further versatility.
Recently, The Office purchased a state-of-the-art NuCo system that makes its own oxygen and maintains perfect gas pressure for draught beer. One carbon dioxide tank is used for pilsners, lagers and light ales while another is used for heavier porters and stouts. The last one is strictly for sodas.
“The NuCo system is clean, efficient and low maintenance,” Cohen insists. “It adds more freshness, creaminess and consistency to the beers.”
Since Mardi Gras is just around the corner during my early February visitation, several Creole flags and danglers decorate the bar area. In a few weeks, it’ll be March Madness and basketball tournament brackets will inundate the interior. Next, Cinco De Mayo will be celebrated. Year round seasonal rejoicing is a top priority for this busy locale. And the ongoing party is centered around fine brews poured from the three solid brass mushroom-like wells at the bar.
“All of the seven Office’s in Jersey are known for craft beer,” Villa Enterprises Marketing Manager Kathleen Janssen claims as we quaff pints of The Office Amber Ale, specially made by High Point Brewery for the Ridgewood pub. “Being a beer bar and grill is our calling card. And we made it more centric towards local craft beer. There’s usually only two international beers on tap, Guinness and Corona, and we have Coors and Bud Lite for the masses. Every location has at least nineteen taps. We dedicate four to seasonals and the rest to local or national favorites picked by our customers.”
Now family-owned by Villa Enterprises’ Bioggio and Antonio Scotto since 2011, The Office offers ridiculously cheap Happy Hour specials such as $3 craft beer draughts, $2 domestic macrobrews and $4 margaritas from 4 to 7 PM Monday through Friday. In business for fifty years, Villa began as a pizzeria chain, Villa Fresh Time Kitchens – a string of highly frequented eateries at airports, malls, casinos and arenas. They also own the Green Leaf chain and recently purchased Jersey’s oldest restaurant, the Black Horse Tavern, built in 1740 as a stage house.
“We take pride in our food,” Janssen says. “We’ve revamped the outdated ’90s menu the defunct Charlie Brown owners used to have. It didn’t represent what the food really was supposed to be. Every item on the menu is cooked in the back. Everything’s fresh. The meat’s brought in raw and fresh fish comes daily. We implemented new items like Lettuce Wraps and sauteed chicken and shrimp.”
I chow down the Tuna Tower, a crisp tuna tartar with avocado and arugula in a wasabi and balsamic glaze, while sipping Saranac White India Pale Ale, a new brew with bright citric overtones and lilting herbal spices.
“In northern Jersey, the market available to us in nearby Manhattan boasts an amazing variety of restaurants. There’s a higher level of expectation since much of Ridgewood’s populace works in the city. We can’t just shovel food out of the kitchen and expect people to enjoy it. That happened beforehand. The Office had become an antiquated steak house,” the Philly-born Janssen says.
Since the coolest new trend is matching craft beer to artisanal foods, The Office hopes to educate their customer base with exciting pairings. But it’s just one of the steps Villa has taken to help customers appreciate a transitional upgraded menu.
“The Office is beer focused and family friendly. Villa’s not a huge corporation operating restaurants in an uncaring, profit-taking manner. We appreciate everything that goes into being a successful venture. The Ridgewood-based Office, comparable to the Montclair and Morristown franchises, has the best character and largest sales,” Janssen concludes.
I stopped by The Office once more four days hence to try the smoothly vanilla-buttered, cocoa-draped dessert treat, Breckenridge Vanilla Porter (perfect for chocolate lovers). Stacy, christened by the surrounding Happy Hour customers as the ‘best bartender in Ridgewood,’ shows off her handiwork by making the couple next to me a few highly distinctive Bloody Mary’s.
so don’t settle on slick corporate giants such as Bennigans, TGIFriday or Applebees for average food and limited beer selections. For maybe a few bucks more, The Office will offer better cuisine, finer brews and nicer ambience.
On tap at Mason Jar, creamy crystal malt eloquence pervades soft-toned mineral graining and subtle grassy-hopped bittering of soothing moderation. Corn sugared citric easement receives salted buttering. Don’t expect as much from lesser red bottled or canned version.
DEFIANT’S NEILL ACER SPEAKS BEER
This pertinent conversation took place February 12th, 2012 at Pearl River’s DEFIANT BREWERY.Acer, a veteran of the beer circuit, took an hour to explain his past, present and future. Let’s join in…
I got hooked on Belgian beers early on. Chimay Blue was probably the main reason to get into craft brewing. I recognized the beer I had made earlier from a medieval recipe was related – only Chimay was done very well. I love the freedom Belgium’s marketplace offers. In America, we’re so tied to the marketplace. We’re giving the world hops, hops and more hops – as a broad stroke. And then there are milder strokes. At the time I drank Chimay, there was no beer like that in America. This is the Renaissance right now. These are great times. There’s a lot of quality, consistent stuff coming out. But I really love those Belgian Trappist beers.
There used to be a place called Beers of the World in Rochester, New York. They had a great selection in the early ‘90s. Every payday I’d go to Beers of the World. Try something new. At some point, Michael Jackson’s Beer Companion came out so I’d buy and drink the beer and read his review. I did it with a group of five guys so our purchasing powers multiplied. I’d take notes of 10 or 12 beers and figure which beers I’d like to emulate.
The way forward is never a straight line so I went to a research librarian and asked about old beer recipes, modern recipes and techniques. There just wasn’t anything written at the time about how to make beer. If there was, the book was from England and took four weeks to get in a roundabout manner. I finished my regular education and through self-exploration and the reading of old Eighteenth century books I got nuggets of knowledge. And because of my science background, I wanted to keep really good records. The beautiful thing about discovering beer is it was like discovering fire. It was like matches to an eight-year old. I had access to a Rochester lab and tried every beer I could. I grew yeast.
I kept reading brewing books and you’d open up the jacket and read about the author and the part I noticed the most was that a lot of them went to Seibel in Chicago for training. I decided to research the school and got a hold of their number and asked the admission guy how much it cost. I didn’t know how to afford school so I got a job at Sloan-Ketterling and worked in the outpatient department. That helped me bank some money to attend Seibel.
All along I kept brewing. I was close to Genesee Brewery near Rochester – which was cool. They put out a variety of Genesee the world never saw. And they make good Genny Cream Ale. How did that regional small brewery survive with a hybrid beer like that?
After brew school, I sent my resume around, but there weren’t many places at the time – Colorado, Massachusetts. I finally got a few phone calls and settled at Mountain Valley Brewpub in Suffern. I worked at the beginning with Jay Misson – my first mentor out of brewing school. He was a German-trained brewer I owe so much to. Basically, consistency was everything with German brewers. He gave me experience. He had worked at the long-gone Vernon Valley Brauhaus in Cobblestone Village during the Eighties. It was a magical place in East Coast brewing lore. They had wooden casks. Mountain Valley was also ahead of their time, but it was sort of in synch.
But Vernon Valley was up near the ski resort. You’d get there and it was old German-looking on the outside and you’d pull up to the brewery and there are these huge 8-foot tall horizontal wood casks for beer. I climbed inside one of them and it had loads of hornets, but that was OK. You had to go sideways to get in there. It was 14 or 18 inches wide and narrow going in one shoulder at a time. They had a beautiful work chiller that looked to an untrained eye to be a radiator. The wort was designed to just flow over this thing. Then you’d be pumping chilling liquid on the inside. So your wort would get oxygenated and cooled all in one step. This was before stainless steel plate heat exchange became all the rage. They had open fermentation tanks, all made of wood, that were beautiful. At their height, Vernon made four beers, including a Helles and Dunkel, but real high quality.
I didn’t brew up there because by the time I got there the brewery was in mothballs. It was near the old Playboy Lodge. So I started at Mountain Valley and shortly after Jay left to go out west and work on the brewery chain Gordon Biersch. He became the driving force behind the German style beer revival. I’d trust his palate on a pack of cigarettes before I’d trust anybody else. He was instrumental in my success. I went from book hobby knowledge to professional knowledge.
Back then, Mountain Valley was bottling. We had a little lab, did kegging, and at one time were 5,000 barrels per year. We had occasional wooden cask beers. You’d get a woody flavor, but not like noble French oak that wine people brag about. I started as an assistant working in the mill. I was the happiest person in the job market getting paid like 5 dollars an hour. I loved it. I was elated to get to work, walking on clouds thrilled to death.
We made eight styles before that total was possible. But there were problems and there was the first bubble in the craft beer movement. There were so many people. There was Three Stooges Beer. The concept of craft beer had been pushed to its limits and got to the point of absurdity. Enough people were playing 6-pack roulette while they were shopping. But there wasn’t enough of an infrastructure of checks and balances that the internet later allowed for its normal economy.
As a brewer, it was a soul searching moment to have your beer rated, but it’s essential. You have to have that other leg. So there was inconsistent product in the Nineties due to lack of knowledge. People went from hobby to professional in ten seconds and there was a lack of equipment.
It was the Wild West at that time. I had conversations with people who didn’t know about proper sanitizing. The consistency for the micro industry was so variable it busted. You saw the failure of some amazing craft beers from Catamount to Zip City to Neptune to Red Bank.
Plus, it was hard to finance a new brewery because no bankers believed in it. There were closings exceeding openings around ’99 or 2000. It got deeper around 2001. Things were rocking and rolling. So Mountain Valley was at this point where our sales weren’t going down but we had run out of space. We needed major reinvestment. Contract brewing had become the buzzword because Brooklyn Brewery was using Utica’s Matt Brewery. So we went for the contract route, made the transition and lost inertia. The restaurant became less of a focus. We had looked towards Mendocino Brewery in upper New York.
Mendocino was hot shit on the West Coast but out here in the East, it’s the meat grinder. It’s the largest beer market in the world, larger than London, Madrid, France, and as a result, big companies will do anything to get a foot in the market. If you wanna be on tap, you’re dealing with huge budgets by Heineken and Bud. I’ve always felt, creatively, it’s way better to make your own wobbly furniture than buy particleboard from IKEA. That’s how I viewed contract brewing. It was like lip-synching. It’s only implied that some small craft brewer made it.
But we may see another craft beer bust. It’s hard to get a piece of Main Street and hold it in America. There’s a limited number of taps. There’s more craft beer than ever, but you can never grow faster than the number of new craft customers. Walk through the warehouse of a large distributorship and you’ll know the number of brewpubs and breweries there’ll soon be. It’s walls and walls of Bud-Coors-Miller. The production of new breweries cannot exceed the demand of consumption of craft beers. The consumption’s increasing. But eventually, the industry needs to catch up.
Anyway, while working at Ramapo Valley, the owners of West End Brewery approached me and said to come on down to the city. I had been with the Ramapo guys for two years or so and the product was selling well. I had just made a gluten beer and Ramapo thought this would be their future. It was gluten free and Kosher for Passover. It was unique and I was excited to work on a beer that wasn’t being done en masse. Apparently, it was like setting wildfire. All the celaic sufferers came out of the closet. It had given them a voice and it was around the time organic food got popular. That really worked. But I felt that gluten free beer wasn’t what I wanted to do. So I said, “Good luck with the gluten.”
So I went to go start this brewery in New York City – West End. I worked with a talented young brewer and helped train him – Jeremy Goldberg – who’s now up in Massachusetts running Cape Ann Brewing. Some of his beers are contract produced because of his smaller size. But the beautiful location of his brewery is waterfront. Nice area.
I ended up with a lot of equipment from someone who stiffed me – some of it’s here. Anyway, at Mountain Valley one of my apprentices was Andrew Ety. I was the brewmaster who hired a hand who hired Andrew. He was an incredibly talented guy and also a Seibel grad. He went on to work at Brooklyn Brewery as the right hand man. Another guy from Mountain Valley, Jeff Conwell, started Ithaca Brewing Company. So it was an exciting time.
Also, John Eccles came out of there. He was trained by Jay. He did Hyde Park Brewery. You talk about the early state of craft brewing, it’s like talking about the early part of the rock industry. Everyone played with this person or remembers going to a certain club. That’s how it was.
I was at West End for two years. New York City’s built on solid granite so when the brewery location abutted this outcropping of granite rock even the greedy real estate developers didn’t want to have anything to do with, we specked out the brewery and rigged it Egyptian style through cracks in the granite out the back alley way. It was like stage diving with a fermenter. Everybody had a hand on it because the forklift couldn’t negotiate the nuances of twisting and bending and turning. It was so tight the fittings on the tank couldn’t fit through one area and the tank had to be rotated 60 degrees.
But real estate in Manhattan is expensive and the rent was enormous so we maximized space. I had a complete brewery in the basement. We had a beautiful little pub system with an agitator and kettle so I could do crazy concoctions if I wanted. I was steam powered. But to make things easier with the building code it was electric steam power. It went through 200 amps of three-phase electric.
We cranked out Kerouac, because Beat Poet Jack Kerouac used to drink there. Everywhere that man drank they put up a sign. He wasn’t known for breaking anything there like some metal band. He just split people’s minds wherever he went.
As a brewer, I try to make beers that make me happy. From West End, I moved to Defiant. We were a square peg in a round hole at the beginning. That’s definitely true. It’s a wonderful walking town. Train stops right in the middle. There’s good food to be had here. People are surprised. We have a St. Patrick’s Day parade that’s one of the best in the country. And it’s well run. It’s not a shit show. It’s still old America here in a lot of ways.
I had my son Conner within a few days of signing a lease. Abigail joined us later. Working in the industry for years, I always wanted to have full creative control to be able to do anything I want. The brewery is set up so it’s comfortable to work at. Parking on both sides. I met a lot of great people. Some of their names are along the wall.
There are other brewers serving right from the tanks like Defiant, it’s just that there’s a tube that goes from the tank to the tap. But as far as getting the tanks right up behind the bar, it’s less common. There’s engineering reasons why.
We brew a series of small batch beers we make for our Cellar members. Some are aged in oak. The sky’s the limit. The Resolution Four you’re drinking now is part of our Cellar program. It took a year to make. Those are limited release. I want to make an End of the World 4-pack. That’d be killer! That’s the kind of thing that’d be hard to sell to the owner if I had one. Could you imagine it not selling? I wanna be here for the end with all the calamities and running and screaming.
I was at Peekskill Brewery for two years. A new talented guy, Jeff O’ Neill, started in November, 2011. He worked at Ithaca so you’re gonna see some interesting beers with some Ithaca flavor evidence cropping up. It should be welcomed.
I worked on a wonderful project in Athens, New York, for Crossroads. They actually have one of my old breweries so you know it’s gonna be good. (laughter) It’s in a historic building off Route 87. I like to stay active. We’re growing here. I have some fermenters arriving today at 4:30.?
Nowadays, there’s less people making the liquid. It’s all about the mental concept instead of the physical production of the art. And that’s a philosophical debate. Where is the beer? Is the beer a mental concept in brand and marketing or is it a physical creation done with your hands made from one person on that day and made some creative beer.
The industry now wants consistency in larger batches. So what is craft? What makes a craft brewery truly a craft brewery? I think it all comes down to flavor in the end regardless of who’s behind it and in what capacity.
On tap, delectable Bavarian lager (a specialty beer made exclusively for Barcade’s three locations) brings beguiling chocolate, cocoa and toffee flavors to caramel-toasted Munich malting. Soft-hopped earthen peat dewiness and recessive dried-fruited sherry-port conflux affect amiable mocha finish.
RIDGEFIELD PARK, NEW JERSEY
Like some mad scientist concocting strange brews for some secret society of local hipster geeks, Jersey home brewer Robert Olson could be found boiling and toiling with experimental elixirs at his suburban Ridgefield Park domicile on any given day crafting BOLERO SNORT’S premier 2011/2012 suds. Presently employed as a consultant for a construction claims company, the hearty twenty-eight year old Bergen Catholic grad spends most of his ‘free time’ devising formulas for a diverse range of beers under bovine-sniffing moniker, Bolero Snort – one of New Jersey’s latest upstart breweries.
Working out of his modest garage, the wily wizard recently hooked up with fellow award winning zymurgist Andrew Maiorana on an adventurous journey through the wondrous world of brewing. Together, the now business partners produce a constant barrage of non-traditional, alternative-minded beer batches that take customary methodology to task, with the occasional stylistically brew tossed in.
Brew days didn’t always go as smoothly as they do now. “I made a mess of my parents kitchen with early batches,” Olson claims as he puts an India Pale Ale up for boil. “I had to bottle beers on my second date with my wife, Melanie. I had sanitized everything, but there was sweat running down my shirt. So the fact she stayed with me was impressive. She saw me at my worst.”
Unfortunately, when it came time to cap the beers, Melanie accidentally broke the capper. Now he had forty bottles of beer with no way to cap. So he simply hand-hammered on each top.
In April 2010, Olson began jotting down his own recipes. By May, he’d befriended Matt Steinberg of North Bergen’s New Jersey Beer Company. At the time, Matt was launching his brewery with a tasting at North Arlington’s prestigious beer joint, Copper Mine Pub.
“Matt was a celebrity to me and I was afraid to talk to him. What I think endeared him to me was I saved him from a conversation with some crazy chick,” Olson laughingly recalls. “Matt inspired me – and helped me realized that brewing beer could be more than just a hobby. I started building a brand instead of just winging it. Now I’m routine and practiced.”
As we settle in at the patio, Olson pours his initial flagship beer, There’s No Ryeing In Basebull (its wordy crybaby appellation stolen from Tom Hanks’ famous League Of Their Own character), one of Maiorana’s original creations. A summery soft-toned steppingstone for lighter thirsts, but yet still flavorable for the craft beer enthusiast. It’s a sessionable mainstreamer with a rye-spiced nicety, subtle orange-dried fig acridity, and earthen bottom Olson tagged “a casual sipper for boating or a day on the beach.”
Next up, the bustling brewer breaks out an abstruse peculiarity – a Mexican lager pairing mint and lime zest. Another keg-only pilot batch, we quaff the last remaining bottle he had saved of this capricious Fourth Of July celebrator labeled Cowabunga. Its fragrant cologne snip, setback lemony clove tingle and woody hop prickle dance on the tongue as Sambuca illusions reach fruition. Like all of Bolero Snort’s pilot batches, it’s not yet commercially available.
Then, there’s Apbul Cinnamon Amber, a draft-only aperitif made for the Clemson alumnus’ football tailgate party. A festive cool weather treat, its liqueur-doused stone fruiting drapes cinnamon-toasted apple sharpness, lacey cardamom-nutmeg spicing and honeyed wheat sweetness.
Better still, Wee Heifer Fruitcake (dubbed ‘the fruitcake you don’t want to re-gift’) places dried red cherry, spiced fig and golden raisin inside a citric-tinged dessert beer emulating Reisling, port and burgundy on the backend. Oak-soaked in Woodford Reserve small batch bourbon, its unassuming 9% alcohol volume provides elegant warmth.
As church bells ring out at the top of the hour and a train whistles by in the distance, Olson dips into his first true collaboration with Maiorana. “The first time we brewed together was in March of 2011 and we really wanted to create something unique to mark the occasion.” Emulating a PB & J sandwich, Brown Bag Lunch Brown Ale places Concord grape-jellied Muscat wining below an increasingly pervasive walnut-shelled peanut butter mouthfeel.
A trial batch that Olson hopes to move into a seasonal offering, Bananas Foster-style hefeweizen, Scotty Goes Bullnanas, furnishes fig-dried plantain souring to brown-sugared rum-soaked oak. He admits getting proper carbonation and residual sugaring for fruit beers becomes an obstacle for most brewers as he sour mashes an original IPA.
We then drift into his cask-like Black IPA, recently re-branded Blackhorn, where piney-sapped dried fruiting embraces dark chocolate-y caramel malts.
“The Black IPA was my first original recipe. We’ve pursued alternative ones to become our flagship beer, including today’s standard IPA, but we just kept coming back to it,” he claims as I relish in its amplified wood-charred grapefruit afterburner.
Maiorana decided early on to enroll in the American Brewer’s Guild program to provide Bolero Snort with the technical background needed to spread the upstart brewery into a full production microbrew facility. For now, Olson utilizes a plastic Gatorade cooler as a transition tank. But he also benefits from the backyard garden that provides hops, herbs and fruits for certain beers.
So far, Bolero Snort’s impressed many aficionados. Their Gingerbull Cookie won a local competition two days hence. Olson may mash it higher to add residual sugaring, but its brown-sugared gingerbread sweetness, black-breaded molasses nuttiness, and nutmeg-clove seasoning appear to be well placed.
Before leaving, Olson unleashes Cuadrilla Cocoa (Mexican Hot Chocolate Imperial Stout), a lactic-heavy intricacy plying gingerbread-cinnamon spicing to cocoa nibs, vanilla bean, dark chocolate, sarsaparilla, licorice root and most strikingly, chili peppered heat.
“A cuadrilla is a team of people helping the bullfighter. It’s sure to get people fired up,” the smiley-faced entrepreneur concludes.
For Groundhog Day 2012, I revisit Olson’s 100-year-old Victorian pad to see how the federal and state liquor licensing is going. Bolero Snort has been granted federal approval, the first step in marketing beer for sale, since outdated state laws forbid him from taking the beer off-premises even if he’s allowed to brew up to 200 gallons per year for personal consumption.
At 9 AM, Olson sets up the pilot rig while rolling the brewing equipment from inside the garage to the outside patio. He hopes to be selling beer commercially this Summer and may move his equipment to a local warehouse soon. Initially the beer will be contract brewed with Olson and Maiorana assisting on brew days and distributing Bolero Snort’s fare, but the goal is to maintain a self-run production facility by late 2013.
Today, Olson’s beginning the brewing process for Blackhorn Black IPA as well as an unnamed sessionable Extra Special Bitter – his 70th batch since April ’10. “I’m building an arsenal through creative engineering,” the finance major with a biosystems engineering background says laughingly.
“One of the best thing about the brewing industry is the sense of community among craft people leading to fulfilling collaborations. Anytime two brewers get together, different techniques are discussed.”
And great beer is usually the result. Take Bolero Snort and New Jersey Beer Co.’s world class Clarence Clemons pilot tributary, Big Man Imperial Black Rye India Pale Ale, a creamy mocha-bound full body placing maple-sapped rye graining and oats-sugared cookie dough opulence above less opulent IPA-like bruised fruiting.
At this point, Olson heads to the basement and breaks out a buddy’s newfangled homemade suds (contained in a Samuel Smith brown bottle). Brewed by North Brunswick-based Ben Bakelaar, the ‘historically accurate’ 1776 Porter brings peat-malted dried cocoa and black chocolate to hop-charred nuttiness. It’s simply delicious and always nutritious.
As I make my way out, the sun’s shining on Olson’s fairly large frame. The future looks bright for Bolero Snort. And there’s plenty of beer geek insiders who already know they’re on the loose.
Refreshingly crisp India Pale Ale aged in Grand Marnier oak brings lemony grapefruit-peeled piney hop bittering to clean white-watered mineral graining, leaving only subtle hints of red-wined Grand Marnier along the trail. Vanilla, honey and burnt caramel sweeten ancillary dried orange tartness. An approachable wood-soaked digestif well suited for lighter thirsts but bold enough to receive strong ale plaudits.
Reliably sessionable milk stout may only have 4% alcohol volume, but its expectant mocha richness and hop-charred grain roast will please any hearty dark ale fan. Lactic black chocolate entry picks up coarse coffee-oiled walnut and black currant illusions. Silken milky backend tethers medium-bodied easygoer.