NJ beer: Lakewood, Jersey City and Asbury Park breweries supporting ACLU

Alex Biese | Asbury Park Press

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The People Power Pledge, a call from Threes Brewing of Brooklyn, is uniting American craft brewers in the name of the American Civil Liberties Union this summer and fall, and a number of New Jersey breweries have joined the cause.

"We take our craft really seriously, but we also know that it's really just beer and when you think about it relative to the larger ills in society it can feel really frivolous," Threes Brewing CEO Joshua Stylman told the Asbury Park Press in late June. "Like today, you open a newspaper and you hear about children being taken from their parents at the border and then we go to work and we talk about whether we're going to make a pilsner or an IPA, and it really feels like kind of defeating sometimes.

"So for us, it's really just a way to take whatever little platform we may have, whether it's in our community or for some breweries more broadly, and really be able to use that to shine a spotlight on things that we think are meaningful. And if it makes a difference, then great. And if not, well at least we know we tried."

Since its 2014 founding, Threes Brewing has created a number of brews they classify as "activism beers" or "cause beers," including Gender Neutral, a pale lager with lemon zest launched in 2017. In 2018, 10 percent of the beer's sales went toward the New York City-based Anti-Violence Project working to end violence in lesbian, gay, bisexual, transgender, queer and HIV-affected communities.

For the last two years Threes has also brewed the hoppy pale lager Courage, My Love in support of the ACLU.

"Really, we think breweries are pillars in the communities that we reside in and really do want to take part in all sorts of things that are near and dear to our hearts," said Stylman.

The ACLU launched the grassroots mobilization platform People Power in 2017, and are currently hard at work in the fight for voters' rights. Threes knew they had to be part of the cause.

"We were kicking around the idea at the brewery and were really inspired and said, 'We should do something about this, we should make a people power beer,'" Stylman recounted. "And then we looked at each other, a bunch of us sitting around talking about this, and said, 'Well wouldn't it be cool if we called some of our friends to do it to?' and it kind of took on a life of its own."

What followed was the People Power beer movement, with more than 70 breweries and counting joining in. According to Stylman, all it takes to participate is for breweries to brew and release a beer named People Power (or some variant on that) between July 4 and Election Day, Nov. 6, and donate 10 percent of the proceeds from the sale of that beer to the ACLU.

"Our feeling is that if we're doing this right, they should all be different because people are different," Stylman said. "And the end game will be this what we hope is this beautiful tapestry of different flavors and different label arts. And who knows where it goes from here? So our feeling is that if we're calling on creative people to do a creative thing than they should interpret it in whatever way they see fit."

Threes' own People Power, a pilsner, released in early July. So far a trio of New Jersey breweries have signed on: Icarus Brewing in Lakewood, Dark City Brewing in Asbury Park and 902 Brewing in Jersey City.

(For more on the New Jersey beer scene, check out the episode of "Jersey Brewed" on the women of the state's beer boom at the top of this story.)

We're still waiting for details on Dark City and 902's contributions, but Icarus owner and head brewer Jason Goldstein told us about his company's People Power vision set for release on Labor Day weekend.

"We tried to design it just as we see the American working class so we decided to use an American Pale Ale as a base," Goldstein said. "We're going to be using some classic hops like Citra and Mosaic as well as some experimental hops including Experimental 04190, as that's always been a key facet of the working class in developing new ideas and marching forward.

"For a malt profile, we decided to mix a variety of domestic grains ranging from Pale Malt to Midnight Wheat (a very dark wheat) to create an amber hue for our amber waves of grain."

"In many ways, this exercise of a lot of voices coming together on a cause is really what the whole spirit of what the ACLU is doing with this group is all about," said Stylman. "So we're just really excited to play whatever little part we can play."