NJ beer: Carton, Kane, Bradley Brew Project and Little Dog talk life in local craft beer

FREEHOLD TOWNSHIP - Augie Carton has some words of wisdom when it comes to growing a brewery in Monmouth County.

"Just make good beer," said the co-owner of Carton Brewing in Atlantic Highlands. In a place with as active a bar and party scene as New Jersey, he said, "you'll sell that beer."

Carton was speaking as part of a quartet of brewers and brewery owners who gathered Thursday night for the Asbury Park Press' Jersey Shore Influencers: Craft Beer Edition event at iPlay America in Freehold's Event Center.

Moderated by Asbury Park Press and USA TODAY NETWORK New Jersey business reporter Michael Diamond, their 90-minute discussion touched on topics including brewery tours, the current legislative landscape of New Jersey's liquor laws, non-alcoholic craft beer and the benefits of social media as a means of direct interaction with customers.

Both Carton Brewing and Kane Brewing Company of Ocean Township, represented by president and founder Michael Kane, have become regionally-renowned power players since each of their operations opened in 2011.

Kane, who worked in finance and home-brewed on the side prior to opening his brewery, admitted to slacking in many areas where other breweries work diligently, such as social media engagement, website updates and hosting of events. Instead, he explained that all of his company's efforts are directed to the product itself.

"We just focus on the beer," said Kane.

The beer, including Kane's signature American-style India Pale Ale dubbed Head High, had the opportunity to speak for itself on Thursday night, as each of the four participating breweries had one beer available for purchase during the event. The other offerings were Little Dog Brewing Co.'s altbier-style amber ale Gesundheit, Bradley Brew Project's Unicorn Girls hazy pale ale and Carton's 077XX East Coast Double IPA.

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Gretchen Schmidhausler opened Little Dog Brewing Co. in Neptune City in 2014; before that, she worked as a reporter for the Asbury Park Press and has brewed professionally since 1996 — including a 12-year run as the head brewer at the former Basil T's in Red Bank.

Brewing in a 1,600-square-foot building that had been a butcher shop, then a laundromat, before she moved in, Schmidhausler took a pragmatic view of life in the beer business.

"We're basically manufacturers," she said, "and we're paying our rent selling beer by the glass."

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Craft brewers, she explained, are essentially running two businesses, trying to satisfy both the crowds drinking in their tasting rooms as well as customers for their bar, restaurant and liquor store sales.

"You have to have new things to bring people into the tasting room, keep that fresh and interesting, but I'm trying to build brands," said Schmidhausler.

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One of the newest entrants to the Jersey Shore brewing community, Bradley Brew Project in Bradley Beach was opened by Chelsey Ziolkowski and her husband Mike in 2018. Their business has quickly become a key destination in their resurgent downtown.

As the local beer scene gets more and more crowded — Schmidhausler noted that Little Dog, Kane and Bradley Brew Project are among seven breweries located within five miles of each other — there's an increasing sense of professional competition.

"Everyone up here is a competitor," Ziolkowski said, "but (it's) beneficial, also."

Thursday night's summit came at a key time in New Jersey's booming beer world. Following Gov. Chris Christie's 2012 signing of a law allowing smaller breweries to increase production and give consumers the chance to drink on site as long as they toured the facility, New Jersey went from 25 breweries that year to crossing the 100-brewery line in 2018.

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But under the most recent guidelines outlined by the New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety's Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control introduced in May:

Breweries will be limited to hosting 25 advertised events a year.

Breweries will still not be able to provide food — other than packaged snacks, such as nuts or pretzels — to customers or collaborate with vendors, including food trucks, though patrons can have food delivered to tasting rooms and can bring in food.

Patrons still will have to tour the brewery before purchasing beer for on-site consumption. But under the new rules if a brewery keeps a record of tour-takers customers will only have to take the tour once a year.

Apart from the mandatory tour and the restrictions against selling food, the provisions laid out in the May special ruling "should be considered guidelines and will not be strictly enforced by the Division at this time, barring flagrant or repeated violations," according to an executive summary of the ABC's special ruling by James Graziano, acting director of the ABC.

Carton said the loosening of tasting room regulations back in 2012 didn't impact the way his brewery does business. Carton Brewing's tasting room, he explained, is used as a point of interaction with neighbors and customers so they can sample the product before being directed to local watering holes where they can keep drinking the product.

"We just wanted beer the way we thought it should taste in our bars, made locally, and we accomplished that," Carton said.