Go to your local beer store and buy a New Jersey beer. I bet you can't. I can't and I live in Manhattan, just seven miles as the mangy street pigeon flies from Weehawken. Yet in my local bottle shop, I can't find a single New Jersey beer. It's easier for me to grab stuff from Hawaii or Alaska or even Japan. New York (147 total) and Pennsylvania (153) are two of the best states when it comes to the amount and quality of craft breweries. Yet, in between these two great beer states, lies what for a long time has been one of the worst. How is one of America's most populous and wealthy states also one of the poorest when it comes to beer? I was determined to find out...and excited to learn that, because of two key upstarts, the tide is finally turning.

That New Jersey doesn't have great breweries isn't just my opinion. The Garden State places zero breweries on Rate Beer's top 100 Best Brewers in the World list (New York has four and Pennsylvania three) and zero beers on Beer Advocate's Top 250 Beers in the World list (New York places four, Pennsylvania one). One brewery has stood prominent in New Jersey since the early-1950s though.

In the shadow of Newark International Airport lies an absolute behemoth of an Anheuser-Busch plant cranking out ten million barrels of beer per year. I always disparagingly figured the giant neon eagle gracing the brewery's roof stood as a Bat-Signal for the state's typical consumer: mass-market, adjunct lager drinkers. Unless I'd missed the episode, I had never seen Pauly D and The Situation pre-gaming with Heady Topper cans before hitting Karma for a Dogfish Head tap takeover event.

Yet one major point makes my vicious stereotyping surely wrong. As pointed out to me, New Jersey gets more breweries distributed to it than any other state. Thus, there must be a customer base thirsting for quality. I know anytime I pass through the state, I'm giddy to stock up on Lost Abbey, Great Lakes, and numerous other U.S. breweries not currently distributed to New York City. Still, I never have an urge to buy any Jersey brewery's bottles and that's always bummed me out.

I had another theory there was something locationally preventing New Jersey from producing great breweries. Craft breweries are often in warehouse districts, office parks, "bad neighborhoods," and the middle of nowhere. You rarely see them in suburban locales and, in a way, that's the entirety of New Jersey. I thought it no coincidence that Connecticut, another mostly suburban state, likewise has very few great breweries. I wasn't sure whether this was because the typical beer-maker archetype (hip, bearded, artsy) wasn't the kind of person who would want to open a brewery in the 'burbs…or whether these suburbs have a "not in my backyard" mentality toward vice peddlers. (I, incidentally, have a "PLEASE in my backyard" mentality when it comes to great breweries.) Yes, New Jersey may be populated, but perhaps it's too populated. It is in fact the most densely-populated state and maybe there simply isn't space to brew.

That point is debunked with a little research. Pre-Prohibition, the state topped out around 3,000 breweries and as recently as 1935, there were over 700. Even more interesting, American craft beer's most notable yeast strain traces its origin to New Jersey. Ballantine Brewery was founded in Newark in 1840, and by 1879 it was twice as large as Anheuser-Busch. Their most iconic beer was a wood-aged IPA which went on the market the year after Prohibition ended. Perhaps more importantly for modern craft beer history, a man named Ken Grossman "stole" that beer's yeast strain and cultured it in Chico, California, when he created his iconoclastic Sierra Nevada Pale Ale in 1980.

Still, much like America's craft beer revolution is often attributed to President Carter's 1978 homebrewing legalization, if New Jersey's revolution actually comes to fruition, Governor Chris Christie might be the man to thank (although, with his recent weight loss, he might turn down that pint you buy him). For the longest time, New Jersey has had some of the most oppressive beer laws around. Heck, the "Alcohol laws of New Jersey" Wikipedia page takes over 11,000 words (and 300 footnotes!) to summarize them, rotely noting there are "many peculiarities not found in other states' laws." High taxes, costly liquor licenses (upwards of $100,000), and even such absurdities as not allowing Jersey brewers to attend state beer festivals all come down to what is called "home rule," something that allows individual municipalities to regulate as crazily as they see fit. With laws historically more restrictive than the states surrounding them, most aspiring local brewmasters have found it easier to simply cross a border to New York or Pennsylvania.

Luckily, just last fall, Christie signed a measure which finally makes it desirable for New Jersey beer makers to stay in state. No longer are breweries forced to give free tasters after a tour and are, instead, able to actually maintain tasting rooms in which to sell beer. Likewise, whereas before breweries could only offer two six-packs worth of brews to go, this has been lifted allowing for bottle release parties (ever popular with beer geeks) as well as growler and keg sales. This is creating much-needed revenue for breweries and finally turning beer-making into a somewhat feasible business.

Still, there are only twenty-five New Jersey breweries currently in operation and, until recently, none of those were blowing me away. Flying Fish is the state's largest craft brewery and their cleverly labeled Exit Series occasionally borders on sublime while High Point's Ramstein Winter Wheat Eisbock is annually one of my favorite Christmastime releases. Still, I'd all but written off New Jersey as ever producing a true brewing superstar when just last year I had a pint of a hoppy session ale called Boat Beer and immediately asked the bartender, "Where is this from?"

"Most 'New York' brewers are making their beers farther from New York than we are!" notes Augie Carton, playfully mocking the dirty little secret that many New York City breweries contract brew their products either way upstate or way out of state. Meanwhile, I was able to drive to the aforementioned co-founder's Carton Brewing in under an hour during a busy summer shore weekend. Augie was raised and still lives near Atlantic Highlands, even commuting to Jersey City via a forty-five minute boat ride every weekday for his Wall Street trader job.

Augie is a self-described "flavor geek" who used to write some of the most articulate restaurant reviews I've ever read at his blog Augieland and whose personal wine collection numbers near 5,000. When it came time to go into the flavor business himself in 2011, he thought a brewery an obvious choice over a restaurant or winery. Besides being able to get by with a much smaller staff, he liked the ability to craft flavors he'd dreamt of but never had in a beer before. There was absolutely no question he would open his brewery where he grew up.

Being a local, from a family of longtime locals (he's technically from nearby Locust), meant Augie would be embraced by the neighborhood while also being able to navigate political road blocks in a way outsiders couldn't. Amazingly, Carton Brewing is located literally across the street from an elementary school. Augie also relates that when he enters a town meeting he's already longtime acquaintances with most everyone in the room. He's also never had any worries about customers embracing his beers, despite my stereotyping of the typical Jersey shore consumer as perhaps being a shit-faced guy in a Corona-logoed tank top ("I've been that guy!" he laughs). On the Sunday I visited, the tasting room had a diverse crowd of beer geek destination travelers, middle-aged locals, and even a man who'd just come from fishing the shore and asked Augie if he wouldn't mind throwing his fluke in the beer fridge.

Having said that, Carton's beers are not made to appeal to everyone. Augie and co-founders Chris Carton and Jesse Ferguson craft highly-ambitious brews that actually live up to their promise. A few of my favorites include Intermezzo, a green apple wasabi root sour ale, Monkey Chased the Weasel, a mulberry-packed Berliner weiss with the most gorgeous sunset purple color, and Purity Body Flavor, a Garden State Craft Brewer's Guild collaboration using, wait for it, Chico yeast.

Creating beers that are anything like standard flagships, and ones which taste like foods he admires (he compares Intermezzo to a palate-cleansing sorbet he once had), is of the utmost importance to Augie. Each Sunday, Carton brews a twenty-gallon pilot batch on their beloved "Tippy" machine to test out potential future concoctions. (The brewery's YouTube channel offers numerous "Why Did We Brew This?" videos which are a lot more entertaining than you'd guess.)

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One great New Jersey brewery might be an anomaly, but two and we'll call it a trend. Just two weeks earlier, while plowing through samples at this year's SAVOR, I stumbled upon some extraordinary beers from a brewery I'd never heard of before and one I embarrassingly hadn't even made a mental note to try when scouting out the festival's program days earlier.

This was Ocean Township's Kane Brewing which, coincidentally, opened on the same shoreline just a few weeks before Carton. From Carton, reaching Kane involves tacking on a half-hour drive south through a part of the state more beautiful than I knew existed (hopefully you're riding with a local who can point out Mr. Bon Jovi's house).

Sam Masotto

Michael Kane got into homebrewing in college and, like me, never understood why his home state didn't have more quality beer. He lived in Manhattan for ten years and, as an investment banker, had traveled the world. His locational options were wide open, but, at the end of the day, he wanted to start a business in the same place he wanted to raise his family, despite the so-called downfalls. As he told me, "It was worth limiting my business model to elevate New Jersey's craft reputation."

While Carton distributes to a few hipper bars in Manhattan, Brooklyn, and Philadelphia, Kane restricts their distribution strictly to their home state. In fact, Michael likes to capitalize on a rare positive New Jersey beer law which allows him to self-distribute. He loves the ability to literally sell the beer himself to the bars that stock it. I'd advise any Jersey spots not currently sporting a wooden Kane tap handle to get on board ASAP. Their Overhead is one of the east coast's finest double IPAs, their Morning Bell has a roasted coffee aroma as intense as the freshest batch of Founder's Breakfast Stout, and their lofty barrel aging program has already created several splendid high-ABV options.

If Carton and Kane are superstars who would be huge no matter where they hung their shingles, other New Jersey breweries seem poised to join them in the arms race. Flying Fish and New Jersey Beer Co. are beefing up their taprooms, River Horse just opened a new spot, and Iron Hill Brewery & Restaurant is expanding their brewpub locations. Meanwhile, Cape May Brewing and Rinn Duin have sprung up in the past couple years, while dozens more local breweries are currently in the works.

It's certainly an exciting time for New Jersey beer fans. And, while I still may not be able to get much New Jersey beer in New York, I currently have a refrigerator overflowing with growlers of Carton and Kane. Once I finish them, I'll be itching to get back over the border for some refills.

Aaron Goldfarb (@aarongoldfarb) is the author of and .

Aaron Goldfarb Aaron Goldfarb lives in Brooklyn and is a novelist and the author of 'Hacking Whiskey.'

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