NJ beer: 5 new breweries enter the New Jersey craft beer scene

New Jersey's beer scene is showing no signs of slowing down.

In fact, this spring and summer alone we're going to be welcoming several new craft breweries to the Garden State.

From Montclair to Seaside Heights, here's a look at just five of the upcoming breweries we can't wait to visit in the not-too-distant future:

1. Raritan Bay Brewing Co.

The craft beer boom has arrived in Keansburg.

Raritan Bay Brewing Co., located in a 19th-century building at Church Street and Carr Avenue, started pouring beer on March 23 and has so far been enthusiastically received by the Bayshore community.

"Everything's been going pretty well so far," said master brewer Jeff Benfer. "We've been open for business for three weeks now. We've sold a good amount of beer and we're starting to make money."

(Learn more about Raritan Bay Brewing Co. in the video above.)

So far, Benfer said, Raritan Bay Brewing's amber ale has become the crowd favorite, while his own beer of choice is the brewery's India Pale Ale.

"But," he concedes, "IPAs are not for everyone."

GO: Raritan Bay Brewing Co., 32 Church St., Keansburg, 732-769-5034, www.raritanbaybrewing.com.

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2. Heavy Reel Brewing Co.

For Ocean County beer lovers, Friday the 13th will be a very fortuitous date: 5 to 10 p.m. Friday, Heavy Reel Brewing Co. in Seaside Heights will celebrate its grand opening on the Boulevard.

Last call is at 9:30 p.m., and no growler fills will be available on opening weekend. Stay tuned to the Heavy Reel Facebook page for information on hours throughout the weekend.

A lucky few local beer lovers have already tasted a hint of what Heavy Reel is capable of thanks to Bay Dreamer, a 2017 collaborative session IPA created with neighboring Icarus Brewing in Lakewood.

Bay Dreamer, Heavy Reel owner Jeff Greco said, will return in canned form this summer.

Speaking with the Asbury Park Press in April 2017, Greco said he learned valuable brewing lessons from local beer legend Gretchen Schmidhausler of Little Dog Brewing Co., Neptune City.

The hopeful Heavy Reel signature brew, Greco said, is the Drowning Clown, an extremely hazy pale ale double dry-hopped with citra, mosaic and Amarillo hops. That, Greco said, will be the only constant beer at the brewery.

"We're so small that we're just going to keep brewing new beers and throwing out new beers all the time," he said. "We want to build a lineup of at least 25 beers that we just keep rotating through.

GO: Heavy Reel Brewing Co., 613 Boulevard, Seaside Heights, www.heavyreelbrewingco.com.

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3. Source Brewing

Good beer is about to start cropping up in Colts Neck.

Entrepreneur Philip Petracca is the founder of Source Brewing, slated to open in September at a former Route 34 dairy farm next to popular rustic culinary shopping destination Delicious Orchards.

Working with brewer Greg Taylor, whose studies took him from Chicago to Germany, Source will offer myriad styles, from lagers to saisons ("Given that we're a farmhouse brewery, you would expect that," Petracca said), with particular attention given to the various points on the IPA spectrum.

"We'll have a pretty wide range of IPAs, from your West Coast to your Northeastern styles to milkshake to single-hop variety of IPAs," Petracca said.

GO: Source Brewing, 300 Route 34, Colts Neck, sourcebrewing.com.

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4. Bradley Brew Project

The big day is getting closer all the time for Chelsey and Michal Ziolkowski, the couple behind the upcoming Bradley Brew Project on Main Street in Bradley Beach.

After receiving their temporary manufacturing license from the state's Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control last week, the couple began brewing beer on April 6, and hope to be open to the general public by mid-May.

Bradley Brew Project currently has four beers in the works. There are its two flagship beers: the classic American pilsner This Is Hard But Making Beer is Fun!, made with all certified organic ingredients, as well as a session stout, Cleaning, Doing Laundry or Making Beer.

The brewery is also working on both a hefeweizen and grisette-inspired New Jersey table beer made with malts, hops, yeast and honey all grown here in the Garden State.

GO: Bradley Brew Project, 714 Main St., Bradley Beach, 848-444-0914, www.bradleybrew.com.

5. Montclair Brewery

Husband-and-wife duo Denise and Leo Sawadogo have been working toward making Montclair Brewery a reality since 2014. They just have to wait a little bit longer.

The Walnut Street microbrewery was originally expected to open by the end of April. Due due to a number of issues, including construction and the need to receive a parking variance from the township's planning board following revisions to the site plan, Denise Sawadogo tells us the current best case scenario is now to be open by the end of spring.

But, Sawadogo said, the local community has been incredibly supportive in ways both big and small, from supporting a $10,000-plus crowd-funding campaign on Indiegogo covering construction costs to attending paint parties to freshen up the building's exterior.

Montclair Brewery, Sawadogo said, plans to offer seven to 10 beers at any one time, a combination of regular staples and rotating fixtures. She said that her husband, who is also the company's brewer, is passionate about creating fruit-based beers such as an orange ale or a grapefruit IPA.

GO: Montclair Brewery, 101 Walnut St., Montclair, www.montclairbrewery.com.