Whiskey distillery coming to Asbury Park

Asbury Park has a Biergarten, restaurants that serve craft cocktails, and a liquor store where you can purchase craft beers and spirits – but they don't have a craft whiskey and gin distillery. At least, not yet.

In April, Asbury Park Distilling received planning board approval to locate a craft whiskey and gin distillery on Lake Avenue and Emory Street.

"The (Asbury Festhalle & Biergarten) and the (distillery) are connected by a glass wall in between the two businesses, so people will be able to see the distillery process," said Asbury Park zoning officer Barbara Van Wagner.

Indeed, the two buildings will be connected, but will be two separate businesses with no direct access, said Andrew Karas of Ridgewood, a partner of Asbury Park Distilling.

"We're going to operate a craft distillery under the new craft distillery law in New Jersey," Karas said. "Right now it looks like we'll be the first ones making whiskey in New Jersey."

The first

The new craft distillery legislation went into effect December 2013, which changed the annual craft distillery license fee from $12,500 to $938 a year.

Karas hopes that the distillery will open by the end of this year or early 2016.

He anticipates the "buildout" of the building located adjacent to the Biergarten to take roughly six months, while the delivery of the still – the equipment used to distill alcohol – could take anywhere from 9 to 14 months, as they are predominantly made in Germany, Karas said.

On top of that, that business still must obtain the necessary state and federal licensing fees.

Asbury Park Distilling will employ James Waters, an experienced brewer. Karas said he doesn't have any personal experience in crafting whiskey or gin.

"I have no experience, however, my grandfather was a bootlegger in prohibition, so it's in my blood," he said.

Karas, an attorney at a Paramus firm, has worked with Sackman Enterprises, an Asbury Park based developer, which is how he "fell in love" with Asbury Park.

Long history

Warren Bobrow, author of three cocktail-centric books including "Whiskey Cocktails," said that distilling has a long history in New Jersey, but it didn't start with whiskey or gin.

"Distillation is something followed right back to colonial era. ... The first distillers were rum distillers because of the ease of (obtaining) the raw ingredient, which is molasses," Bobrow said.

Not until the 1800s, he said, did whiskey make its first appearance in the United States when an influx of northern Europeans brought the technology for distilling whiskey with them.

"(Craft whiskey distilling) is absolutely huge and that's absolutely fantastic," Bobrow said. "It's gone from maybe 100 (distilleries) two years ago to several hundred and that's just east of Mississippi."

"I think people are paying much closer attention to quality of ingredients and products they eat and drink. They're looking for diversity and new flavors. ... It all comes from making something from scratch," Bobrow said.

At this time, Bobrow said, there are no craft whiskey or gin distilleries in New Jersey.

Have you seen a construction project in Monmouth or Ocean counties and wanted to know what was going there? Contact staff writer Devin Loring at 732-643-4035 or dloring@gannettnj.com, and she will look into it for a future column. For previous stories, visit www.app.com/whatsthere.