NJ beer: Why craft beer brewing boomed across New Jersey in the 2010s

Alex Biese | Asbury Park Press

This has been New Jersey's big beer decade, and Mike Kivowitz has witnessed the boom firsthand.

When Kivowitz launched the online resource New Jersey Craft Beer in 2010, there were around 14 breweries in the Garden State. As the decade comes to a close, there are more than 100.

It was a sea change Kivowitz saw coming.

"I didn't know how quickly or not quickly it was going to happen, or how long it was going to take to develop," he said, "but for sure there was a need for local (products) and a need for it to happen."

To be fair, beer always has had a home in New Jersey. The landmark India Pale Ale from P. Ballantine & Sons Brewing Company of Newark, considered by some to be the first American IPA, hit the market in 1878, while Anheuser-Busch's Newark brewery for Budweiser and related products opened in 1951.

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The state's first microbrewery, Climax Brewing Company in Union County's Roselle Park, opened in 1996. Both Flying Fish Brewing Co., now based in Somerdale in Camden County, and River Horse Brewing Co., currently located in Ewing, Mercer County, were founded the same year and found statewide followings.

Things really got brewing on the craft front this decade as power players such as Kane Brewing Company in Ocean Township and Carton Brewing in Atlantic Highlands, both in Monmouth County, and Cape May Brewing Company, Cape May County, all opened in 2011.

The game continued to change, and much of the growth can likely be attributed to Gov. Chris Christie's 2012 signing of a law allowing smaller breweries to increase production from 3,000 barrels a year to 10,000 and giving consumers the chance to drink on site, as long as they toured the brewery.

New Jersey had 25 breweries in 2012; it crossed the 100-brewery threshold in 2018, with some breweries becoming anchors for downtown business districts and others turning industrial parks into happening weekend destinations.

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According to the Brewers Association by 2018 — the most recent year the association has data for — at 109 breweries the state had 1.6 breweries per 100,000 adults 21 and older, placing us 45th in the nation in terms of breweries-per-capita.

The state's brewery growth is roughly comparable to our closest neighbors; with a 454 percent increase from 24 breweries in 2011 to 109 in 2018, according to the Brewery Association, New Jersey is growing at a faster clip than Pennsylvania's 402 percent growth during the same period but behind New York's 514 percent increase.

New Jersey's beer boom hit a speed bump in late 2018 when the state issued new restrictions on breweries, most controversially limiting breweries to hosting 25 events and 52 private parties a year. By early October, state regulators pumped the brakes on that, and a new set of rules was introduced in May.

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Under those most recent guidelines outlined by the New Jersey Department of Law and Public Safety's Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control, breweries will be limited to hosting 25 advertised events a year, won't be able to offer discounts via membership programs and 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. Patrons can have food delivered to tasting rooms and can bring in take-out or food from home.

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.

Kivowitz — whose New Jersey Craft Beer membership club ended 2019 with nearly 6,100 members with upwards of 5,300 already registered for 2020 — said that in 2020 he expects to see more local beer hitting the liquor store and package good markets, as well as more locally brewed products on tap at area bars and restaurants.

With fewer events like yoga sessions and paint-and-sip classes on a businesses' calendar, Kivowitz said going forward he expects the focus to shift more to the beer itself.

"That's really, in my opinion, what it should be," he said. "The beer is the important thing because if the beer is not perfect or great or good or you don't like it, you're not going to keep coming back to these places. So I think the beer is going to become also more nuanced and all of the breweries are going to figure out exactly what they're doing and hone in on that."

To read more stories by Alex Biese, click here. Follow Alex on Twitter at @ABieseAPP, or email at abiese@gannettnj.com.