USA, NJ: Jersey Girl Brewing scheduled to officially open on April 15

With a head brewer whose name is Stoudt, the craft beer must be good at the new Jersey Girl Brewing Co. in Budd Lake, New Jersey Hills reported on April 5.

This Jersey Girl has nothing to do with Tom Waits who wrote the song of the same name or Bruce Springsteen who made it famous.

Rather, it is the name given by its owners, Charles Aaron, 47, and Mike Bigger, 48, both of Flanders, to Morris County’s first microbrewery at 426 Sandshore Road. The brewery will open on Friday, April 15 and there will be a launch party at 4 p.m., Tuesday, April 19, at Morris Tap and Grill, 500 Route 10, Randolph.

Initially, Jersey Girl will offer golden ale, pale ale, Porter and ESB, an extra special bitter English-style pale ale. The brewery is licensed to produce up to 50,000 barrels of beer a year. That production would make Jersey Girl one of the largest on the east coast. Instead, Bigger said he hopes to produce 1,500 to 2,000 barrels in the first year.

The brewery is not licensed to offer entertainment or to serve food but visitors can bring in pizza or other dishes to enjoy while drinking Jersey Girl beer.

“It’s a brewery, not a bar,” Biggers said.

Visitors will first get a tour of the facility and then go to the sampling room to try out all the beers on tap. Upon deciding, customers can then order a two ounce sample, a flight of four to six beers to taste, a pint, bottle, 32 or 64 ounce growler or a half keg. Jersey Girl beer also will be served at many area taverns and restaurants.

The brewery is in a 10,000-square-foot building. It includes a tasting room that occupies about 10 percent of the building and will hold about 75 people.

The rest of the building includes the brew house, fermenting tanks, brite tanks, and cold storage. Initially, the brewery will have capacity to produce about 4,000 to 5,000 barrels of beer a year, but there is room to add about 10 more fermentation tanks and triple its production, according to the website.

“We want people to come here and see the brewery,” Bigger said. “If you’re a home brewer, you can really appreciate it.”

The head brewer, Jodi Andrews-Stoudt of Montclair, has been involved in the brewing trade in for more than 23 years. The head brewer leads the brewing team and coordinating materials to produce quality and consistent beer.

Andrews-Stoudt said an important part of her job is to determine community tastes in beer and then to create those beers.

“You have to scope out the community for trends,” she said. “Most people feel the more hops the better.”

A native of Allentown, Pa., Andrews-Stoudt attended the Art Institute of Boston where she earned a degree as a graphic designer. But along the way, she worked in various brew pubs and decided to become a brewer.

“I love it,” she said. “There are so many aspects of the job, sensory evaluation, keeping palates current and keeping up with trends in beer and the culinary world.”

Andrews-Stoudt has performed and managed all aspects of brewhouse operations and staffing. She also has been responsible for new recipe formulation as well as developing customized cask and barrel ageing programs working with rum, bourbon, whiskey, tequila and wine barrels.

The brewery cellerman is Chris Pszonek, a 2013 graduate of West Chester University. He has been a craft beer manager and is a Certified Beer Server (Level 1 Cicerone). He also is the coach of the Sparta High School boys ice hockey team.

The cellarman is involved with all areas of beer clarification, processing, transferring and conditioning, fermentation monitoring, fermentation and finishing vessel cleaning and maintenance, cellar equipment cleaning and maintenance, as well as beer treatments and additions.

The nearest microbrewery, Manskirt Brewery, opened last year in Hackettstown.

07 April, 2016