New NJ Breweries

With all the new breweries popping up in NJ, I wanted to start a thread to discuss them. I know Screamin’ Hill, Cypress and Conclave all opened up in the last week or so and Demented is opening up its taproom soon. NewJerseyCraftBeer.Com list 38 startup/breweries in the early development stage that are pending.



Anyone been checking them out? These are the smaller ones I’ve visited in the last couple months:



Conclave - Flemington - Opened today. 4 solid beers on tap. Reminded me of Kane in the beginning a little bit. Much better than most of the smaller breweries I’ve visited. I expect them to be good.



Cypress - Edison - Opened last week. 7 serviceable beers on draft. Reminded me of JJ Bitting a bit. One of the owners was a manager there. Beers were okay, but nothing real exciting.



Lunacy - Magnolia - Had 5 beers on when I was there including a chocolate peanut butter stout. Beers were okay, but need to be dialed in a bit more. Interested to see how they’ll be in a year or so.



Angry Erik - Lafayette - Similar to Lunacy in that they are experimenting already, but the beers were a little better and a bigger facility. I think they could be pretty good down the road.

I hit up Screamin’ Hill yesterday at opening time on opening day. The wheat was meh and they were randal infusing it with fresh berries, I believe raspberry, and was still meh. The habenero ale was decent as was the chocolate cinnamon stout. Nothing ground breaking beer wise but I think they need some time to get used to the new brewing system.

Thw taproom is pretty small. Just 2 dozen people will pack that room. The place itself os very cool on a small farm in Monmouth County. I highly suggest visiting on a gorgeous day so if it’s crowded you can just relax and overlook the farm which is really cool. Oh and it’s like corn/pumpkin/veggie farm not an animal farm so it smells fine outisde.

The taproom isn’t open yet, but I had the Demented Brewing Double Dementia today and it was a very good Double IPA. Given that it’s also one of the closest breweries to my house, I will definitely be there once they open.

Melovino is also making some world class meads. Ghost pepper mead is being released this Friday.

Demented is pretty close to me as well (I’m just a couple of miles away) so I’ll be anxious to give them a spin when I have the chance. I hope they’re good (early reports have been very promising).

I’ve visited quite a few of the other new small brewers in NJ over the last couple of years (or have otherwise tried their products in bars or the occasional bottle purchase). Unfortunately I haven’t been too impressed thus far (and a couple of them should clearly have remained homebrewers rather than going commercial).

But that said, props and good wishes to all of them...it’s nice to see the entrepreneurial spirit alive and well. Even though I’ve yet to see any NJ brewer making anything particularly compelling, the best of them are making very passable beers and some of these places do seem to be doing consistently good business and that’s what matters... but it will be interesting to see how long some of them survive.

Have not been to any of the one’s you listed yet.

Has anyone tried any Departed Soles in Jersey City? I know they’ve had a couple of soft openings, but I wasn’t able to make any of them.

Originally posted by ben4321
Have not been to any of the one’s you listed yet.

Has anyone tried any Departed Soles in Jersey City? I know they’ve had a couple of soft openings, but I wasn’t able to make any of them.

Originally posted by MaxxDaddy

Haven’t been yet, but I just recently learned about them. May try to give them a shot next weekend.

I’m going to try to go to Brix City and Magnify soon. I’m tempted to go tomorrow night or later in the weekend because Brix City has a beer on called Jaromir Lagr and that’s something I just need to tick.

Originally posted by MaxxDaddy

Originally posted by ben4321
Have not been to any of the one’s you listed yet.

Has anyone tried any Departed Soles in Jersey City? I know they’ve had a couple of soft openings, but I wasn’t able to make any of them.

Haven’t been yet, but I just recently learned about them. May try to give them a shot next weekend.

I’m following their Twitter account, so I’ll know if there are more of those soft openings for pilot batches. I’ll be in JC next Saturday night for dinner anyway, so hopefully they’ll have something going on.

Originally posted by jtclockwork
I’m going to try to go to Brix City and Magnify soon. I’m tempted to go tomorrow night or later in the weekend because Brix City has a beer on called Jaromir Lagr and that’s something I just need to tick.