Kane Brewing...

Kane is producing the best beer in New Jersey. Head High IPA, Morning Bell Imperial Porter (when it was available), and Solitude are all fantastic. The 365 First Anniversary is also pretty great if you can get your hands on it.

 

I think it's just because they opened around the same time (summer of '11?) and are located in the same county and only 20 miles apart. Monmouth County hadn't had a production brewery in quite awhile at the time (the short-lived Red Bank Brewing Co and, more recently, Heavyweight), and the entire state hadn't seen new breweries open at all for over a decade I think it was. So, along with Iron Hill (a brewpub) and the nano-Cape May, they were first of the second wave.

Then they both choose similar - and somewhat unusual for the east coast - business models to be draught only. NJ's on-premise craft beer culture is still rather small compared to other states. They both self-distribute as well, IIRC?

Kegging only made their beers somewhat limited, growler-only for off-premise - not a lot liquor stores with growlers stations in some areas of the state. And the lack of bottle labels probably makes their overall "branding" and images less distinct. Rather plain and generic tap handles for both only furthered that confusion. And, on top of all that, to add to the similarities, both went with non-distinct beer names -

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• Launch, Boat, 077XX instead of Carton Pale Ale, Carton Brown Ale, Carton IPA
• Drift Line, Afterglow, Head High instead of Kane Brown, Kane Rye IPA, Kane IPA

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Not a series of criticisms but just noting the coincidental similarities. So, even before tasting the beers it seems easy to confuse the two companies.​

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Well, maybe a little criticism on their non-specific beer names - without labels and distinct tap handles and beer names, a casual drinker is dependent of bartenders for info, and NJ's true "craft beer bars" are few.​

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"What's that plain wood tap handle?"​

"Kane."​

"Uh, yeah, but what style of beer is it?"​

Looks around bar for a piece of paper --- "Drift Line."​

"Oh... OK".​

​

 

This excites me, greatly.

 

Yeah that has the potential to be quite good.

 

Already planning the epic bottle share for the release.

And after party at my house of course.

 

That has more than the potential to be quite good lol.

 

Any info on the release out there yet? I know they are taping a keg April 17th at the Taproom in Warren.

 

Not yet. I think Mike is still waiting for the carbonation to be perfect. Kegs are a different story.

I'll let you guys know as soon as I find out more since I'm there pretty much every weekend.

 

Lets just hope this cork doesnt just pop out once the cage is removed like 365. Nearly lost an eye.

 

Looks like they just got their website up and running - http://www.kanebrewing.com/

 

What is the brewery like? I'm in Princeton and I haven't seen much of Kane around at all...once on tap and owe or two bottles at my local shop. I was thinking of making a trip out there but couldn't really find any info online. Do they have food or anything or is it just a no frills, drink some samples and fill your growler type place?

 

They don't have any food, but you can hang out for a bit and have full pours of the beers they have on tap that weekend (in addition to sample sized pours and growler fills). I guess if you go on Saturday or Sunday you can hang out at the picnic tables in the brewery for a while, but when I was there early on a Friday night, everyone stayed in the tasting room.

 

They're only open Friday and Saturday. No Sunday.

 

Bottle release update:

The beer is ready, carbonation is good to go.

They're just waiting for the labels to come in.

We're probably looking at 2 weeks for the release, but you never know, could be longer.

 

they need to start bottling their IPAs asap

 

They're hoping to do 16oz cans of Head High and Overhead by the end of the year.

 

this puts a smile on my face

 

Definitely. We'll finally have a kick-ass "local" to send out as extras in trades. I'm sick of having to compare distributions because NJ has such shitty locals!

 

That would be amazing. I'd clean the 200 beers out of my fridge tomorrow to make room if I knew this was true. Did you hear this from Michael himself? When i was at the brewery about 6 months ago he said he had no immediate plans to bottle or can either of those so very happy to hear this if its true.

 

Mike has been talking about it for a while now, and I talked to the head brewer about it yesterday. It's not guaranteed, but they do seem very serious about it. I can't wait... Will NJ be the new Vermont??? Haha.