BY GLORIA STRAVELLI
Staff Writer
One of the most highly regarded microbreweries in the world isn’t in Bavaria, Belgium or England.
Also rated as one of the top small breweries in America, Heavyweight Brewing Co. is tucked away in a nondescript strip of warehouses in Ocean Township where brewer Tom Baker produces one of the nation’s top rated brews in a small but adventuresome brewhouse.
Web sites like Beer Advocate.com rated Heavyweight No. 14 among the Top 50 American Breweries in 2003, and rated its Perkuno’s Hammer Imperial Porter No. 26 among its list of Top 50 American Beers.
"It’s basically beers that other people don’t want to make, aren’t making," said Baker. "We have so many different ingredients, why not make something a little more interesting?"
Baker, Eatontown, will celebrate the fifth anniversary of Heavyweight Brewing with an Aug. 14 open house, during which brew aficionados, he terms "beer geeks," will get to taste some of the unique, robust ales, lagers and porters he brews.
"The open house will feature tastings of rare beers we’ve made over the years and kept in our cellar," said Baker, founder of the 3,200-square-foot microbrewery. "It’s a chance for beer lovers to meet.
"We consider ourselves a beer lover’s brewery, it’s a social thing," noted Baker. "There’s a whole culture involved. It’s very different and it’s bigger in cities. For most of the world, beer is as highly regarded as wine is. It’s definitely more complex and better to work with."
For the open house, Baker enlisted friends and fellow brewers to create a sahti, a Finnish beer made with juniper and rye.
"This is the kind of fun we had yesterday," he said, pointing to a bucket of evergreen cuttings. "It’s a juniper bush we made a beer out of. I had four people in here — homebrew friends, aspiring brewers and an apprentice — who all were excited about it. I get a lot of help, which is good because it’s free.
"I’m just always looking to do something unusual, something that somebody else doesn’t want to do. I thought it would be interesting."
Baker credits his sister-in-law with starting him on the path to brewing by giving him a home brewing kit as a gift. He was bitten.
In 1995, he left a career as a programmer analyst to attend the apprenticeship program run by the American Brewers Guild. He then worked as a brewer in area brewpubs and in 1998, began planning for his own microbrewery.
After eight months of planning and being turned down by lenders, Heavyweight was launched in March 1999 with a $100,000 business loan and $60,000 in personal funds.
Baker’s brewhouse comprises a 7-10 barrel brewhouse (an oversized, 2-15 barrel mashtun and kettle) and two, 10-barrel fermenters. He does his own packaging in-house, mostly in 12-ounce bottles, and even designs some of the colorful, distinctive labels himself.
"That’s what attracted me to brewing — it’s creative and I’m a frustrated artist, he said. "I do a lot of my own labels. But there’s also science, and it allows you to dabble in that as well."
Baker started producing two beers and 150 barrels, and by this year the microbrewery will produce 700 barrels. The addition of two fermenting tanks will increase capacity by another 800 barrels, he said.
The microbrewery packages three year-round offerings – Lunacy, Baltus O.V.S. and Perkuno’s Hammer Imperial Porter. In addition, Baker brews four seasonal beers and also releases draft-only and special bottled products throughout the year.
Baker’s focus is on brewing beers that are not readily available in the domestic market. Heavyweight ales, lagers and porters are bold interpretations of classic styles and have alcohol contents much higher than mass-produced American beers. Lunacy, a Belgian-style golden ale that was the first brew produced by Heavyweight, has a 7.7-percent alcohol content and the alcohol content of his beers range up to 10-11 percent.
"I have no problem making a beer that’s 4-5-percent alcohol if it’s interesting and challenging," Baker said. "I just made a 4.5-percent black lager, but who else makes a black lager? For me, it has to be beers that are interesting and aren’t made to death."
The brewhouse produces three year-round brews: Lunacy, created with Belgian Pilsner malt, Styrian and English Golding hops and freshly ground coriander; Perkuno’s Hammer Imperial Porter, named for the Baltic thunder god, with ingredients that include Munich malt with some chocolate and Roman beans; Stickenjab Alt Bier, a crisp lager with a major infusion of German hops.
In addition to the three regulars, Baker brews several seasonal beers like Cinderblock Lager, a German-style winter brew available January through March, and Two Druids’ Gruit Ale, available July through September, which is based on a medieval recipe flavored by the herbs yarrow, sweet gale and wild rosemary.
Only real devotees get to drink the limited quantities of Heavyweight’s OneTime
OnePlace series. Baker doles out the draft-only beers made in small, seven-barrel, batches sparingly — only two kegs per bar in each of Heavyweight’s prime markets.
Creating the complex beers "requires more in the making," Baker noted. That’s more of ingredients like European malt, hops and – importantly – more time. But the extended conditioning and maturation time help to develop the robust flavors.
Heavyweight’s brews are distributed in six states, — New York, New Jersey, Pennsylvania, Massachusetts, Maryland, and next week Heavyweight will enter the Virginia market for the first time.
With no advertising budget, the brewery’s following has grown through word-of-mouth, gorilla marketing and Internet buzz, and is concentrated mainly in cities.
"We sell less draft beer in New Jersey than we sell in the entire city of Philadelphia due to the nature of our beers: they’re stronger, bolder," Baker explained. "New Jersey is a somewhat timid market. I think the reason we’ve been able to survive and grow is because we expanded geographically to find people who like these beers, and it’s been big cities like New York, Philadelphia and Baltimore that have helped us. Those markets have helped spread the word. But it’s people. We have rabid fans. People become your advocates.
"We’re the smallest in the state but the most widely distributed of the 16 microbreweries and brewpubs in the state," said Baker, who is current president of the Garden State Craft Brewers Guild.
By Heavyweight’s fourth year, the microbrewery was producing 400 barrels and that was the break-even mark. But Baker said any profits get plowed right back into the brewery, he added.
Despite long days, Baker puts in doing everything from milling grain to making deliveries to stores and restaurants, he remains passionate about brewing and still finds it hard to believe that his small brewhouse has carved out a unique niche, apparently on a global scale.
"We’re the 14th in the world. How ridiculous is that when you look at this," he said, gesturing around the brewhouse on Village Road. "It’s just so ridiculous.
"When I think about all the good breweries out there, stuff like that amazes me, that we could be that small. I don’t know what it is. I think it’s just the uniqueness of it.
"We strive for the unique. Druid ale sells the worst but you know it’s just a great beer and people love it. It’s too interesting, too much fun. I have to make it."