CRICKET HILL BREWING COMPANY

Tour Until You Drop

  "And I do my little turn on the catwalk"

Almost every brewery that you visit will have the mash/larter tun and brew kettle next to each other. Since both of these need to be accessed from the top to add ingredients, there is always a catwalk around them both. Anyone who has been on a brewery tour knows this. At Cricket Hill Brewing Company in Fairfield, NJ, this is where one of the most passionate brewery owners ascends to deliver his sermon to the faithful and qualify the shindig that takes place every Friday afternoon as a "tour". We'll get back to what is perhaps my favorite "tour" of any brewery that I have ever taken, but I need to go through the usual rundown first.

If you just pop in, get the lay of the land and maybe sample a few beers you're not going to get what this place is all about. Stick around and let the "social lubrication" work its magic and for the beer goggles to be set in place. For when you first arrive you'll see people in the parking lot, drinking beer and smoking cigars. They carry both activities in and out of the building all afternoon. Follow them inside and at first appearance you'll get the impression that busy employees shoved everything that wasn't nailed down on the brewery floor into every crack and crevice to make room for a party, just like Fezziwig's staff just prior to the Christmas party...er, Christmas tour. In the rafters there are strands of little, white lights that do less to make the place dark and dingy than to draw your attention to the plastic, childrens' riding toy shaped like a cricket. But  never mind all that and go get your samples and you'll find that beer goggles work not only with members of the opposite sex, but with buildings as well. Ignore your first impressions because if you put too much stock in it, you will miss the true heart and soul of this place and the inner light that is not perceived at first. Hang out and drink it all in...literally and figuratively.

The BUILDING is unimpressive and like many craft breweries is situated in an industrial complex, sharing its cramped, pothole-laden parking lot with a few other businesses that inhabit the street-facing side of the building. There is nothing architecturally or historically interesting about the place (like River Horse) and it is not spotlessly clean (like Flying Fish). But it has something both of those are missing...a deeply passionate soul. Although you wouldn't want to drop any of the proffered snacks on the floor and apply the five second rule, the owner assured me that their sanitation protocols are "over the top". And when you really think about it, all that matters is that the ingredients are fresh and that all conduits that the beer travels through are clean. As long as the product coming out the other end is drinkable, who cares what the floor looks like?

I'm trying to get some verification on the existence of a GIFT SHOP as I saw no merchandise on hand for sale. It's entirely possible that there was a sheet, listing available items, posted somewhere that I missed while enthralled by the band and the beer. Maybe the tasting table from the neighboring cheese company supplanted their "company store", but three visits from four different kohai all came away with the same impression: there is no gift shop. On their website the prices seem pretty reasonable. One of their pint glasses is $4.00; most other places charge $5.00.

Rick Reed Adressing the Faithful

The TOUR is what makes a visit here entirely worthwhile. I made the mistake of referring to the surrounding revelry as a "party" to the owner, Rick Reed. He quickly corrected me and said that it is indeed a "tour". I gladly stood corrected and, when the time came, enjoyed a tour like no other before it. If you're reading this then you've more than likely been on a brewery tour. You may have even suffered through a boring, repetitive, monotonous dialogue from an office stooge whose turn it was to lead the tour that day. You probably even resisted the urge to correct them as they confused the mash tun with the whirlpool, as I have done on a tour or two. Yes, on those tours they teach you HOW they make beer, but most of us are past the overview portion of that lesson. From his perch on the catwalk, Rick may not teach you much about the process (or he may), but you learn about the method...the method to his madness. During the pontification you get a good understanding of WHY people brew beer, WHY they scrap perfectly profitable careers to get into this business and the JOY they experience by having made that choice. You may hear some of the frustration that comes with this business, but you'll get the feeling that the love of the craft will always overcome any roadblocks.

Rick gives this tour so that they can operate the TASTING BAR and keep within state legality (so he says. ..I honestly believe he really enjoys entertaining his tour guests). As you enter, you give someone at the table $2.00 and you take your plastic cup that has four tickets in it. Regardless of the color, each ticket will get your cup filled with any of the beers they're offering that day. I hear that on some days you can pay $5.00 and get a souvenir glass as well. It was not one of those days when I was there so I'll need to go back. There are four taps mounted to the wall between the brewery area and the refrigeration room, so you can try them all unless they've got a sixtel going through a cooling rig. They had the Summer Ale, Colonel Blide's, Hopnotic, a Belgian Dubbel and a shandy...yes, a shandy. Rick was not happy about this, because they had made it from a failed batch of East Coast Lager, their flagship beer. In fact, the story of East Coast Lager and the mistake that resulted in pouring most of it and adding lemonade to the rest was the basis of the tour sermon. He implored everyone to try the shandy and let him know honestly if they liked it or not. You almost got the feeling he wanted people to tell him it was horrible as if he had a bet with someone in Marketing that a shandy wouldn't sell. It was actually pretty good...for a shandy. My mom would have loved it.

Cricket Hill's BEER selection is developing into a nice assortment of styles that are done very well. Rick touts the results of his labors as "the finest beer on the planet Earth." There are people who would dispute that  brash claim, as I might be inclined to do, but I have to give Rick props on making some really nice beer, across the board. From the tasting bar I was really impressed with the Belgian Dubbel and it would have been the tops for me had Rick not brought forth a couple of bottles he had in back. The first was a barleywine and it was very, very nice. But then he produced a bourbon barrel-aged barleywine that was phenomenal. Folks, I LOVE Weyerbacher's Insanity, which is Blithering Idiot aged in bourbon barrels. I never thought that I'd ever say that there was a beer brewed in New Jersey that I liked better than Insanity, but here I go. The bourbon barrel-aged barleywine that Rick poured for us was so perfectly balanced that the bourbon did not overwhelm the beer and both swam harmoniously in my mouth and made me loathe to swallow down the last drop from my cup, knowing it might be the last time I ever tasted it. It was superior to Insanity on many levels. Can you find this on the shelf? We asked Rick about that and he was evasive, so don't hold your breath, but join me in crossing your fingers. Update: Yes, it has been distributed in 22 ounce bottles.

You can watch the YouTube videos of Rick's little turn on the catwalk. Go ahead and click the play button to watch him in action. But you're not going to get the full effect of being there and FEELING how connected this man is to his brewery, his craft and his loyal drinking base. Is this a case of Rick being "too sexy" for his beer? Does his likability drive you  to WANT to like the beer more, so you wind up overestimating its true value? Does his passion act as beer goggles so that a dingy, unimpressive-looking brewery feels like a great place to piss away a Friday afternoon? I can't answer those questions for you; you're just going to have to go and figure that out for yourself.

CLOVERLEAF TAVERN

Home away from home

"Sometimes you wanna go where everybody knows your name..."                          

Yeah, how overused is that lyric? So I apologize for that, but we all do want to have a place where we can get away from it all, but still have a comfort level built out of familiarity. For me, and much of the kohai, that place is The Cloverleaf Tavern in Caldwell, NJ. The bar staff recognizes The Senpai and me when we come in. When one of us shows up alone, we usually get asked if the other is coming as well. And now The Geisha, The Control and The Duck and Daisy are known to some of the staff.

So one would ask how we can do an objective write-up of a place that is so dear to us? Actually, I believe it will be easier to do than for a place new to us. When you visit a place for the first time and have a good time, much of what could be wrong is hidden to you...you're having fun and issues can be overlooked. Likewise, if the experience is negative, you focus on your frustrations and they have a tendency to overshadow anything positive. In the case of The Cloverleaf Tavern, we've been there on nights when we didn't want to leave, but also had visits that left us scratching our heads over some of the wait staff. When it's this familiar, little things get noticed and objectivity is not a problem.

The ATMOSPHERE here is not unique to many restaurants that are in college towns with a population rife with families who have called the place home for generations. That's a nice way of saying that you get a lot of barely-legal drinkers, geriatrics and everyone in between. I love places like this. The older patrons usually have great stories to share and are appreciative of the audience. The younger crowd wants to try to impress, but is still open to learning about the beer that the place serves. And due to their beer selection you find many beer enthusiasts here willing to talk beer until they finally kick you out.

The architectural style seems to be one of expansion and necessity and the lay-out of the place could only be worse if you really worked at it. The hostess station is in what is nearly the dead center of the establishment. You couldn't pick a more inconvenient place to put it and I can only assume it's where it is because the bar was there first and it would be too cost-prohibitive to reconstruct the whole joint to improve the traffic flow. Despite a waiting area next to the back door, the result is that many people block off the traffic from the bar to the dining rooms and the rest rooms. Trying to wind your way to the rest rooms, after polishing off a 10% ABV barleywine or two, can be challenging and dangerous to glassware precariously perched on servers' trays.

A short paragraph on the restrooms: clean and well-maintained with many amenities including a mouthwash dispenser. It's up to you to figure out why a restaurant known for its beer selection and award-winning cocktails would have one of these in the bathroom.

The SERVICE is a bit of a Jekyll and Hyde story; it all depends on where you are. All of the kohai prefer to be at the bar or the tall tables in the bar area when we're there only to partake in some adult beverages. We tend to differ when we're there for dinner and any place you sit other than the bar area is hit or miss. Even the low tables in the bar area are served by the general wait staff.

The problem is that they have some pretty high turnover in the dining rooms. It's not that they're bad waiters or waitresses (they're pretty attentive), it's just that it almost seems that as soon as someone gets to know anything about the beer, they leave. But this is starting to stabilize and the owner has been started to send his staff to Cicerone training. How awesome is that?

They have four different dining areas: a main dining area, the really nice patio (when weather permits), the family room (which I try to avoid like the plague unless I've got the kids) and even an upstairs room that you can reserve for parties. They utilize that room on special days or when they know they'll be crowded.

The bar staff is more consistent and they're pretty knowledgeable about the beer. They've got some excellent bartenders...some of which have won awards for their creations. It's this group (and the managers) that make it such a welcome place for us.

The FOOD consists of some pretty good pub grub and restaurant fare. Their burgers are pretty darn good (I prefer the sliders) and they have a Burger of the Week which can be rather creative. The fish and chips are an Irish pub classic and are excellent. Their weekly lunch and dinner specials offer an ever-changing choice of well-prepared food. They even have a brunch laid out every Sunday which is pretty good, I must say. They'll do special brunch themes on special days like St. Patrick's Day (or the closest Sunday to it), Mothers' Day and Fathers' Day.

The food is pretty reasonable in PRICE. It would have to be to keep the college kids coming back night after night. In some cases they're there just to drink which means the beer needs to be offered at a decent price-point as well. But there are brews that are pretty expensive because of what they are, but many are in the middle of the price range when you do comparative shopping. Considering the number of special brews they carry, they do a great job of keeping the prices in check.

The taps on 6/29/11

Which brings us to the BEER. They have 24 taps...some are constant, but most of them rotate. Their bottle selection is pretty impressive, but don't look for anything from Anheuser-Busch; they don't carry any of it, he  writes with a barely suppressed ear-to-ear grin. They're always bringing in special firkins and sixtels, but you need to know about them almost immediately because they run through them quickly. The best way to do this is to "Like" them on Facebook. That's also a great way to keep up with all their beer events: tap take-overs, weekly menu specials, brewery nights and Randall the Enamel Animal runs. Oh yeah, they've got one and they certainly have fun with it.

They fill growlers off of any of the draft beers as long as they have enough to satisfy all their patrons.  They offer three colors in the special growlers produced by Benjamin Arthur, but also have the standard screw top jugs.

The Senpai (800) and The Beer Samurai (801)

One of the most genius aspects of the CL is that they have a couple of loyalty programs. One card is based on what you spend (food and drinks), but there's another program based on what you drink...and there are a few levels. All levels have perks as you run through great styles and different breweries and the whole thing is a lot of fun and keeps customers coming back...as if a beer geek needs another reason. At the time of this post The Senpai and I have completed the MBA (Master of Beer Appreciation) (see picture to the left), with The Control and The Duck starting to fill out punches on their cards. The Senpai is close to completing the PhD (Professor of Hops and Drafts) and I've started to fill out my second card in that level. We've all experienced some pretty great brews doing this and have had a lot of fun. Just pulling out your card can spur a conversation with others at different levels within each program. We've met some really great beer nerds in this manner.

Update: As of August 2012, the Duck and the Control have both completed their MBAs, the Senpai has completed his PhD and I have completed my second PhD, with no real urgency to complete a third. 

So be sure to visit The Cloverleaf Tavern and raise a pint. It's a great, friendly, family-safe environment with a lot of excellent beer and great food! Perhaps you'll catch one, two or more of us there feeling right at  home bellied up to the bar. If you're at the bar, tell them that the Beer Samurai sent you...they may have a story or two for you. 

"And you're always glad you came."