The newly opened Asbury Park Brewery took a different approach toward entering New Jersey's booming craft beer scene.
ASBURY PARK - Most of the people who have opened breweries during the recent boom in New Jersey's craft beer scene have home brewed for years before trying to make a business out of it.
But the musicians behind the newly opened Asbury Park Brewery opted to do things in reverse in their effort to bring a taste of Asbury Park to the masses.
Local musician and attorney Jeff Plate - who has played in the bands Low Flying Jets, Sikamor Rooney and with The Parlor Mob and Nicole Atkins - registered the web address and bought intellectual property rights for "Asbury Park Brewery" in 2005, long before New Jersey loosened its laws for breweries in 2012 and before he had even brewed his first beer.
The musician-backed Asbury Park Brewery, owned by local attorney and musician Jeff Plate, has taken a unique approach toward entering New Jersey's booming craft beer scene. (Rob Spahr | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com) "Like many other people, I thought it was a good idea for Asbury Park to have a brewery. I definitely wasn't the first or the last," he said. "But I figured that if I'm going to open a brewery, I might as well learn how to brew beer."
During the next several years, Plate honed his craft beer palate and brewing talents while simultaneously playing in bands, going to law school and then practicing as a commercial transactions attorney.
When the state's craft beer scene started to explode, he dusted off his business plan and began shopping the idea around to other New Jersey musicians who were passionate about beer and had an inclination of Asbury Park's revival.
"These people knew what was going on in Asbury Park, could see the redevelopment and could see the potential," he said. "And by early 2015, the confluence of craft beer and the city of Asbury Park started to make a lot of sense to them, so I was able to get some private placement investment some pretty cool music industry people."
These investors included Bob McLynn - co-founder of the New York City-based Crush Management, which includes musical acts including Fall Out Boy, Panic! at the Disco, Sia and Train - and Chris Cornell, founder of Manhead Merch, which handles the promotional merchandise for dozens of major musical acts.
When it came time to find a building in which to build the Asbury Park Brewery, Plate again opted for the path less traveled.
Asbury Park Brewery is located in a nondescript building at 810 Sewall Avenue that is tucked away inside of the fenced-in area behind the Family Dollar on Main Street.
The musician-backed Asbury Park Brewery, owned by local attorney and musician Jeff Plate, has taken a unique approach toward entering New Jersey's booming craft beer scene. (Rob Spahr | NJ Advance Media for NJ.com) "Our tasting room is really subordinate to the brand. I wanted to launch the brand Asbury Park Brewery and I wanted to have the capacity to produce enough beer to bring the brand to the rest of the state and beyond on a pretty truncated timeline," Plate said.
The brewery currently brews at a pace of about 3,000 barrels a year, but Plate said it has the capability to easily grow to 12,000 barrels annually.
The tasting room is still somehow chic in its simplicity, however, with a bar and furniture fashioned out of materials left behind by previous tenants and wooden pallets from a local solar panel company.
And when it came time to choose which beers to brew for the masses, the choices were also simple.
"There's really no secret to it, I picked beers that I like," said Plate, who compared opening a brewery to starting a band.
"When you write a tune, whether it's conscious or not, it ends up kind of sounding like music you like. It's the same thing with beer," said Plate, whose most recent musical project is the Hall and Oates tribute band Hall and Oatzes with members of The Parlor Mob and The Bouncing Souls.
Asbury Park Brewery currently has six beers on tap: a roasted stout, an amber ale, a blonde lager, an XPA (extra pale ale), a seasonal selection and its Session 4/4, which is named as nod to both the beer's 4.4-percent ABV and "common time" in music.
So far, the brewing - and business - recipes have surpassed expectations, as Asbury Park Brewery beers are projected to be on tap at 100 bars throughout the tri-state area by Nov. 1, according to Plate.
"Every year more and more people are coming to Asbury Park during the summer. And when they come here and they see our handle on at a bar, they'll try it. That's why it was important for us, when we formulated our recipes, to make our beers accessible so we didn't scare them off," Plate said.
"So when they go home and they see our handle at their local bar during the winter, they'll say: 'that's the beer I had in Asbury Park and I really liked that, let's get that here.' ... It's a way to bring the vibe that they had down here home with them."
For more information on Asbury Park Brewery, including tasting room hours, click here.
Rob Spahr may be reached at rspahr@njadvancemedia.com. Follow him on Twitter @TheRobSpahr. Find NJ.com on Facebook.