Everyone knows that successful restaurants have chefs orchestrating everything in the kitchen, usually out of sight from the dining room. In the case of brewpubs, there’s another key player behind the scenes: the brewer. Triumph Brewpub in Princeton has had several chefs over the years, but Tom Stevenson has been head brewer just about since the restaurant opened in 1995.
Brewpubs differ from other bars in that beer is brewed and served on premises. Most brewpubs today have a mix of ever present beers on tap, and Triumph is no exception. Its honey wheat, amber ale and India pale ale styles are always available.
Triumph also rotates in a selection of seasonal or specialty beers, usually including a stout, an English-style ale and one wild card. Right now, that’s wild card is the popular pumpkin ale, usually on tap in October and November. Stevenson’s is brewed with pounds and pounds of pumpkin pie filling and traditional pumpkin pie spices including cinnamon, cloves, allspice, nutmeg and ginger. He used to use 200 pounds of organic New Jersey pumpkins to make the beer, but they took a whole day to prepare and roast.
He needs that time to brew other beers. The flavor he gets from the filling is “pretty darn close,” he said. In the brewing process, yeast converts the sugar in the pie filling into alcohol, leaving the flavor spicy and pumpkin-y more than sweet. Stevenson talked about his brewing career last month at the brewpub while he made a batch. The South Jersey native has lived in Titusville “off the river a bit” since the summer, when he bought a house there. He has a college degree in horticulture and worked in the nursery business for more than 20 years.
Like many professionals, Stevenson, 57, began his career as a homebrewer. When Triumph owner Adam Rechnitz was looking to start up a brewpub, Stevenson was looking for a new challenge. “When this place was being built, my horticultural career was kind of in a stall,” Stevenson said. “So for lack of anything better to do, I talked to the owners about coming here, and I guess I persuaded them that I would be a worthwhile addition.”
Brewpubs weren’t legal in New Jersey in 1993 when Rechnitz decided he wanted to open one. He partnered with Ray and Erica Disch, from Hopewell, and they lobbied the state to change its brewing laws. Though the Ship Inn in Milford was the first to open, in 1995, Triumph was the first to be licensed in the state since prohibition and the second to open, later that year.
Rechnitz is now the sole owner, but together he and the Disches (who have since moved into the field of real estate) renovated the former Marita’s Cantina in Princeton into the airy, modern, two-level, restaurant-bar-brewing company that still looks much like it did when it first opened. At first, Stevenson was the No. 3 man in the brewing operation, after Rechnitz and another brewer. But when the second brewer moved on and Rechnitz decided to focus on the overall business, he had to make a decision.
“I had a career for a long time. I wasn’t sure I wanted to leave that behind,” he said. “But once I was put in charge of the brewery, then it became a lot more fun. Then it became what I want to do ’til I die.”
Stevenson must brew Triumph’s most popular beers every two weeks or so, using the same recipe and the same process every time. Once a recipe is perfected, there’s not much room for innovation or variety.
Though he tweaks seasonal recipes like the pumpkin ale from year to year, once he decides on the formula, he sticks pretty close to it until the next season it comes around. Many beers are only brewed once a year.
“People talk about consistency in brewing. And what does consistency mean? It means doing the same thing every time. That’s not for everyone,” he said.
Stevenson does get to flex his brewing brain on the specialty offerings, like the pumpkin ale or the Jewish rye ale, which wasn’t popular at first but is now sought by so-called beer geeks, who enjoy tasting uncommon or unique beers. Coming up in time for the holidays will be his Winter Wonder, a strong ale brewed with honey, orange, cinnamon and star anise.
Still, most people who drink beer at Triumph go for their most popular styles, and Stevenson and the brewpub have been successful enough over the years to enable two expansions, one in New Hope, Pa. and one in Philadelphia. Stevenson remains focused on the Princeton operation.
“The most rewarding part of this job really is seeing people enjoying the product,” he said. “When the place is busy, and when I see beer glass after beer glass on the bar, that makes me happy.”
Triumph, 138 Nassau St. in Princeton, is a full-service restaurant with a new American menu that changes seasonally, is is open seven days a week for lunch and dinner. Telephone: (609) 924-7855. On the Web: triumphbrewing.com.
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