Hamilton finally has a brewery that it can call its own, although one must travel almost to the easternmost portion of the township to reach it.
Bent Iron Brewing Company opened late this summer on Extonville Road, where the opposite side of the street is in Upper Freehold Township.
Not that anyone has had any difficulty finding the place so far. Since it opened in a summer thunderstorm Aug. 2, the brewery started up by three partners from Chesterfield has been packed every weekend. Head brewer Dave Ascione says he has all he can do to brew enough beer to keep the taps open — though fortunately, Bent Iron has managed not to run out yet.
Partners and Chesterfield residents Dave Sass, Peter Brittain and Jon Kanuck dreamed up the business over brews in 2020, while locked down for Covid. They talked about one day opening a brewery of their own, getting excited enough about it to actually sit down and write a business plan.
And as it happened, Brittain had the perfect place for them to locate it: his family farm in Hamilton Township.
The location gave the partners a ton of options in terms of site planning. They drew on their memories of breweries they had visited in the past, and toured many new ones in the region to get the best idea of what they wanted to do and what kind of customer experience they wanted to provide.
In the end, they built their brewhouse and taproom in a brand new building. The taproom is spacious and welcoming, yet all of the brewing equipment is off to the side in plain view.
“This (farm) was our only option,” Sass says. “We always had a plan to be a farm brewery where families could gather, where people could sit inside or outside, where families could gather.”
The partners traveled to Pittsburgh to find a 1930’s vintage bar that they could bring back and install in the taproom. “We wanted it to feel new, but we also wanted people to feel like it had been here a long time,” Sass says.
Out the back door is a wide gravel patio with picnic tables and fire pits. Beyond the patio is green space for kids to play and families to relax.
“When people come to the brewhouse, I hope they are surprised in a good way,” Sass says. “I hope they see the vision that we have, a farm brewery with a welcoming space they can feel comfortable in all year round. Some people are beer people, some people aren’t but we hope everyone finds something to please them, that makes them want to come back.”
One of the first orders of business was finding a head brewer, of course, and in Dave Ascione, Bent Iron found someone not only with brewing experience but who also lives in the area.
A native of Chesterfield, Ascione was for years a partner in Knights Keep Brewing, which spent the better part of seven years looking for a place to open in Hamilton without ever finding quite the right spot.
Ascione says he remains friends with the other partners from Knights Keep, but by the time Bent Iron contacted him, Covid had killed whatever hopes they had left of opening their brewery, so they had disbanded.
Ascione, a long-time bar manager at Chickies and Pete’s in Bordentown, was not necessarily looking to get back into the brewing game after those years with Knights Keep. “Let’s just say Peter (Brittain) can be very persuasive,” he says.
The partners asked him what he would need if they were to work together. The first thing he asked them to do was double the size of the operation they were prepared to build. Where they saw planned on with 8 taps, he wanted 32. They met somewhere in the middle, opening with 16 taps.
“A lot of breweries, when they open, they are constantly running out of beer. People stop by, they’re excited to try something and they’re out. I always knew I wanted a large mix, I wanted there to be something for everyone to be able to drink. I needed IPAs, I needed sours, I needed seltzers. They said ‘It’s a lot of work.’ I said, ‘Work is not a problem.’ The more work I do, the better the business does.”
And since opening, they have had all of those varieties of beer on tap and more. Bent Iron’s hazy IPAs, with names like Odessa and Vortex, have been popular, and so have their seltzers and fruited sours. They usually have a strong porter and stout on tap, as well as seasonal beers, like a grisette in the summer and a märzen-style beer for Oktoberfest and a pumpkin beer for Halloween. A surprise hit has been the hoppy blonde ale, Willie Mays Haze.
Beer is available to drink on premises, or to take away in 32-ounce cans called Crowlers. The brewhouse is open Thursdays from 4 to 9 p.m. and Fridays through Sundays from noon to 9 p.m.
As they get their feet underneath them, the Bent Iron team are gradually bringing in more in terms of entertainment and promotions. Live music (indoors and out) and food trucks are already part of the mix, and soon they hope to start hosting trivia nights and other special occasions.
They also host special occasions such as anniversary parties, birthday parties, even weddings. They have a room in the brewhouse that can be closed off, they can erect tents on the grounds or even close the entire brewhouse for large enough occasions.
“It’s been a great start,” Sass says. “We’ve exceeded expectations. The responsiveness and the amount of people — I wouldn’t say it’s overwhelming, because we planned for it — but the support from the community has been just amazing so far. It’s been described as ‘an itch that people didn’t know needed to be scratched’ until we opened here.”
All of the partners still work full-time at their regular jobs in addition to their responsibilities at the brewery. For Bent Iron, Sass books entertainment and food trucks, Brittain manages the grounds, including the hops farm out beyond the patio, and Kanuck handles permits and taxes and compliance issues.
The partners’ wives, Nicole Sass, Maggie Brittain and Corissa Kanuck, are also all involved in day-to-do management of the operation. At this stage, everyone just pitches in wherever help is needed.
Business has been good enough that they have already expanded the brewhouse, adding a 30-barrel fermenter to the equipment they started with. It turns out that Ascione was right — expanding the original plans was the way to go.
“The last couple weeks, we’ve been hearing where people are coming from — different parts of New Jersey, Virginia, Delaware,” Sass says. “A lot of them are saying they’re driving here just to try it. That’s the sort of thing that makes it all worthwhile.”
Bent Iron Brewing Company, on Extonville Road on the borders of Hamilton Township, Mercer County, and Upper Freehold Township, Monmouth County. (Facebook photo.),
