Here’s a reason to not bitch about the cold winter we’re having:

January’s deep-freeze has allowed High Point Brewing to do a second run of eisbock. Round 2 uses the brewery’s 7% ABV Double Platinum Blonde hefeweizen as the beer handed over to the frigid elements for icing up.

Beer in the tanks for Pinelands Brewing.

The tiny, newly licensed production brewery at the southern tip of Ocean County began brewing Friday evening, a day after New Jersey regulators granted a license to make beer.

Pints and growlers from the tasting room at Rinn Duin Brewing …

The newly licensed brewery did steady business with its brown and Scottish ales Thursday evening, the long-awaited start of public tours and opening of its six-tap tasting room. The evening also marked the release of the English/Irish-style session ales that are the core of Toms River production brewery’s beer lineup.

Cape May Brewing’s big Belgian strong ale leads the brewery’s venture into 12-ounce bottles.

Folks at the brewery did a 90-case run of Devil’s Reach to get their feet wet with the Meheen bottler the brewery picked up last summer on the used equipment market. The 8.4% ABV brew, named for a narrow strait in Cape May Harbor, for now is limited to takeout sales of six-packs at the brewery.

There’s some technical stuff, i.e. check dissolved oxygen levels in the bottled beer, before it’s full speed ahead with the Meheen. (Oxygen, as we know, will turn beer stale and, thus, is a concern when bottling and canning.)

Devil’s Reach was bottled early this month, and the brewery’s game plan is to bottle Cape May IPA and Sawyer’s Swap Barleywine later this winter.

The strong ale and barleywine previously have been available in bomber bottles. Cape May IPA, the flagship beer Cape May Brewing launched with during the summer of 2011, previously has been available draft only.  

Anniversaries are as much about looking forward as they are backward.

For Tuckahoe Brewing, it’s no different.

The northern Cape May County brewery marked a second anniversary in December 2013; the video above is footage from Tuckahoe’s first brew day, Dec. 23, 2011. Talk to the folks there about it, and they’ll give you the backstory and their vision for the future.

UPDATE, Dec. 19th: State regulators granted a license to the brewery today.

New Jersey is likely to close out 2013 with one more brewery getting the go-ahead from state regulators.

 Licensing is imminent for Angry Erik Brewing, a husband-and-wife team whose efforts promise to bring production brewing back to Sussex County, the place where the modern era of small-batch beer-making actually began in the Garden State in the middle of the 1980s.

The mash-in was done, and the waiting had begun.

Plenty of time before the next step – sparging the grain for the chocolate oatmeal stout – plenty of time to devote some attention to a few other tasks.

Rich Palmay stepped away from the brewhouse space situated in a former tavern kitchen and pulled up his email account on a laptop computer left on the nearby bar. He clicked on an email, a much-anticipated missive from the state of New Jersey.

"It's here," Rich announced to his brewing partner, Vince Masciandaro, who stood a few feet away.

"Attached," Rich read aloud from the Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control email, "is a pdf of your license certificate that will be mailed to you shortly."

Pinelands Brewing is winding down the buildout in its space in a southern Ocean County business park.

Over the past few weeks, founders Jason Chapman and Luke McCooley, joined by three new partners, have been putting the finishing touches on the 3-barrel brewery in Little Egg Harbor, about a 20-minute drive north of Atlantic City.

Glasstown Brewing in Cumberland County has joined the ranks of New Jersey's two dozen craft breweries.

Officials with the state Division of Alcoholic Beverage Control on Monday inspected the nano-sized brewery in Millville, giving Paul Simmons and his wife, Jenifer, the green light to produce their planned lineup of ales, pending the city granting its final blessing.

New Jersey's newest brewpub is about ready to put its house-made beers on tap.

The folks at HearthStone Grill in Jamesburg in Middlesex County say keep an eye on their Facebook page for the details of when it will happen.

But that could be very, very soon.