Clown Shoes brewery celebrates one year in N.J. at the Mohawk House

SPARTA — One year later, New Jersey beer drinkers are still clowning around.

Though it’s their fifth year in business, Clown Shoes Beer recently celebrated their first anniversary in the Garden State — and what better place to celebrate than the Mohawk House, where the brewery made its New Jersey debut last February.

“We’ve really exceeded our expectations for the state as a whole,” said Clown Shoes Director of Operations Matt Smith.

Though the brewery is based out of Ipswich, Mass., Smith has a connection to Sussex County — he was born and raised in Andover Township and graduated from Lenape Valley Regional High School in 1999.

Though (for the second year in a row) the heavy New England snow made travel back to his hometown for the event impossible, Smith says “it meant a lot” to have both the inaugural pour and one-year anniversary in Sparta, one of his old “stomping grounds.”

Tap takeoverIn addition to their standard fare — including Clementine, Chocolate Sombrero and Undead Party Crasher, to name a few — the Mohawk House event showcased Garden State Rhapsody, a beer Smith calls “an ode to New Jersey.”

“It’s unlike anything we’ve done before,” he said.

As the brewery’s barrel-aging program has come to the forefront over the past year, Smith and company have created a New Jersey-exclusive beer by blending 12 rye barrels of Undead Party Crasher, an American imperial stout, with three barrels of an “experimental barley wine.”

The result marks the first time an out-of-state brewery has made a beer available exclusively for the New Jersey market. Smith was especially thankful Clown Shoes was able to get the beer to New Jersey after the brewery was buried in almost four feet of snow in the last three weeks.

“The fact that they are a Massachusetts brewery and still support New Jersey, that’s great,” said Mohawk House manager Ricky Soni.

Clown Shoes hopes to continue with the barrel-aging focus, using “more interesting, unique-type barrels, including rum, cognac, wine, port and tequila barrels,” Smith said.

“We’re trying to experiment as much as we can,” he added. “That’s been our mentality since Clown Shoes started.”

Clown Shoes’ beer will remain on tap at the Mohawk House while supplies last, and New Jersey brewery representative Steve Von Grimm will be on hand at the Big Brew Fest at Morristown Armory on Saturday, Feb. 21 as well as Caldwell’s Cloverleaf Tavern for a tap takeover on Feb. 26.

For more information, visit www.clownshoesbeer.com.