For James Priest, brew days are more like two days, sometimes three. The founder and owner of The Referend Bier Blendery in Hopewell Township, New Jersey, doesn’t have his own stainless-steel brewhouse under his roof, so when he needs wort, he has to schedule time at a nearby brewery, drive with his ingredients in the back of his truck, and spend a day doing a double batch. At some point during the day, he’ll go back to the truck, pull out his mobile coolship, and set it up within a hose length of the brewhouse.
Priest, who opened his doors in 2016, specializes in spontaneously fermented and barrel-aged beers, following in the well-worn footpath of certain Belgian brewers and a handful of U.S.-based artisans. At an early (drinking) age, he was drawn to the geuzestekerij model, and when the voice in his head became so loud, convincing him it was time to open his own place, Priest realized that doing something different from so many of the other breweries that were coming online at the same time could help him stand out. He notes that he’s “not a brewer,” so while others in his generation might have spent time working on a brew deck, Priest instead spent time on packaging lines and working at a winery.
“I knew that every bit of wine knowledge would be better for the business,” he says, “because this cellar work is functionally identical to working in wineries, on a comparable scale. Having that knowledge was important to me and helped with confidence going in.”