There’s no tour. When cans are available, the allotment is posted on Instagram, and that’s usually followed a few hours later by a post that the brewery is sold out. Of course, the beers are hazy IPAs, and more and more, they are being traded, checked-in, and closely examined. It’s brought a lot of attention to Troon Brewing, a small brewery that sits in an old barn on 800 acres in New Jersey’s rolling farmland.
(For those who think Jersey is only cities and the Turnpike, it’s this western part of the state, toward Pennsylvania, that has earned the state the nickname the Garden State.)
Alex Helms was living in Miami when his mother sent him a newspaper clipping about a new restaurant that was being planned for Hopewell Township, about 12 miles from the Delaware River. He grew up there but had spent his college years and thereafter bouncing around the country working as a chef. His time in Vermont and Maine introduced him to fresh, quality local beer, and a move to Austin showed him much the same, along with a cutting-edge and continuously evolving dining scene.