NEW YORK, Oct. 7 (JTA) — In the beginning there was an idea and it was good: Jewish beer, named HeBrew – The Chosen Beer.
The beginning, for beer developer Jeremy Cowan, was last Chanukah, and it was so good that he sold every bottle of his 100 cases almost as soon as they hit the shelves of the liquor stores, kosher delis and restaurants that carried it in the San Francisco area.
Today Cowan, 28, has contracted with a leading micro-brewery and professional beer distributors in the San Francisco area, and is selling as many cases of the unconventional beer — 500 — in a week as he did during the past nine months.
The beer, whose theme is exile never tasted so good, is available in stores throughout California and in other places by toll-free mail order through The Wine Club.
The centerpiece of the beers brightly colored label is a picture of a Chasidic-looking rabbi looming over a landscape that puts the Golden Gate Bridge right next to a Jerusalem skyline.
Although no beer is kosher for Passover — hops are made from forbidden grain — the labels side panel answers the question: Why is this beer different from all other beers?
As the label explains in a Jewish text-referenced way, the answer is part-Jackie Mason shtick, part-micro-brewing expertise: Our first creation is Genesis Ale.
Barley is one of seven Biblical species that celebrate the bounty of the Land of Milk and Honey (Deut. 8.8), and HeBrew draws a symbolic link to our own Garden of Eden in Northern California. A smidgen of Middle East, a dash of American West.
Cowan shmaltzes it up on the label, which also says, Like your bubbes chicken soup, theres no preservatives (or gefilte fish) added, store cold.
T-shirts, posters, pint glasses and other paraphernalia are available directly through Cowan at his San Francisco-based company, Shmaltz Enterprises.
The beer is certified by a local kashrut agency.
The label also says that 10 percent of the beers profits go to tzedakah, or charity.
Cowan said he has donated beer to Jewish organizations, which have auctioned it off at their fund raisers.
His customer base has been diverse. Last Purim a Chabad house ordered a keg, and skateboard-MTV-type Jewish kids buy it at grocery stores, Cowan said.
Cowan first hit on the idea a decade ago while talking with the only other Jewish student in the high school they attended in Menlo Park, Calif., a suburb about 30 miles south of San Francisco.
A year ago, Cowan talked a small group of his most faithful friends into squeezing the juice out of pomegranates — an early ingredient in the beer that he had to drop when it made government labelling and kosher certification requirements too complicated — in his living room.
In the works is a full line including another beer, to be introduced next summer, coffee drinks, teas and sodas, Cowan said.
I want HeBrew to be like Manischewitz for the next generation, Cowan said, a high-quality product, but with a lot of funk and humor.