MD beer gains popularity during basketball season

Frederick Brewing Co.'s Red Terrapin Ale is getting some increased play in bars across the state as the Maryland Terrapins gear up for the Final Four this weekend.

While the beer is offered year-round and has been for more than two years, officials at the brewery said yesterday that orders have been up for the English style red/amber ale in light of the Terps' winning season and march to the NCAA championship.

"Actually, the funny thing about it is last month [through] our distributors in Carroll County over to Baltimore and Baltimore County, we've picked up somewhere in the neighborhood of about 30 extra tap handles with this product all of a sudden," said John Niziolek, plant manager at Frederick. "Basically, everybody is jumping on the bandwagon ... and the beer is great, actually."

Tony Dela Rose, one of the owners of family-run Dela Rose's at the Avenue at White Marsh, has been running the beer on special for $2 a pint for the past month, and expects sales to be up significantly for the ale this weekend.

"We do a lot with the Terps," said Dela Rose. "And March is a very busy month for us. We thought [the beer] would fit in nicely and people really started to like it."

This weekend, Dela Rose will be closing down the restaurant side of his establishment to accommodate another television and the huge crowds that he is expecting to watch the game and imbibe the amber brew.

"Every game we've actually been shutting our dining room," he said. "It gets so crowded in the bar that we needed more room. We open up the whole place for the Terps games."

Niziolek said the beer is available in 30 to 50 bars statewide. He added that the brewery will concoct about 200 barrels of this particular ale.

The idea for Terrapin Ale, which was described by Andrew Tveekrem, Frederick's brewmaster, as having a "nice malty character," came about two years ago, when the brewery was approached by a bar in the College Park area.

"We do a lot of house beers and we registered the name Terrapin Red," said Niziolek. "We thought it was a really good idea [because] basketball has been doing very well ... and we've been their supporter for quite a few years."

Meanwhile, the beer is only available on tap, unlike Frederick's other two regional brands, Wild Goose and Blue Ridge, the brewery's original beer.

"We do no bottles of it whatsoever -- it's a total draft product," said Niziolek. "Being a small brewery, we can do things like that because of our flexibility. Once you take a product like that and try to market the label and do all the packaging materials, it becomes a very costly proposition. If it's a draft product, it's something local to the area and it's very good for us."

"A guy came in [yesterday], who had heard about it on the radio, and wanted to buy a couple cases, but unfortunately it's available in draft only," added Tveekrem.

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