USA, NJ: Invertase Brewing Co. officially open in Phillipsburg

Ed Ponce looked at the gleaming fermenters as he set his half-finished beer on a divider. Then he gestured around the rest of the bustling brewery.

“You can tell they’re chemists and stuff because everything’s so clean, everything’s so precise,” he said. The scientists-turned-brewers, meanwhile, were busy around the corner with the rest of their family serving up pints and flights, pausing only to cut the ribbon on their new business.

Invertase Brewing Co. in Phillipsburg officially opened on October 10, lehighvalleylive.com reported.

The first customers of the brewery at 51 N. Broad St. for months had followed along on social media as the building transformed from a former day care into a literal beer laboratory.

Owners Stephen and Karen Zolnay, of the Hunterdon County borough of Stockton, are scientists as well as homebrewers – he worked as a biochemist for 25 years, she as a diagnostic virologist at a children's hospital in Boston. Karen Zolnay is the brewery's yeast expert and has a lab to experiment with the ingredient inside the brewery.

The brewery itself is named the enzyme invertase, which starts the fermentation process. The logo is a stylized version of invertase’s molecular structure.

They say the science will also be reflected in their beer. Stouts and IPAs will always be on tap, but the house specialty will be Belgian brews, which require precise yeasts that Karen will test in her lab. Seasonal and sour beers will also be on rotation.

"We're kind of psychotic scientists," Stephen said during a sneak-peak of the brewery back in July. "We're going to psychotic lengths … to make good beer."

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