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A new brewery is joining the South Jersey craft beer scene.

Former Cape May Brewing Co. staffers Christopher Henke, Brian Hink and Justin Vitti founded Wander Back Beerworks. The company’s first two beers – Wanderback Lager and Perfectly Cromulent IPA – are set to release by late May. A third beer, Future Proof Pils, will follow soon after.

After co-founding and building Cape May Brewing Co. into one of the largest independent breweries in the state, Henke left the business in 2019 in search of new ventures. Vitti, the former general manager of sales and distribution, and Hink, the original head brewer, departed three years later. Both have since worked in the New Jersey and Pennsylvania brewing industry.

“I had no plans to go back to brewing. It was never in my vision to open another brewery. But when these guys came to me, it was like Doc and Marty asking me to the Enchantment Under the Sea Dance – you just don’t say no,” Henke said in a press release.

Once the first beers launch, the Vineland-based company will begin self-distributing its product in Atlantic, Camden, Cape May, Gloucester and Cumberland counties before opening a physical location.

‘Old-school mentality’

Wander Back is temporarily brewing out of Hidden Sands Brewing Co.’s Egg Harbor Township facility while the company secures a location in Vineland.

Vitti commented, “We want to get this out to the consumer first. Let them figure out what our brand is and what we’re doing. We know we’re taking a different approach: we’re a brewery – not a nanobrewery, not a microbrewery, not a craft brewery.”

“We’re going into this with an old-school mentality, guerilla marketing approach to our launch, looking back to a time when breweries brewed beer and sold it wholesale well before they opened a tasting room. We’ll get the beer into the bars and restaurants for folks to try and then go to find it on the shelf, and vice-versa, then, once they know who we are and what we’re about, we’ll open our tasting room,” Vitti said.

He also believes what differentiates Wander Back from a lot of new breweries is that the team behind it is not made up of hobby brewers. Instead, they have been in the industry for decades.

“We’re not just going to market with some cool homebrew. We’ve had years of being successful at this, we love doing it, now we want to do it for ourselves,” Vitti said.

He went on to add, “We gave our place in a crowded market a lot of thought. There’s so much overly sweet, overly juicy, overly hoppy beer out there, and, at the end of the day, we wanted our beer to be appreciated by everyone, not just one segment or group of beer drinkers. We wanted to make it stand out on the shelf and be technically sound but also enjoyable and approachable. We just want drinkability: beer that tastes like beer.”

Pairs nicely with …

Wander Back will be just the second beer maker in Cumberland County, joining Glasstown Brewery in Millville. Hink, Vitti and Henke said they looking forward to growing the craft beer industry in the region.

“I actually grew up with Paul [Simmons; owner of Glasstown] and his sister, many summers in Rio Grande in Cape May County,” Vitti said. “We’re not coming in to compete with them. We want to be complementary to Glasstown. They’ve done all the work already to establish a local brewery in Cumberland County and we don’t want another one to take away from their hard work and dedication to the local beer scene. Hopefully it’s the same big brother mentality that has helped the local beer scenes boom throughout New Jersey.”

We’re not coming in to compete with [Glasstown Brewery]. We want to be complementary to Glasstown. … Hopefully it’s the same big brother mentality that has helped the local beer scenes boom throughout New Jersey.
– Justin Vitti, Wander Back Beerworks co-founder

Vineland was also selected due to the area’s vast agricultural resources, Wander Back’s founders said.

Founded as a farming community of Italian grape growers in 1861, the city has never wavered from its agricultural roots. Besides being known as the birthplace of Welch’s in 1869, Vineland also became a poultry center in the 1950s. Today, the area’s diversified into cold storage and food processing.

Henke said, “We’re insistent on tapping into the agricultural side of beer. We’re dedicated to using local malt: it’s very important to us to have our own local flavor. The styles that we plan to bring to market are going to show off local malts: local wheat, barley, spelt, rye, corn, etc. The trend has been to use, you know, German malts to make a German Pilsner, but the original brewers used German malts because they were in Germany. We’ll have a Cumberland County Pilsner.”

For more information about Wander Back Beerworks, visit facebook.com/wanderbackbeer.

In case you missed it:

Under a law signed in January by Gov. Phil Murphy, the state will boost the number of available liquor licenses as well as ease controversial restrictions that New Jersey’s rapidly growing craft brewing and distilling industry have railed against. Click here to read more.