Beer and hot sauce by the beach

Head to Long Beach Island today, and you'll encounter the sizzling fun of the Hop Sauce Festival. As its name suggests, the fest fuses craft brews and spicy condiments. Toss in some local eats, live music, and a craft market for extra zest, and you have a recipe for a Shore day well spent.

Now in its third year, Hop Sauce's organizers anticipate a crowd of about 7,000 people - double the size of the first festival.

A collaboration between the Beach Haven specialty shop Spice It Up and the Jersey-born surf lifestyle brand Jetty (the flagship store is in Manahawkin), Hop Sauce started as a response to Hurricane Sandy. Proceeds from ticket sales and vendor fees benefit Jetty's nonprofit, the Jetty Rock Foundation, which has supported the LBI community since June 2013, the first post-Sandy summer.

"This is an amazing community and it's only gotten better and stronger because of the obstacles Sandy put in the way of it," said Hop Sauce music programmer Joe Belsh, 31, who curated the soundtrack for the Jetty-supported documentary Landfall: The Eyes of Sandy.

For this year's festival, the co-headliners are the Lonely Biscuits - a Jetty-affiliated act from Nashville whose tunes meld soul, funk, and pop with rap - and Craig Finn, front man of the narrative-driven indie rock band the Hold Steady.

Regina Lotito - who opened Spice It Up with her husband, Dan Starin, in March 2013 - brings the heat to Hop Sauce. One of the store's suppliers, Ed Bucholtz of Born to Hula, suggested that LBI would make a great setting for a hot sauce festival. The idea stuck.

In addition to the Highlands, N.J.-based Born to Hula, Hop Sauce will also highlight other Garden State sauces, such as Sea Isle City's Hank Sauce, LBI's own World Famous Hot Sauce, and Jetty's new Rocktail Sauce. Other blends come from Philly and more distant East Coast locales. But all must pass the Spice It Up taste test.

"We have to decide if it's a product we'd want to carry in our store," said Lotito, 48, who left her telecommunications job to run the shop. "If it is, they get an invite to the festival. We try to curate it really carefully."

The beer, meanwhile, was Jetty CEO Jeremy DeFilippis' idea. For the fest, Freehold's Shore Point Distribution trucks in brews from near and far. You can sample the bittersweet Hopfish IPA from South Jersey's own Flying Fish Brewery alongside oak-aged Scottish beer from Innis & Gunn. Also on offer: hard ciders and sodas, and a tentful of indie craft beers.

"[The festival is] about people who are like-minded," Belsh said. "No ego, a lot of art, a lot of love."

Hop Sauce lasts from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. at the Beach Haven ball field (between Ninth Street and Taylor Avenue). $20 for general admission; $50 for general admission and craft beer. (You must be 21 and older to drink the beer.) See hopsaucefest.com.

zmiller@philly.com or 856-779-3813