Departed Soles

Departed Soles, Jersey City's first brewery, has been hard at work this summer, distributing their gluten-free beer to bars around the city, developing and tweaking recipes, and (the best part for us) opening the tasting room.

The tasting room is part of the brewery itself and it's great to be able to see all the equipment as you're sitting there, enjoying the end product. Brian Kulbacki, founder, will quickly show you around, per NJ law, before you peruse the list of beers available on tap. There are menus around listing the beers and what they are, but questions and conversation about them are also welcomed. I don't remember for certain, but I believe there are usually about 8 options to try including a couple multiple batches of the same beer that had been modified or had the recipes tweaked. It's fun to be able to go in now, taste all the varieties, and see what changes.

My particular favorite of the beers is the Philoso-Rapper, a trippel, and also one of the strongest. Another favorite included the black IPA (#3). Everything I tried was either $5 or $6 and while flights aren't available, if you ask, they will provide a small taster at the bar to help you decide - it really won't be an easy decision. These are really good beers.

Within the space itself, the urban/warehouse/industrial feel is played up with some special graffiti art and a lot of metal, but there's color and personalization everywhere. One of my favorite touches was the shoe laces on the tap handles, a tribute to a friend of Kulbacki's and the inspiration behind a lot of Departed Soles. If you haven't read the entire back story, you can check it out here.

The tasting room, located at 151 Bay St, Suite 2A (right next to Bucket & Bay) will be open Friday, Saturday, and Sunday this weekend (the full schedule is posted on the brewery's facebook) but then closed again for a few weeks in order to do a lot of major brewing for October. If you haven't yet stopped by, do so this weekend and get yourself excited to come back in a few weeks and try even more.