Bonesaw Pilot House Brewery has opened at the Deptford mall. This is the second location for the team behind the wildly popular Bonesaw Glassboro brewery.
They announced on Friday the soft opening hours for this weekend, and will be updating soon regarding their more permanent operating hours.
While the Pilot House Brewery is physically located in the mall building, it is only accessible from outside of the mall in the area of where “Ruby Tuesday’s” was located, and is direct next to the Round1 arcade entrance.
The Pilot House entrance also features an outdoor front patio area.
The Deptford tasting room is a surprisingly large space which carries a full airport theme to it! Would you believe they have an actual small plane suspended from the ceiling over top of the tasting room space!?
The airport and plane theme extends throughout the entire facility and features runway markings and lighting on the flooring, a bar designed from an “old school” airplane wing, and round tables built out of airplane jet turbines!
It really is a visually awesome tasting room where significant thought and investment went into so many individual details… it really creates a fun and pleasant beer tasting environment.
Bonesaw Pilot House operates under a NJ Brewery license which means while they can create and serve delicious craft beers and seltzers… then do not sell food. You are welcome to bring in your own food or stop in the Deptford Mall food court, or the other area restaurants.
Why Pilot House?
The Pilot House name comes from a brewing industry term “pilot” which is when you create smaller batches of a new recipe and offer to consumers to gauge reaction, before deciding if you put into your larger production systems.
While many breweries accommodate the creation of new beer varieties by adding a smaller second system, owners Rich and Dave decided took things several levels higher… by opening up a completely new second brewery instead!
But make no mistakes about it, Bonesaw Pilot House is a medium-large sized brewery which will likely rank higher on the list of South Jersey’s larger breweries, based on the tasting room square footage and the 15bbl brewing system.
In fact, co-owner Dave shared with me previously that the Pilot House tasting room floor area is actually larger than the first floor tasting room area of Bonesaw Glassboro!
But again, you really should look at Bonesaw Pilot House as it’s own amazing brewery experience.
With a defined purpose and name… it made complete sense to bring in an airplane/pilot theme to the new Deptford brewery.
So if you factor in the amazing decor of Pilot House, and awesome location at the popular Deptford Mall and of course their delicious beers… Pilot House will quickly become an area destination brewery that customers will “fly” to get to!
New Jersey’s brewery laws state that the beer sold within the location’s tasting room must be brewed in that same location. So for the Pilot House opening, in Deptford they are brewing a few Bonesaw favorites such as Swoosh and Pum-queen… but they’ve also already added “Pilot House Only” beers such as Rango 12 Pale Ale and Chocolate Coffee Stout.
One of the beers I tried was The Rango 12, which is an East Coast/West Coast IPA overlap with an old school hint of citrus. Deliciously refreshing and not “hoppy” with its 5.5% ABV… I could taste the citrus even without reading the description to know it was there.
And while I don’t know if it’s unique to Pilot House but in my visit today I even had a frozen Pina Colada Seltzer with Raspberry swirl!
Pilot House Brewery – Deptford Mall
As mentioned Pilot House has been developed by Bonesaw Brewery team out of Glassboro NJ.
Co-owners Rich and Dave are brother-in-laws who partnered to develop the original Glassboro Bonesaw brewery to make delicious craft beers in one-of-a-kind tasting rooms… and with a eye towards strong growth in product sales and locations.
Rich had a lifelong dream to open up a brewery long before it was “a thing” in New Jersey… but chose first to make a little side trip by becoming an orthopedic surgeon
If it’s not obvious, it was Rich’s career which inspired the name for the Bonesaw brewery.
Brother-in-law Dave comes from a corporate background where he was a high-ranking financial executive at an area Fortune 500 company.
Together the two of them are a perfect balance of what it takes to operate a successful and large brewery company.
The original Glassboro Bonesaw location proved to be instantly successful… wildly successful!
Today, Glassboro is basically two different tasting room experiences in one, as they also somewhat recently built out the second floor of the Glassboro location with an entirely different aesthetic when they created the Lager Loft.
With the Deptford Pilot House location they’ve really taken things into a whole new direction by creating a very definable and fun theme built around planes and airports… while also adding a bit of whimsy to the décor!
Likely one of the most signature aspects you’re going to notice immediately upon entering is the red airplane hanging from the ceiling of the tasting room!
It’s positioned over top of a painted runway in the floor which is proudly identified as Runway B2… to signify “Bonesaw Two”!
The other two runways off to the side are marked to represent the years that the two breweries were founded.
The large Pilot House bar sits in front of the brewery area and has been crafted to resemble the large wings of a stainless steel early American airplane, and even features the metal rivets you would expect to find on a plane from the 1940s.
In the front center of the bar they’ve even included an airplane prop.
Sections of the walls in the space are covered in corrugated steel and riveted plates, to give the high ceiling space somewhat of an airplane hanger feel.
The larger main tasting room area offers a variety in tables and chairs. One really innovative aspect is they’ve created round tables out of airplane engine turbines!
While overall it’s one large mostly square room, in the back side there is a partition wall featuring a fireplace and a television. On the other side of the partition is a more private event style space area with an attractive full wall map graphic.
The very front of the tasting room features two windowed garage doors which open up to an outer patio, which was developed on the large sidewalk of the mall.
Back to the bar area… it’s seats probably 24 people and has a perfect view directly into the windowed brewery space.
There are two different sets of taps each featuring 20 different choices.
As mentioned the brewery area is a 15bbl system featuring state-of-the-art brewery technology. It’s an impressive system but doesn’t carry all of the extra higher production aspects which have been added to the Glassboro Bonesaw location.
Currently Pilot House is operating under “soft opening” hours, currently offering Saturday (9/30) until 11pm and on Sunday (10/1) noon until 8pm.
They have not announced their full operating hours yet, but it seems they will be updating customers at their Facebook page and other social media channels.
Links and Locations
Pilot House Brewery – Now Open
Deptford Mall
1750 Deptford Center Road
Deptford NJ
