Deptford Mall welcomes Bonesaw's newest venture ... and newest beers
DEPTFORD TWP. — There are no more beers to invent — said no beer lover ever.
Bonesaw Brewing Company bubbled to the top in the South Jersey craft beer market in 2019 from its built-from-scratch production facility and taproom in Glassboro. Now, the family behind the business is trying its luck and stretching its brewing skills to the Deptford Mall.
The company’s second taproom is Bonesaw Pilot House, where gleaming steel tanks have been working for about three weeks. Some of those are Bonesaw “core” products but increasingly what is reaching taps are beers unique to the Pilot House.
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Some new products that have reached the menu are the Rango 12 pale ale, Udder Nonsense milk stout, and a chocolate coffee version of their All Blacked Out oatmeal stout. And, no surprise, all pack an alcohol content greater than your average domestic.
Bonesaw pulls out stops to brew new beers in Deptford
Still, about half the 20 taps behind the riveted-metal bar remain dry as production ramps up. Brewing was non-stop for two weeks before the Pilot House’s soft opening on Sept. 30, according to co-owner Dr. Richard DiVerniero.
“You don’t make beer in a day, you know?” DiVerniero said. “It can take 10 to 30 days, depending on if it’s an ale or a lager, to produce. “But you’ll basically see beers come online every couple days, because every tank we have over there is full and in one process or another of getting ready. So, within a month, we’ll have all 20 taps filled.”
Compared to the Glassboro operation, Pilot House has much less production capacity. Glassboro can fill 60 barrels in the time the new site can make 15 barrels.
“Honestly, our pilot, small-batch brewery is bigger than 90 percent of the other breweries in the state,” DiVerniero said. “So, for us, it’s somewhere to mess around, make some new stuff. And then, if we like something over there on the Pilot system, the recipe could wind up being brewed on the bigger production system.”
Pilot House started its production runs with some Bonesaw “core beers.” Past customers come in expecting those to be available but Pilot House also is focusing on turning out its own unique offerings.
“Right now, there’s about five or six exclusives over there, which you can’t get in Glassboro,” DiVerniero said. “Within a month, there’ll be even more. We still do cores, because we have people who expect some of our cores and our seasonals.”
Craft beer taproom, Deptford Mall seemed great match
Bonesaw, which opened in 2019, has had an eye on a second spot since before the COVID pandemic.
“Truth be told, over the first few years of operation in Glassboro, we got approached by a lot of neighboring towns in southern New Jersey,” DiVerniero said.
“But whenever we would go out and look at the logistics and the number of people and the population, Deptford always kept coming up because there were no breweries in Deptford,” he said. “And it’s one of the few malls that is actually very successful. There’s a tremendous amount of foot traffic.”
Since the Deptford Mall site is a “pilot” venture, Bonesaw decided to commit to an aviation theme in its design and décor. Pilot House took over 7,600 square feet space previously occupied by a Sears, which made adapting it simple.
“It wasn’t like remodeling a furniture store,” DiVerniero said. “We had a blank canvas in which we could kind of create what we wanted Bonesaw to look like. So, we designed the inside to look like an airplane hangar. We got a plane hanging from the ceiling. We’ve got a runway with LED lights in the floor.”
The plane is the real deal, a 35-foot-long Beechcraft Model A19 with a 27-foot wingspan. It had to be taken apart and reassembled inside the building. Beneath the plane, the floor is the “runway” leading to the order station.
“We bought it from an airstrip out in Michigan,” DiVerniero said. “Somebody had a bumpy landing, and I guess they decided to scrap it as opposed to redo it. The engine was the first to go, which was good because that’s the heaviest part of the plane.”
New beers you might want from Pilot House
The current menu for Pilot House includes these exclusive offerings.
Peaches ‘N Queen: Peach, vanilla cream ale, 4.7 ABV, using Silver Queen golden ale with lots of Jersey Peach puree, vanilla beans, and lactose.
Rango 12: A dry pale ale, 5.5 ABV, expresses the “East Coast/West Coast IPA overlap.”
Chocolate Coffee All Blacked out: A dark oatmeal stout, 6.2 ABV, brewed with oats and conditioned with organic Ecuadorian cacao nibs, Madagascar vanilla, and Costa Rican coffee.
Bonesaw Pilot House hours are: Monday-Wednesday, noon to 10 p.m.; Thursday-Saturday, noon to 11 p.m.; Sunday, noon to 8 p.m.
Joe Smith is a N.E. Philly native transplanted to South Jersey 36 years ago, keeping an eye now on government in South Jersey. He is a former editor and current senior staff writer for The Daily Journal in Vineland, Courier-Post in Cherry Hill, and the Burlington County Times.
Have a tip? Reach out at jsmith@thedailyjournal.com. Support local journalism with a subscription.
This article originally appeared on Cherry Hill Courier-Post: Bonesaw at Deptford Mall draws craft beer drinkers
