Jupiter

woodychandler

Pennsylvania

4.33/5  rDev +5.9%
vibe: 4.5 | quality: 4.5 | service: 4 | selection: 4.5 | food: 4 | $$

Damn, another place that did not exist between 1987 and 1989! The conspiracy continued to crumble in my sodden wake.

The layout was unique, in my estimation. The m.d.s. was in a corridor set back just inside a pathway that began at the sidewalk. By turning right at the m.d.s., I found myself in the bar area with a Vertigo-like staircase leading up two flights to a separate seating area. The walls on both sides of the first floor were lined with pressed tin (!). Turning to the right inside the entryway, standard tables and chairs lined the walls as well as the three windows overlooking Shattuck Avenue. The "L"-shaped, copper-topped bar began just past the stairwell on the right side of the space and included color chalkboards, a wood storage cabinet/cooler, and the wood-fired brick oven, all as part of the back bar. All of the way aft was the very crowded outdoor patio which could be accessed either from the m.d.s. pathway or from the bar area. Upstairs was a bunch of restaurant tables and chairs with more windows overlooking Shattuck and a short balcony overlooking the patio.

Food: I had the Andromeda (cheese) pizza from the brick-oven!

Beers: Pilsner; Hefeweizen; Quasar Double IPA; Amber; Porter; Helles Lager; Honey Wheat; IPA; Red Spot Ale; Dry Stout.

Lots of guest taps, ciders, meads and wine.

12-24-2009 19:41:57 | More by woodychandler

johnmichaelsen

Oregon

3.8/5  rDev -7.1%
vibe: 4.5 | quality: 4 | service: 2.5 | selection: 4.5 | food: 4 | $$

Stopped by after the Supberbowl today.... been many a year since I last visted the Jupiter alehouse.

Have always really loved the atmoshere and layout of this place, with it's wonderful red wood, copper bar tops, etc. The alehouse has otherwise a very low key, informal vibe, and so this is a great place to hang out with a beer or three. As for the beer selection, it's pretty good, with the house beer selection coupling very nicely with the well thought out guest selection. On this day, the latter included the alaskan barleywine, old rasputin, moonlight lunatic and bombay by boat, among other thigs.... Food is OK... got the gem pizza which was tasty and full of fresh ingredients.

Service was fairly friendly, but I finally had to walk up to the cash register to pay my tab. My waitress sort of realized she'd screwed up at that point, but regardless... service was friendly, but otherwise a bit distracted and unattentive.

Despite the fair at best service, I've always been a fan of the Jupiter (used to stop by all the time, but this was my first visit in some years), and had a good time here tonight as well. There are probably better places in Berkeley to grab a beer I suppose, but regardless, I had a pleasant evening as always at the jupiter alehouse.

02-06-2012 05:29:11 | More by johnmichaelsen

francisweizen

Australia

4.2/5  rDev +2.7%
vibe: 4.5 | quality: 4.5 | service: 4.5 | selection: 3.5 | food: 4 | $$$

I love Jupiter. Located in downtown Berkeley literally on top of the BART and one block from campus. The atmosphere is cool, open, and big with a GREAT outdoor patio area where they often have really good, funky, avant garde music performances in the good weather months. Selection is great with a nice spread of house brewed beers and some good seasonals and guest taps as well. Moonlight is usually available and their house brewed double ipa quasar is pretty awesome. The food is great, with the pizza being a personal favourite and the prices are a little high but perfectly reasonable for downtown berk-dizzle. Put ya stunna shades on.

02-09-2008 05:56:10 | More by francisweizen

DaPeculierDane

Wisconsin

4.22/5  rDev +3.2%
vibe: 4 | quality: 4.5 | service: 4 | selection: 4.5 | food: 3.5 | $$

Jupiter is a top brew pub/beer bar, standing out above its competitors in the East Bay and much of those in the city in terms of selection and to some degree quality.

I spent a respectable amount of time at Jupiter during the past several days and evenings and got to know the establishment and its beers fairly well. Jupiter is located on one of Berkeley’s main thoroughfares just a hop, skip, and a jump from a BART (train) station. The bar itself is copper and the walls around it are tin. In the rear is a large patio with an outdoor oven and plenty of sun. Near the front are some good looking steps leading to a second story. The place is narrow but deceptively large and it looks good.

Above the bar several chalk boards outline the house and guest beers. They are plentiful. I counted nearly fifteen house beers and roughly the same number of guests. Amongst these were a couple of casks and four nitro taps. Guest taps were almost all of great quality, i.e., Racer 5, Hop Rod Rye, Death and Taxes, Arrogant Bastard, offerings from Drake’s and Anchor, etc… Of the Jupiter beers I tried, their one-off Bavarian Hefe stood out as the best, just loaded with clove and banana. Ironically, their regular wheat beer was the worst, a cloying mess of lemon and rotten garbage.

Service was damn near perfect except for one thing. The first time I went in I was shortchanged by the bar tender. He corrected his mistake when I pointed it out to him but I had a feeling that his graft had been intentional, that he was pulling the “tricks of the trade” as we used to call them when I bartended. At any rate it only went up from there. I have been to few brew pubs/bars that are as generous as Jupiter with their taster pours. At one point I must have had four or five glasses, each with a 3 oz + pour in front of me at no charge and without me even asking for them. The bartenders just wanted to share their favorites and get my opinions. The last time I was in a particularly cute bartender didn’t even charge me for any of my beer. I took that to cross out the shortchanging on the first day so as far as I’m concerned, service doesn’t get much better than at Jupiter.

As for food, I only ate there once. I had a delicious chicken sandwich with basal and roasted red peppers. The portion was small but it was scrumptious. I also had a side salad served with a generous portion of blue cheese and a fine vinaigrette. The pizza looked and smell great and I wish now that I had tried it. It’s wood fired, which usually means good.

Overall, my thoughts on Jupiter are very positive. It takes some guts for a brew pub to put several of the best beers in America on tap next to its own products and I respect them for that. I also hand it to them for trying hard to please and for giving everybody plenty of samples and time to select just the right beer. If I could offer one suggestion it would be to raise the temp in their coolers. Their beers are served way too cold, almost icy.

05-11-2006 21:30:29 | More by DaPeculierDane

Floydster

California

4.33/5  rDev +5.9%
vibe: 4.5 | quality: 4.5 | service: 4.5 | selection: 4 | food: 4 | $$

I literally walked out of the BART station and saw this across the street, I walked in and grabbed a seat at the bar and ordered a pizza as I was very hungry after a long morning, looked up at the board and saw a variety of guest brews and lots of house brews, I immediately ordered a Drake's Denogginizer, I ended up having their 18 Barrel IPA as well, then Quasar and a Moonlight Lunatic Lager when I went back, food was good and not that expensive at eight or nine dollars, their two IPAs I tried were pretty good as well, the place was really modern and close to the UC campus, nice garden in the back and located in a cool area, place was super clean, the upstairs section was neat and would be a fun place to go hang out with a group of friends, they had about two dozen taps total and they all seemed to be good choices, they had impressive guest taps from E.J. Phair, Moonlight, Deschutes, Speakeasy, and others, bartender was cool and kept asking me if I wanted to sample anything else, this is a place I look forward to going back to next time I am in the bay area, recommended

02-07-2009 01:38:12 | More by Floydster

bradybeer

California

4.55/5  rDev +11.2%
vibe: 5 | quality: 4.5 | service: 4 | selection: 5 | food: 4.5 | $$

Went here a few weeks ago with my wife and friends before a Wilco show. You can walk in through a side entrance or the beer garden. Walking into the bar area you will notice a massive bar area with some round tables nearby. You can either go upstairs, outside, or grab a spot inside. We opted for inside near the bar. The atmosphere is excellent with lots of wood and a humming bar area and I didn't notice any TVs (yeah).

The had about 10 beers of their own on tap and another 10 or so guest beers. I tried the Quasar Double IPA and my wife the Porter-both were excellent. After a couple pints of the Quasar I had an Old Rasputian on Cask-Nice.

Service was good-it did take a while to get someone-once we did she rocked. One of the cool things about this place is that they use PDAs to take your order which means they know if they are out of a beer and they can also look up reviews!!!

Food was the "bomb" as the kids say-we had two of their pizzas and both were outstanding.

Word of warning get here early for a table-by 5:30pm it was standing room only.

It was 8 years since I was last at the Jupiter-but now that I live within driving distance I would love to make this aa regular stop.

09-06-2007 19:52:01 | More by bradybeer

benito

Oregon

3/5  rDev -26.7%
vibe: 5 | quality: 2 | service: 3 | selection: 3 | food: 4 | $$$

In the heart of downtown Berkeley, Jupiter has one thing going for it that most brewpubs would die for: perfect ambience. They have a huge space to work with, including a tiered patio out back, and the designers/managers/other folks giving input have put together the most creative, pleasant, and slightly intimate brewpubs I've seen. The main building has two floors, the upstairs being decidedly quieter, and then the patio is split into an area surrounding a fountain and fire and a more traditional covered patio. My friend who lives in SF tells me that you can sit outside in February. If only that were true in Leadville!

There's also an outdoor grill that specializes in seafood. My seared scallops were delicious, and their brick oven pizzas (from inside) looked tasty as well. Some other ambience highlights: there's music every night, and even on a Wednesday, this place was packed for dinner.

Unfortunately, they don't have the beer to match the rest of the place. I mean, who could? Even average beer would have been made glorious by the ambience and food. But they really don't have it. I tried four of the ten or so beers they had on tap. The porter was palatable if not particularly interesting, while the other brews (a honey wheat, hefe-weizen, and double IPA) severely lacked any type of flavor. I won't harp on it; bottom line--the beer is no good.

Jupiter has the potential to be a great brewpub. I mean a great brewpub. One of the best. But to get there, they need to get their beer up to speed. If they manage that, I'll be the first in line to try it.

06-17-2006 02:04:27 | More by benito

VegasBill

Nevada

4.45/5  rDev +8.8%
vibe: 4.5 | quality: 4.5 | service: 4 | selection: 5 | food: 4

Jupitor offers many great beers of their own and also offers a very good selection of guest beers. They have a new IPA called Kinnickinick sp? that is really good for hopheads like me.
They feature pizza and it also was great.
Jupitor has a outdoor two level patio,they call it the beer garden, with entertainment I think every day. The last time I was there they had the house band which is Bluegrass music, but the music runs the gamut, remember this is Berkeley!

The only downside is it is difficult to find a table on the patio and parking is impossible.

05-23-2004 19:06:27 | More by VegasBill

jrancan

New Jersey

4.22/5  rDev +3.2%
vibe: 4.5 | quality: 4.5 | service: 4 | selection: 4

Great place with 8-10 house beers as well as a good selection of 'guest' West Coast brews. Day I was there, the chalkboard listed 8 Jupiter beers, but to my dismay, they were out of four of them. Bartender told me that they were slammed the previous 2 days, so I guess I could understand...
No biggie, the guest list made up for it: Bear Republic Hop Rod and Racer 5, Moonlight Bombay, Drakes IPA, 2 from Stone, Fullsail, and a couple of others. For an East Coast guy, this was fantastic.
The atmosphere was great....fairly small downstairs bar that reminds me of a church, with pews used for seating and pressed tin on the walls. Cozy upstairs area and a real elaborate 2 level outdoor patio. The patio seemed like the place to be, complete with heaters and a little stage area for live music.
Next time I'm in SF, I will definitely make the side trip to Jupiter in Berkeley.

12-04-2003 01:09:55 | More by jrancan

t0rin0

California

4.14/5  rDev +1.2%
vibe: 4 | quality: 4 | service: 4.5 | selection: 4 | $$

My brother and I took the train from the penninsula and to my surprise, the bart station is across the street from the brewpub. I had a pint of Old Godfather while I waited for my old roomate to show up. I noticed that they had a pretty decent selection of guest beers on tap. Once everyone was there, we did the sampler and it was about 10 beers or so. I really liked the Quasar DIPA and I enjoyed the german hefe. There were a few other ones that were pretty good and there were a couple that I didn't think much of. But overall it was a pretty diverse beer selection.

The waitress was helpful as she arranged a sampler for us to try. She claims that they don't normally do samplers. We had already eaten at that point so we didn't even look at the menu, I couldn't tell you how good the food was or how expensive it was. The beer however was reasonably priced; the house beer was cheap and the guests beers were a bit pricey.

The setup was interesting as the furniture was all wooden and had a dark stain to it but the bar was a bright reflective copper. The bathroom was a community bathroom shared by the neighboring buildings and there was a rope elevator thingy to send orders up the 2nd floor. It had a very San Francisco vibe to it. It was also relatively quiet but it was early saturday afternoon. In end I enjoyed the place and would return if I find I myself in Berkeley.

01-03-2008 21:50:55 | More by t0rin0