Gravitating Towards Jupiter
Reflections on the pull of a Berkeley brewpub
One evening last April at downtown Berkeley’s Jupiter, my friends and I took our seats at a familiar table bordering the fire pit and confidently ordered our favorite beer: the Quasar. The waiter — a vaguely familiar woman with cropped pink hair and a fedora perched on her head — looked at us, a little pityingly and a little like someone had ripped the world out from under her own feet. “We don’t have any more Quasars.”
Silence blanketed my formerly smiling friends. If you’d taken a snapshot of our faces right then and looked at it out of context, you might’ve thought we’d just learned that Michelle Obama had died. “Ever?” I said.
She shook her head. “Not anytime soon. We don’t know why.”
Jupiter has been a Berkeley staple since 1992. I sat down to speak with one of the current managers — Michael, a 36-year old fast-talker in a purple and white striped button-up, a notch slicing a path through his left eyebrow — and asked him what he thinks makes Jupiter so appealing as a local hangout. He shrugged; his eyes never left his bustling employees even as he sat lounging in his chair, his feet tapping under the table. “Jupiter’s the heart of Berkeley. Sometimes we compare it to the Cheers bar.” The restaurant’s motto — gravitate towards Jupiter — fits perfectly.
Its website claims that the site was once “an old livery stable” back in the 1890s. The inside, decorated to reflect its roots, is both rustic and hip: old pews from St. John’s Presbyterian Church line the walls, acting as seating. Metal sheets from the 1920s cover the walls. A huge copper bar shields dozens of beer taps, and often attracts a flock of regulars. And yet it’s not the inside that draws attention.
Finding an outside table at Jupiter is a bit like the Hunger Games. It takes a seasoned expert, a hawk-eye, and a willingness to look like an asshole as you wait too close to tables while they pay their checks. The inside seating area is much tamer. You’re seated by the host. You can make reservations for large tables. But sitting inside at Jupiter is like ordering a virgin piña colada: you’re just not getting the full experience.
It’s easy to miss Jupiter’s outdoor patio at first glance. You walk down a long hallway, squeezing your way past rows of beer kegs and the swinging kitchen doors. You reach the end of the tunnel and emerge into a beer garden packed with foldable green tables, awash in a bronze and multicolored glow from the fire pits and the Christmas lights overhead. On weekends, you can barely hear your own thoughts over the din of local, live bands. It’s idyllic, but seating is first-come first-serve.
This doesn’t pose a problem early in the evening or on weeknights, but come anytime after six on Fridays and Saturdays, and you’re signing up to be one of the lingering hawks. I’ve resigned myself to this fate: sometimes you have to pounce in order to get a table near the fire pit or heaters. That’s the price I pay for being a Jupiter regular.
Jupiter was the brain child of John Martin, who also founded Triple Rock Brewery and Drake’s Brewing Co. All three establishments are local hotspots, each drawing crowds for a similar reason: they serve really good beer.
Since 1992, Jupiter has been brewing several of its specialty beers in-house. These beers — like the legendary Quasar and the late Red Spot (a brew before my time) — were intended for in-house drinking and in-house enjoying. They’re not bottled or canned for selling in stores. You can’t request a growler or a crowler and take it home to your friends. (I’ve tried more times than I can count.) Jupiter beers are for Jupiter only, and the brewpub is proud of this. They occupy something like a mythic role in the company’s culture. Employees smile when you order a Quasar, their eyes seeming to whisper: you must have the insider knowledge.
Posters of the Quasar logo line the walls. Vintage Jupiter shirts are emblazoned with this same logo across the back. And the logo is iconic. Green hops explode out of a literal quasar; Star Wars-esque letters slant away from the explosion, identifying the beer. It makes sense, then, why the beer got its name: in astronomy, quasars are the brightest objects in the universe.
Quasars were my first introduction to the Jupiter I’d come to know and love. Seniors in my sorority started telling tales of a beer that tasted great and got you drunk quickly. For me — someone freshly out of high school who still proclaimed to anyone who’d listen that all beer tasted “like butthole” — this seemed like the perfect introduction to the world of beer.
It was like a portal had opened in my life. On one side, the side behind me, lay the Bailey who stole her parents’ Bacardi to take to high school parties, the Bailey who boldly used her fake ID at Virginia gas stations to buy Barefoot wine. Supplies were limited and illicit, so it wasn’t an option of what tasted the best; beggars couldn’t be choosers.
On the other side of this portal lay a college woman who had come of age—drinking age, at least. This Bailey proudly drank craft beers and wore oversized jean jackets to stay warm in the Berkeley air and sat in trendy beer gardens laughing with college friends. For the first time in my life, I began to understand alcohol as something to be enjoyed, even savored. I saw that different people liked different drinks: one friend preferred tequila simply because she liked the taste; another friend would only order red wine at any bar or restaurant. This freedom allowed me to develop my own taste, one that apparently includes whiskey and red wine and — most importantly — craft beer.
My initial introduction to Quasars — and more specifically, my awakening to a new element of my taste — led to countless more Quasars over the next few years, so many that my friends and I would plop down at one of the green foldable tables and order a round of them without even bothering to glance at the menu.
Quasars are amazingly easy to drink, but not at first sip. They’re bitter up front: the initial taste has you wrinkling your nose and tasting the hops at the back of your throat. It’s the second and third sips—when you finally reach the beer’s sweetness and underlying notes of citrus—that get you hooked. Untappd.com, a Yelp-like online community where users can recommend their favorite beers, describes them as “a strong double IPA with an explosive piney hop character and a balanced malt backbone.” And they certainly pack a punch. At 8% ABV, their strength tends to sneak up on you. When talking to the manager, he confessed to me that “Quasars are dangerous. They taste too good to be that strong.”
So why, then, would this local, thriving beer garden discontinue its most popular staple beer?
Michael knows exactly why. In 2008, Jupiter co-founder John Martin purchased Drake’s Brewing Co., based in San Leandro. Drake’s has consistently grown since this time, becoming a household name and expanding to a taproom location in Oakland in 2015. Drake’s began to brew Jupiter beer in its much larger, industrial facilities, both for efficiency and monetary purposes. The problem here? Drake’s Brewing distributes its beers nationwide, playing a role in the national craft brewing game. Jupiter, meanwhile, is a local brewpub that serves local brews.
According to Michael, Drake’s finds it the most economical to its own business to use these industrial warehouses to brew Drake’s beer, like its renowned Denogginizer. But — much to the utter heartbreak of me and the rest of the Jupiter family — it’s hard to reconcile the pursuit of large-scale profits with the making of small-batch brews like the Quasar, a beer sold on site in only one location.
Michael told me all of this from the perspective of a businessman, his voice struggling to maintain a managerial, matter-of-fact tone. But underneath was an element of helplessness: my hands are tied. “Customers are always asking us what we did with Quasars, why we took them away,” he said. “But we miss them too.”
He broke this professional façade for a moment to tell me about his employees. He described how, when they learned the news of Quasar’s discontinuation, all of the Jupiter employees hosted a funeral for their favorite beer. They had one final keg left, one they plowed through as a staff as they mourned the end of an era.
The death of Quasars isn’t an isolated incident in the world of craft brewing. Giants like Anheuser-Busch and MillerCoors control most of the beer industry in the US. Acquisitions like Jupiter’s by Drake’s are common. Between 2010 and 2017, Anheuser-Busch acquired ten independent breweries, such as Goose Island and Wicked Weed Brewing. And the fight got a little more local just two years ago, when the Japanese-based Sapporo acquired Anchor Brewing Co., a San Francisco staple since the years of the Gold Rush.
The Bay Area has claims as the birthplace of many movements: the Free Speech Movement, the tech industry. And adding to the ever growing list of the Bay’s claims to fame? It’s also the birthplace of the craft brewing industry.
Anchor Brewing Co.’s website states that the company was “America’s first craft brewery” and a “pioneer in the craft brewing movement.” And it was indeed. Although Anchor has been around since 1896, its status as a craft brewery was cemented in 1965, when Fritz Maytag took ownership of the ailing brewery. This investment sparked a revolution. California is currently home to 1,039 craft breweries, a number higher than any other state in the US. Even Jupiter’s closest relative has a stake in this fame: Triple Rock Brewery & Alehouse asserts itself as the country’s “oldest original brewpub.” In Berkeley alone, there are no fewer than 10 craft breweries, brewpubs, and taprooms for you to hop between.
So the dilemma arises: can the craft brewing industry remain independent and successful, or will it ultimately fall to giants like Anheuser-Busch? And what does the future look like for Jupiter, now that it’s been stripped of part of its identity?
The answer lies in the employees. Michael’s eyes light up when he tells me about the people he supervises. They’re an eclectic bunch: septum-pierced and hair-dyed and sleeve-tattooed. They whirl around in the bronze glow of the string lights, the waiters clad in black button-down vests and white shirts — sleeves rolled up past the elbows to bare tattoos — and black pants. And between the waiters lurks the runners, less visible but their faces still recognizable, Quasar shirts on their backs and Docs on their feet to soften the wear-and-tear of running up and down brick stairs for hours at a time.
It’s a supportive employee environment. I spoke to Clare, a friend who’s a former Jupiter runner and bartender, about employee dynamics. They described the employee culture as “really fast-paced, really hard working, and also really fun. For the most part it was a really good team atmosphere, especially behind the bar. Everyone always had your back!”
Michael acknowledged the friendships formed between his staff. He shrugged when he told me about it, as if playing the part of a disinterested older sibling. “Yeah, they’re all friends. They go out together outside of work. I think a bunch of the young ones are sleeping together.”
They’re friendly with each other, but they’re also friendly to their customers, much to our delight. They banter with you when you order your beers and — if you really get on their good side — they’ll drink with you. Which leads to one of Jupiter’s most sacred traditions, the reason college students flock to the beer garden with swarms of friends: the birthday chug.
It’s simple enough. If it’s your birthday, tell your waiter. The waiter brings you two glasses of Jupiter’s stout. Yours will have a birthday candle atop it. Blow out the candle. Cheers — and you hoist the glass down, up, down. And chug. And chug. And chug. If you win, you get eternal bragging rights and a free beer, but it’s no easy feat. Think about it — these employees train day after day for this, birthday chug after birthday chug. Of course they’re better than you. Your only hopes are to catch them on an off night or to get a newbie waiter.
But these bragging rights give me pause. Why have we made chugging a beer into such a tradition?
I find myself returning again and again to the emblematic Quasar logo. I’ve always thought that it represented an explosion: the hops rocketing out of the supernova, the Quasar label pulling away from the bang. But when I look closer, I wonder if I’ve been reading it wrong. It seems instead like the explosion pulls everything else towards it. Under different eyes, the Quasar label doesn’t inch away from the burst but instead struggles to resist its gravity. And at the center of this unforgiving gravity? A black hole.
A beer I love so much that it defines some of my best college memories. A drink so popular that an entire staff mourned its loss. Just like in space, these Quasars are so bright they engulf the light of all other stars, sucking everything towards a black hole at their center.
Is it our fault for willingly buying into the attraction of this drinking culture? Or are we powerless to its gravity?
Many social settings organize themselves around drinking. Business deals are closed over a cocktail. Friends use “grabbing beers” as an excuse for casual bonding. A couple on a date may order a glass of wine with dinner. But why exactly do we need this drinking culture?
Alcohol is considered a “social lubricant” by many. It lowers our inhibitions, makes us less self-conscious, and seems to heighten our social skills. For hundreds of years, humans have used alcohol as a means to form and strengthen relational bonds. And many of the rituals associated with alcohol consumption are fun — it’s exciting to attempt the birthday chug, even if you lose, just for a moment of bragging rights.
It’s cheaper, more convenient, and generally quicker for me to sip on a beer on my couch with my friends. So why do I travel with these same friends to a place like Jupiter just for a beer?
Maybe it has something to do with idealizing a feeling. It’s more exciting, more aesthetically pleasing, for me to reflect on memories of my friends clutching Quasars in the bronze glow of Jupiter’s lights than to think about us drinking a beer in our dingy living room. Or maybe it has something to do with how we present ourselves to others. We want our peers to think of us as fun people who go out on the weekends to local hangouts, not as sequestered homebodies. Either way, this drinking culture, this use of alcohol as a glue for our relationships, seems to indicate that we may be afraid of some kind of authenticity. Maybe we’re scared of what our friendships look like without the bond of drinking, because maybe the answer is exactly what we don’t want to hear: maybe they’re nonexistent. Perhaps drinking pulls us towards a black hole where we can’t remember how to bond without it, can’t even imagine going to Jupiter and not ordering a beer.
The gravity of this drinking culture seems inescapable. Or maybe the problem is I don’t want to escape it. I like claiming membership to this society that enjoys craft beer, that knows local breweries well enough to have go-to orders. I enjoy grabbing a beer with my friends. I don’t plan on tapping out anytime soon. Rather, I’m willing to let the quasar pull me in deeper for the time being.
Beneath the twinkling lights and the live jazz and the brick courtyard, there’s a heartbeat that pulses at Jupiter—and it’s the people that give it this heartbeat.
It’s the waiters and the runners. It’s the regulars who speckle the huge copper bar, sporting Jupiter sweatshirts so often I get them confused with employees. And it’s the people who crowd next to me around a folding table, jammed elbow-to-armpit but nursing beers and smiles.
It‘s also the tumble of memories that’s attached to these people. My dad, quietly sliding my first Quasar across the table towards me. It is a four-person table stuffed full with seven happy faces and pools of ranch and meat lovers pizza. It is birthday chug after birthday chug, fruitlessly racing the waiters until finally, finally I slam the glass down first (and it wasn’t even a newbie waiter!). It is trying to wipe away tears from a recent heartbreak before any of the uber-cool servers saw them falling. It is drunkenly stumbling towards the bathroom with muscle-memory, confident in its location only because of countless visits before. It is the waiters recognizing us when we sit down, yelling “hey, it’s you guys!” It is learning to like beer. It is mourning the loss of Quasars with my best friends.
Most weekends find me lurking on the outskirts of the Jupiter beer garden, eyes peeled and ready to pounce on the next available table. I keep returning, even though my favorite beer has been phased out. Happily, employees like Michael are here to ensure that Jupiter’s still in the fight to stay true to its roots. He teamed up with the other managers to get the ear of someone higher up on the corporate ladder, and together they lobbied for the return of Quasars. And it worked — at least temporarily. Drake’s agreed to brew a “vat” of Quasar, which roughly equals 32 kegs, a hearty supply that lasted Jupiter about three weeks.
“We told them how much it means to people,” Michael said. “And we hope we can keep doing that.” Michael says that the plan is to brew several vats of Quasar a year, meaning that the favorite beer will hopefully return every six months or so. Quasars weren’t gone for good. Jupiter will still remain the Jupiter I’ve known and loved.
As long as the people fight for what they love: Quasars.
