Roc Brewing, Rochester craft beer pioneer, will close this week

The East End brewery, which originally opened in 2011, was part of Rochester's second wave of craft beer.

Roc Brewing, one of Rochester’s pioneering craft breweries, will close its doors after nearly 13 years in business.

Owners at the East End brewery made the announcement to employees Wednesday and then confirmed the news via text message. It’ll close its South Union taproom at midnight Saturday. When it first opened in 2011, Roc was just the second craft brewery in the city of Rochester. (Rohrbach Brewing opened its Railroad Street beer hall and production facility in 2008.)

Brewery co-founders Chris Spinelli and Jon Mervine met as students at RIT and then started homebrewing in the Brighton kitchen of Spinelli’s parents. What started off on a glorified 1-barrel homebrew-like system graduated to a 7-barrel system within the first few years.

Beyond the community it created and fostered, Roc’s biggest legacy will be the path it provided for other craft breweries to open in both Rochester and throughout New York state. Spinelli is a long-time New York State Brewers Association board member and helped encourage growth throughout the state through both his mentoring and advocating for the easing of state regulations and passage of new laws.

Spinelli also founded the 585 Brewers Collaborative, a group of local brewery owners and brewers that meet almost every month to share knowledge and build community.

Roc was part of what I’ve termed Rochester’s second wave of craft beer. Between 1991 and 2010, Rochester had only two constants in craft beer — Rohrbach and Custom Brewcrafters (CB Craft Brewers). Other establishments came and went (Flour City, Bru, Empire, etc.) but none lasted more than a year or two. When Roc opened, it was joined by Three Heads (through its original contract brewing agreement with CB’s before opening its own facility in 2016) and Naked Dove (the first craft brewery in Ontario County). Those three breweries even predated state law changes in 2012 and 2014 that loosened restrictions for producers. They provided a spark and a road map for future breweries.

Mervine, Roc’s original head brewer, left the brewery three years in and was replaced by Nick Mesrobian. Mesrobian, who gained valuable experience at Shipyard Brewing in his native Maine and then at Custom Brewcrafters in Honeoye Falls, has led brewing operations for the past nine years. (Mervine eventually opened Fifth Frame Brewing on St. Paul Street in downtown Rochester.)

I met Mervine and Spinelli well before I even published my first beer article. I remember homebrewing with them in that Brighton kitchen and just thinking how struck I was by their shared enthusiasm for the craft. When viewed in hindsight, that enthusiasm could also be called naivete. How many 23-year-olds open their own businesses, let alone a craft brewery? But that could also be viewed as one of the strengths of the Roc crew. They didn’t know any better. So why not give it a shot?!

It could be argued that Spinelli and Roc grew up with the changing neighborhood near downtown. When it opened, Roc overlooked the cavernous Inner Loop, the highway that cut off and cut through entire neighborhoods in Rochester. And then that section of the Inner Loop was filled in and numerous housing developments and businesses sprouted up as some barriers to connectivity were removed. It has become the Strong Museum-driven Neighborhood of Play. And now there are three breweries (Nine Spot and Strangebird) and a craft-focused bar (Fattey’s) within blocks of each other.

It’s kinda crazy that I can almost write this story, the history and impact of Roc Brewing, almost entirely from memory, because I know it so well. But when a place like Roc closes, it signifies the loss of an important piece of the community fabric. Like Tap and Mallet or any other formative Rochester institution, something might eventually take its place, but it will never be the same.

Roc has always been a place to enjoy the classics with a healthy dose of weirdness mixed in. You can always find a lager on draft (and it might feature an unexpected dry-hopping). (And we’re not gonna even dive into the Badass saga and the cease and desist from Kid Rock.) Roc was the first craft brewery in Monroe County, beyond Genesee, to install a traditional horizontal lagering tank. As I’ve established in this piece, however, it goes beyond the beer. It always has.

When it opened, Roc occupied the smaller part of a former VFW hall. An architecture firm occupied the larger half. And when the firm moved out, Roc expanded its footprint to the entire building. It partnered with the FLX Wienery to open a restaurant. The concept was announced in early 2020 and finally opened in August of that year. It coincided with Roc growing from 2’800 square feet to 7,100 square feet. But with the weight of the pandemic, that partnership lasted less than two years. Roc eventually rebranded and reopened its own kitchen.

The brewery also embraced and created community through its Celebration of Cream Ales. For that event, the brewery convinced other breweries from across the state to brew a cream ale and if they listened to Mesrobian, they were encouraged to make it as weird as possible. (That might explain why Roc and Genny once teamed up for a miso ginger cream ale.) It was just another way to celebrate Rochester and that was always the Roc way.

Talk to anyone in the industry and you’ll universally hear that beer is tough right now. Growth has slowed, even stalled, in most areas. Distribution is difficult. It’s hard to compete, especially at a regional level. The pandemic changed so much — from the need to package (really can) as much of your beer for off-site consumption as possible to whatever hurdles the Cuomo administration made breweries jump through with zero notice. I’m not sure if taprooms ever fully recovered. It must be exhausting.

So I’m wishing all the best to Spinelli, Mesrobian, and the Roc crew moving forward. I made a lot of last friendships there. And I hope each person finds success, happiness, and fulfillment in whatever next chapter they author.