Spotted Octopus Brewing opens in former Roc Brewing space

Buffalo-born brewery's new spot in Rochester's East End officially opens Saturday

For the first time in 16 months, one of Rochester’s most well-known brewery landmarks has a new lease on life.

Buffalo-based Spotted Octopus Brewing is officially opening its new Rochester taproom/production brewery for the first time this week. Spotted Octopus Rochester will open at 11 a.m. Saturday at the former home of Roc Brewing, which called the building at 56 S. Union St. home for more than a decade.

Roc abruptly closed in October 2023. It was a pioneer in Rochester’s second wave of craft brewing and kicked off an era of explosive growth throughout WNY. So it’s fitting and cool to see a relative newcomer move into the historic space near downtown Rochester, especially one as inclusive as Spotted Octopus.

Spotted Octopus opened a little under three years ago in Buffalo’s Allentown neighborhood. It is co-owned by Domenic Nicotera, Ken Shaw, and Barbara Priore. The new spot will offer 12 beers on draft. And it has already started brewing on Roc’s 7-barrel brewhouse. Head brewer Evan Flury, who has worked a few different spots in Buffalo, will head up production in Rochester. He joined Spotted Octopus a few months after it opened.

He is the creative force behind a few of the brewery’s flagship offerings, including Call the Kraken hazy IPA, Just a Beer rice lager, and Paxton’s Pale, a hazy pale ale named after Ken and Dom’s pitbull.

And as a point of personal pride, the Spotted Octopus crew was introduced to the vacant Roc space through a sponsored partnership between my newsletter and building owner CJS Architects. (Humble brag — let me help spread your beer news and I can connect you with the folks you wanna reach.)

As the current Buffalo taproom doesn’t have a kitchen and due to their lack of kitchen experience, Dom, Ken, and Barb are happy to partner with Brendan Zugibe, a member of the Zugibe Wine family, to operate the food portion of the business. Zugibe met the SOBC crew through his day-job adventures distroing his family’s wines at breweries and other establishments throughout WNY. He’ll operate Flow Food Rochester as the kitchen partner at the new Spotted Octopus spot. It’ll feature Mediterranean and pub-style offerings.

Since Spotted Octopus utilizes the state’s farm brewery license, it can serve other beers, wines, ciders, and spirits produced in NYS. That means you’ll find offerings from OSB Ciderworks, Lilly Belle Meads, Buffalo Distiling, Ellicottville Distillery, and Black Sheep Distillery, the brewery trumpeted in a press release.

The opening beer lineup contains a ton of variety and at least two fun collabs with other WNY breweries Swiftwater and Brazen.

Spotted Octopus is open Monday and Thursday 11 a.m. to 10 p.m.; Friday and Saturday 11 a.m. to 11 p.m.; and Sunday 11 a.m. to 6 p.m.

More details are available in my Spotted Octopus profile published earlier this month:

A final note: It’s pretty wild to think I’ve been working on this independent publication for over two years now. In that time, I’ve published nearly 250 newsletters, highlighted some of my favorite people in the industry, curated two beers festivals (that featured 150 participants and 4,600 attendees), and continued to break all the biggest news in the region (closures, consolidations, openings, etc.).

The Cleveland Prost remains the preeminent source for regional beer news. If you own a brewery, bar, or beer-adjacent business, this is the best place to reach the nerds you wanna be in front of. So I remain open to sponsorships, advertisements, and sponsored content. Feel free to reach out to me at clevelandprost@gmail.com for more. And more than anything, thanks for all the support. None of this would be possible without the devoted (and thirsty) audience.