This post is going to be a little different to my usual travel/beer reports. As there’s relatively little touristy stuff to do in the Bay Area, I wouldn’t want to bore anyone with how we filled our 30 days in the area. Suffice to say, there was plenty of drinking, so I’ll just focus on the pub/brewery scene so that anyone so inclined might pick up a few pointers. I’ll start with a few travel tips that may help. Firstly, here’s a map of all the beery places I did (this is NOT an exhaustive list, and doesn’t include places I’d already visited on our previous visit).
Staying there.
It can be expensive staying in San Francisco, especially if you’re looking at the Embarcadero/ Pier/ Fisherman’s Wharf areas. Staying over the bay in Oakland or Berkeley area can be cheaper. We stayed in this charming little house in a quiet area of Piedmont, found on AirBnB.
One thing to watch for – The local authorities have imposed a 17% ‘tourist tax’ on stays of up to 30 days. We originally booked for 30 days and, when we realized the levy, cancelled the booking and rebooked for 31 days, saving over £350 in the process! It _may_ pay you to book longer than you actually intend to stay.
Getting around.
Even though San Francisco is a relatively compact city, venues can be a considerable distance apart (especially when walking as we did, most of the time). Having said that, there are a couple of notable ‘clusters’ where, once there, it’s easy to walk between venues – more of this later. You’re definitely going to want to get a Clipper card. This will allow you to travel relatively cheaply around the whole Bay Area on most forms of transport (BART, Muni, bus, ferry and tram) but NOT the traditional Cable Car, which serves no real purpose other than to carry tourists from A to B.
Clipper cards can be purchased from any of the pay machines inside the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transport) stations. Issue costs $3 for the plastic card, plus any pre-load you want to start off with. A cheaper option is to download a transit pass onto your Google/Apple wallet and top-up as you go or set it to auto-load and forget about it.
An even cheaper option, if you’re (un)lucky enough to be over 65, is to get a Senior Clipper, which entitles you to 50% discount on buses and a whopping 62.5% off BART travel! Senior cards can only be picked up in person at the Embarcadero BART station in San Francisco, but are issued FOC (plus the pre-load) – Don’t forget to take a form of ID (e.g. passport). There is a Clipper app for mobile phones, but it can’t be downloaded onto non-American Google/Apple accounts.
At time of writing, bus fares are $2.25 ($1.20 senior) for any length journey – tap your card on the terminal as you board and $2.30 ($0.85 senior) between any two BART stations, but substantially cheaper on longer journeys. Dob your card on the reader at the entry and exit gates at the station. A fare calculator for BART Journeys can be found along with a route map here. I’ve also indicated all the BART stations on my Google map (above).
Uber, Lyft, and other taxis are widely available and reasonably priced. Download the apps before you leave the UK if you’re not using your usual SIM card whilst abroad, as they usually require a verification text to register. If you’re feeling particularly adventurous, take a Waymo driverless taxi. Waymo’s are all over the place in San Francisco and it’s a great experience to ride in one. We paid $29 (about £22) for a 5.8-mile, 38 minute ride, which I thought was good value, especially if four of you are riding.
If you want to visit the historic little town of Martinez, DO NOT get off at Martinez BART station! There’s nothing there but residential homes. Take the BART to Concord and there is a regular FREE (No.28) shuttle bus to the Martinez Amtrak station, which is situated in the heart of the town. We also found another free shuttle bus (No.7) from Calicraft Brewing back to Walnut Creek BART.
Lastly, the most versatile bus service we found was the AC Transit – No.12 route bus in Oakland which services no less than 66 stops and runs for about seven miles between Jack London Square in Oakley through Piedmont and Berkeley to West Berkely, conveniently connecting two of the aforementioned ‘clusters’.
‘Clusters’.
Jack London Square
There are no less than seven great venues in this area that are easily walkable from each other, alphabetically (the order you do them in will be dictated by their opening times).
- Cellarmaker House of Pizza (Taproom)
- Dokkabier (Brewery)
- Hesher’s (Pizza & Taproom)
- Line 51 (Brewery)
- Oakland United (Brewery)
- Original Pattern (Brewery)
- Sante Aidairius (Taproom)
West Berkeley
The No.12 bus goes past three of these places, with the others within an easy walk.
- Cellarmaker (Brewery)
- Fieldwork – Berkely (Brewery)
- Gilman (Brewery)
- Great Notion (Taproom)
- Headlands (Beer Garden)
- Tenma (Brewery)
- Wondrous (Brewery)
East San Francisco
This ‘cluster’ calls for a bit more stamina – but still easily doable (this pensioner managed to walk it!). It’s hard to get your head around how spread out American cities are. It looks ‘just down the road’ on the map, but when you get there it’s a different story! Anyway, the last seven are:
- Ballast Point (Taproom)
- Barebottle (Beer Garden)
- Bartlett Hall (Brewery)
- Black Hammer (Brewery)
- Enterprise (Brewery)
- Harmonic (Taproom)
- Olfactory (Brewery)
There are also other venues just North, South and West of this ‘cluster’ that you could incorporate into this one, depending on your staying power!
Measures.
The usual American ‘pint’ measure is 16 fl.oz, a fifth smaller than a UK pint. However, that doesn’t mean to say you’ll get the whole 16 oz! Some venues are quite liberal with the pint definition and don’t mind serving with a deep head of foam, depriving you of valuable nectar. Other venues limit some of their beers to a 12oz pour, usually depending on the strength – the higher the ABV, the smaller your pour. So make sure you look at the tariff board before you make your choice to avoid nasty surprises!
Another thing to look out for is that half-pints are not half the price. For example, say the average pint is 7 or 8 dollars, a half pour is likely to be around 5 dollars, so it’s more economical to drink pints. Tasters (4 or 5oz measures) can be even more costly, pro-rata – so beware!
…and so on to the beers! I have split this rather long report into four sections for reading comfort, so click the page links below to continue.