26 November 2013

Brew Tour: Cellarmaker Brewing Company

Cellarmaker Brewing Company is the latest on the scene here in San Francisco. It's a definite local place, located off the beaten path in an old warehouse-type space in SoMA.

My friend E & I found ourselves there one mellow Saturday about two weeks after it opened, and it was love at first sight. The tasting room space isn't too huge, and at that point pretty much every table was full but there weren't too many others hovering for a spot (which, for me, I like...I don't like to feel the pressure to have to drink quickly).

The day we were there, they were pouring 8 types of beer -- all super fresh! We decided to taste them all -- which we did. For 20$ you can get a generous sampling of everything on tap. Make sure to save a clipboard listing the beers; there are good descriptions of each. Also, you may want to ask the server the best order in which to taste -- when we were there they gave us the beer in the order the menu listed them, which was not the best order to taste (i.e. you don't want to go from a Saison to a Porter then back to an IPA).

My personal favorite was the Coquette -- a Belgian-ish style, which I always like. Really, I enjoyed most of them, enough to take some home with me. The cool thing here is you can bring in any brewery's growler and they'll fill it, but they also offer two sizes of their own. I got a smaller one of the Coquette, and one of the Hop Slangin' IPA (mainly for my friend who would be visiting me the following week).

This place is definitely gaining popularity, so it'd be wise to get there early. While they don't offer any food on-site, they do have a variety of food trucks visit on the weekend.

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