American Craft Beer The Best Craft Beer, Breweries, Bars, Brewpubs, Beer Stores, And Restaurants Serving Serious Beer.
Craft beer tourism has come of age and increasingly fans are building their travel plans around exciting cities that also brew serious beer. We recently drank our way through Oakland’s emerging craft beer scene and we’ve a number of places that you absolutely don’t want to miss when you’re there.
Linden Street Brewery
Currently housed in an evocative 19th century brick-warehouse in Oakland’s Jack London Square neighborhood you’ll find the iconic Linden Street Brewery – and it’s the right way to start any drinking tour in Oakland.
Opened in 2009, Linden Street was the city’s first production facility in more than 50 years and we think it’s safe to say that they singlehandedly laid the foundation for Oakland to become the vital craft beer destination that it is today.
Linden Street’s brewing operations are now helmed by Head Brewer Shane Aldrich, who was schooled by legends such as Tony Lawrence (Boneyard Beer) and Tim Gossack (Bell’s Brewing). Shane honed his art for over a decade, working at celebrated Bay Area institutions including Marin, Moylan’s, Lagunitas, and Half Moon Bay Brewing, before eventually taking on the reins at Linden Street in 2015.
Far ranging and adventurous in his instincts, yet neo-traditionalist at his core, Shane is currently nurturing a mind-blowing variety of styles at Linden Street Brewery – all of them worth any true beer pilgrim’s time.
Diving Dog Brewhouse
Uptown and across the street from the Oakland Fox Theater, a beautifully renovated music venue that’s hosted major-league headliners like Metallica, you’ll happen upon Diving Dog Brewhouse.
Founded by Rob Bailard in 2014, Diving Dog is a craft beer destination like no other for a number of reasons.
First it’s an ambitious and accomplished small batch brewery – we sampled a Farmhouse Saison when we came through that blew us away!
Secondly it’s a craft beer bar, set in a sleek rustic wood and concrete hideaway, with 30 rotating draft lines dedicated not only to their own creations, but also to northern California’s most cutting-edge breweries.
Diving Dog also offers a unique “brew-on-premises” operation that invites its customers to follow their own brewing muse. They provide the recipes, the guidance (should you need it), the ingredients and professional-grade equipment. You’ll have everything you’ll need to brew your own signature small batch brew (and you can even design your own labels when you’re there).
And finally, Diving Dog Brewhouse is also a bit of a professional photo gallery and its cool industrial space is graced with incredibly playful (and truly artful) photographs of Bailard’s dogs. And yes, one of the dogs pictured is seen underwater, diving through a pool.
Woods Bar & Brewery
Just one block south from Diving Dog, at the corner of Telegraph and 17th, is another uptown craft beer mecca that’s an absolute “must” when you’re in town.
One of four brewing outlets developed by Woods Beer Company, and the only one not based in San Francisco, Woods Bar & Brewery is the organization’s flagship facility set in a lush indoor-outdoor beer garden in the heart of Uptown Oakland.
One of the newer additions to Oakland’s growing craft beer scene, Woods Bar & Brewery opened in 2014, and the fact that it quickly garnered a passionate following isn’t surprising. It’s a beautifully designed beer space and a wonderful place to get “beer-spaced” on elegantly crafted brews.
Enjoy a Sparkle Motion Belgian IPA with fellow beer geeks at Wood’s 20-foot-long mahogany bar or a Local Honey Ale by the fireplace which centers their sun-lit, cathedral-ceilinged entrance room. But no matter your tastes, this is a place that you don’t want to miss next time you’re in Oakland.
