Barebottle Brewing Company

Barebottle calls itself 'crowd-inspired'. The brewery pilot-brews finalists from homebrew competitions and lets the public vote on what gets made, and it prints a five-gallon homebrew recipe on every can. Muir Woods, the hazy IPA that became their first bottled beer, won their own IPA competition.

The three co-founders, Lester Koga, Michael Seitz and Ben Sterling, were business-school classmates who homebrewed, became certified beer judges, and have brewed in San Francisco since 2016.

Bernal Heights is the home base, and it's a big room: it holds more than 200 people across a patio, a lounge, a parlor, the area under the mezzanine and a loft. There are 20 to 30 rotating beers, a few house wines, kombucha, and house-made sodas for non-drinkers. Flights are five 5-ounce pours.

Hella Hetchy is a pilsner brewed with Hetch Hetchy water, the reservoir that supplies San Francisco's tap water.

Food trucks rotate through, and their calendar is on Barebottle's site. You can also bring your own food at Bernal. Dogs are welcome. Kids are too, as long as they stay within arm's length of their adult.

Barebottle also runs a beer garden at Salesforce Park downtown (425 Mission Street, open noon to 7pm, half a mile from the Bay Bridge ramps), plus taprooms in Santa Clara, Menlo Park and Walnut Creek, which are all off this route.