Brewery Working day Journey: Puppy-welcoming taprooms in Brentwood, Concord and Lafayette

I have been circling the bay these final months, sampling beer at breweries from Santa Cruz to Sunnyvale and Martinez. This 7 days took me out to Harmony, Lafayette and Brentwood, where by a reader prompt I’d obtain some of his most loved pet-pleasant breweries.

Four Legs Brewing

As the name implies, 4-legged pals — as nicely as family members — are welcome at this Brentwood brewpub, which delivers indoor seating and tables with umbrellas on the patio. Homebrewer Erik Bacher and his spouse Michelle, a former accountant, opened the brewery in April 2021, with head brewer Kyle McGarry overseeing the 15-bbl immediate fireplace brewhouse.

Among the dozen or so beers on tap, you will locate a rice lager, named simply just Beer. It’s light and refreshing with a good trace of bitterness. Walking Puppy is a tasty West Coast pale ale — and a collaboration with Epidemic Ales, my following halt on this particular brewery working day vacation. Pacing Pils” and Cuatro Patas, a Mexican lager, are each good warm weather beers. The line-up is rounded out by many hoppy and juicy IPAs and a nutty, chocolatey Imperial Stout called Royal Hound.

Get a bite from a person of the meals vehicles parked close by, and be confident to look at out the corn hole tournaments, Bingo Thursdays and other standard gatherings on the 4 Legs web site.

Specifics: The brewery opens at 4 p.m. Wednesday-Thursday, 3 p.m. Friday and noon on Saturday-Sunday at 2010 Elkins Way in Brentwood fourlegsbrewing.com. If you reside in Antioch, you are in luck: Four Legs will be opening a taproom there at 1 I St. this fall.

Epidemic Ales

When Holly Brown, Erin Shally and Brian Wang opened their Concord brewery in 2016, the taproom identify was a playful reference to the explosion of craft brewery openings throughout the location. Now, the comfortable, pet dog-welcoming digs are crammed with amusements for Fido entrepreneurs, from beer faucets to pinball and pool. There’s a prolonged bar and tables inside and out, and you could undoubtedly reduce you for a number of hrs right here.

You’ll uncover up to 20 beers in a vast range of types on faucet. Their most popular beers are the soft, refreshing Lager at the World’s Conclusion and its fruited sister, Limelight, a lager that makes use of the same base beer but adds lime and salt — a great quaff when there is a taco truck parked there on Tuesdays and Thursdays. The Zombrew, a West Coast IPA, is also well-liked it has a great nose that’s properly bitter, a reliable illustration of the fashion that appears to be to be making a comeback.

Other stand-outs involve Pineapple Upside-Down Cake Hazy Pale Ale, whose nose smells specifically like what its name implies, which is no suggest feat, and the newest in the Tartastrophe collection, a Tartastrophe Strawberry Kettle Sour that has wonderful berry fruit notes but is only lightly sour.

There’s a slushie device serving up stylish beer cocktails, to-go beer by the 4-pack, crowlers and growlers. Foodstuff vehicles prevent by every day, and special occasions — trivia night, paint night and classes on every thing from tie dye to spent-grain doggy treats — abound.

Specifics: Epidemic’s taproom opens at 3 p.m. weekdays and noon weekends at 150 Mason Circle in Harmony. Epidemic beer is also readily available at 7 farmers markets, like Orinda, Livermore and Marin. Obtain the entire listing at epidemicales.com.

Headlands Brewing, Lafayette

Established in 2013 by two Marin homebrewers, the brewery was obtained a number of decades ago by Austin Sharp, who opened a Headlands Brewing taproom very last 12 months on Lafayette’s occupied Mt. Diablo Boulevard. The within could be tiny, but outside the house is yet another make any difference, with a number of roomy, pet-pleasant areas where you can chill out and take pleasure in a beer, which include a front deck, a eco-friendly-turfed beer back garden on the side and a huge back backyard garden with umbrellas, Adirondack chairs and bench seating.

On-web site there’s a smaller 3.5-bbl brewery the place head brewer Ryan Frank makes
beer completely for the brewpub. On faucet, you’ll find a great selection of fifty percent-a-dozen or so property beers, furthermore guest beers, ciders and kombucha. Four beers are canned off-web-site, such as three year-round beers and a rotating IPA sequence identified as the Trailblazer.