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Brewery Roundup: Santa Cruz County’s Best in Brew

Santa Cruz County is a great place to be if you’re a craft beer lover. At one point it seemed that every time you blinked a new brewery opened! There are wonderful venues in many geographic areas, from Westside Santa Cruz to Corralitos. A bonus: each is run by local individuals who are passionate about brewing delicious, unique beer. Ready for a cold one? Start your local beer tour with some of the area’s finest:

Balefire Brewing

One of the popular beers at Balefire Brewing Co. is Leeloo, an American-style IPA. Other beer on tap includes English-style ales. Co-owners, and husbands/wives Matt and Leslie Buchanan and Nate and Stephanie Murphy, founded the brewery in 2023. Leslie and Nate serve as brewmasters, while Matt and Stephanie fulfill various roles, from behind the scenes to tending bar. The brewery is located at the East Cliff Shopping Center. As stated on the website, “Historically, a ‘balefire’ signified a gathering place for the community.” In keeping with this namesake, Balefire has plenty of comfortable seating—both indoors and out—and encourages people to bring their own food when they visit and stay for a good while. There are also rotating food trucks in front of Balefire, and the brewery sells light snacks.

Location: 21517 E Cliff Dr, Santa Cruz

Beer Thirty Bottle Shop & Pour House and Beer Mule Bottle Shop & Pour House

Beer Thirty Bottle Shop & Pour House has been serving craft beer fans in Soquel since 2014. They have 30 rotating taps, like popular Maui Waui from Altamont Beer Works, and more than 300 takeout bottle and can selections. On weekends, neighboring Carpo’s Restaurant has an order window in the dog-friendly beer garden; customers can order from the menu to accompany their beer. You can also buy food from nearby Buzzo Pizza and Sunnyside Produce to eat in the garden or bring food from home or from other businesses.

The team at Beer Thirty is also responsible for Watsonville’s Beer Mule Bottle Shop & Pour House, located at The Hangar since 2019. Beer Mule has 40 rotating draft options including non-beer choices like Living Swell Kombucha, and Verve Cold Brew Coffee with or without Stout. One top-selling beer is tropical West Coast IPA, Mai Tai by Salinas’ Alvarado Street Brewery. Beer Mule has lots of packaged beer and wine available in its cold case, and food business Guz Bros serves selections including tacos, sandwiches and fries out of the venue’s kitchen.

Location: Beer Thirty, 2504 S. Main St., Soquel, Beer Mule, 45 Aviation Way, Watsonville

Corralitos Brewing Co.

The South County brewery, located in the Pacific Firewood & Lumber building (a former apple packing shed), specializes in IPA, seasonals and sours. Selections include Corralitos Blonde Ale, Hop Kiss IPA, Richter Red (the house Amber), and Passion Fruit Seltzer. They have a dozen rotating taps, and food trucks frequently appear at their venue. Brewers Luke Taylor and Mike Smith opened the brewery in 2015.

Location: 2536 Freedom Blvd., Watsonville

Discretion Brewing

Soquel’s Discretion Brewing fits well with our progressive county due to a number of reasons. Among them: In fall 2024, it released ParticIPAte West Coast IPA as an “election-season special.” The QR code on the can takes people to the official voter registration website, encouraging customers to participate in the democratic process. Also, their self-proclaimed values are “wisdom, wit, and kindness” and they are the county’s first solar-powered and green-certified brewery. They also designed their brew system with water conservation in mind. And they have brewed quite a few beers in support of a particular organization. The Woodland Critters series of bottled, barrel-aged beer benefits the Santa Cruz County Land Trust. Discretion brews with ingredients that support sustainable farming and gives spent grain to local pigs to reduce waste. Their brewery features an organic beer garden where customers can enjoy food produced in an on-site restaurant, Sugo at Discretion. Menu items including Italian sandwiches and flatbreads are designed to pair with Discretion’s beers.  

Location: 2703 41st Ave., Soquel

Fruition Brewing

Fruition Brewing, with a brewery and tasting room in the East Lake Village shopping center, features a wide range of beer styles including lagers, IPAs, sours, and barrel aged beers. Head brewer David Purgason is co-owner with his partner, Tallula Preston. They are both proud of brewing with many local and organic ingredients. “Our kitchen has a similar organic and local focus,” says Purgason. The menu rotates with the seasons and includes snacks, salads, soups, oysters, and gourmet grilled cheese sandwiches. Food can be enjoyed indoors or on a pet-friendly patio, paired with beer, or with local cider or local Birichino wine. Throughout the year, Fruition offers events including First Friday art shows and trivia nights.

Location: 918 E. Lake Ave., Watsonville

Humble Sea Brewing Co.

Humble Sea Brewing Co. first opened in 2017. Within one year, they were named the third fastest growing brewery in California. By 2019, Hop Culture Magazine named them one of the top 10 U.S. breweries. In 2023, Humble Sea opened a Santa Cruz Wharf location: a beer garden that is open seasonally and closes for the winter months. The original Swift Street brewery offers 16 taps of rotating beer selections brewed in-house, with a heavy focus on foggy IPAs (foggy is the brewery’s term for hazy) but also including lagers, stouts, saisons, sours, blondes, and West coast IPA styles. Socks & Sandals is one of its popular and whimsically titled foggy IPAs. With a dog-friendly beer garden, the brewery features rotating local food trucks and locally made empanadas by Fonda Felix every day. Co-founder and creative director Frank Scott Krueger says he and the other co-founders (Nick Pavlina-head of brewing operations, and Taylor West-head of operations) design half of the beers with the idea of getting fans excited about new releases. They have utilized concepts like smoothie beers. The other half, designed with old world brewing traditions in mind, include six-week slow beers: decoction mashed German lagers, naturally carbonated, horizontally lagered, and poured out of a traditional side pull beer faucet. The brewery also runs The Tavern, located at the Cremer House in Felton. This restaurant collaboration with Emerald Mallard features a continuously rotating food menu prepared by chef Lance Ebert and beer and cocktails from Humble Sea.

Location: Main location: 820 Swift St., Santa Cruz, Wharf location: 45 Municipal Wharf, Santa Cruz, The Tavern: 6256 CA-9, Felton

Lúpulo Craft Beer House

The word Lupulo means ‘hops’ in Spanish. To further pay homage to their roots in Spain and Mexico, co-owners Noëlle Antolin and Stuyvie Bearns Esteva created a menu with these influences. The nearby downtown Santa Cruz farmers market enables them to use fresh, seasonal ingredients for selections including tapas, hearty tortas, and salads. Lúpulo invites customers to “come for the beer and stay for the food.” The venue’s rotating draft beers includes selections from across the world, and Lúpulo has an extensive bottled beer selection including non-alcoholic and gluten-free options. Also, there are carefully curated choices for those interested in cider and wine. Lúpulo, which has been open since 2014, has a parklet out front for additional seating.

Location: 233 Cathcart St., Santa Cruz

Sante Adairius Rustic Ales

Like its namesake promises, the brewery produces rustic-style ales—many with Belgian influences. Co-owner Adair Paterno’s favorite style of beer to drink is Saison. She and husband Tim Clifford started SARA (as it’s affectionately known) with a Capitola location in 2012, and later opened a second tasting room in Santa Cruz. Both locations have dog-friendly patios. The brewery has created selections such as Capitola Sunset (a Rustic Industrial Park Saison in celebration of ‘insanely mesmerizing pink, orange, and azure Capitola sunsets’) and Capitola Bright (described as a Coastal-style Light Beer). The Santa Cruz location has in-house food available daily via Bookie’s Pizza, featuring square Detroit-style pizza with gourmet toppings. Past combinations have included chanterelle/corn/roasted cherry tomato sauce, Fogline Farm chicken with BBQ sauce and smoked mozzarella, and a white sauce variation with nettles and Maitake mushrooms. The Capitola location sometimes has rotating food vendors on the weekends.

Location: 103 Kennedy Dr., Capitola and 1315 Water St., Santa Cruz

Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing

Santa Cruz Mountain Brewing opened at Swift St. Courtyard in 2005. Owners Adair Paterno (of Sante Adairius Rustic Ales) and Brad Clark (Private Press Brewing) took over in 2024; Paterno is a longtime friend of original co-owner Emily Thomas. Clark launched club-based Private Press, which specializes in barrel-aged Imperial Stouts and Barleywines, in 2019. The taproom features several rotating taps, with a solid variety including bestselling Pacific IPA, Unicorn Tears hazy IPA, and Coaster Kolsch. Traditionally, around 12 feature SCMB beers, with 1 tap reserved for Private Press and a couple for Sante Adairius. Customers can bring their dogs to SCMB’s large beer garden and enjoy a food menu including pretzels with beer cheese spread and ale mustard, a customer favorite. Other items include sandwiches with bread from Kelly’s French Bakery and meat from artisan butcher and neighbor El Salchichero.

Location: 402 Ingalls St. Suite 27, Santa Cruz

Seabright Social

Brewpub Seabright Social, located in its namesake Seabright neighborhood near the ocean, has lots of seating including a spacious dog-friendly patio that features cozy fire pits. Beers on tap rotate and include local breweries like Sante Adairius, Other Brother, and Narrative Fermentation, in addition to its own flagship Pelican Pale and Blur IPA. Other drinks include Santa Cruz Cider, wine on tap (like Birichino and Alfaro), cocktails, and Kombucha. The most popular dishes are street tacos, a signature Smash burger, and fish and chips. All three owners have lots of experience in the food and drink industry: Jason and Keiki McKay also own Aptos-based Cantine Winepub. Jon Bates’ career includes decades of restaurant and retail experience including selling wine for more than 12 years.

Location: 519 Seabright Ave., Santa Cruz

Shanty Shack Brewing

Rotating beers on tap at Shanty Shack include IPAs, barrel-aged and fruited kettle sours, pilsners, stouts, and Belgian styles. Popular beers include Train Wreck (Double IPA), Harvey (flagship West Coast IPA), and Razzmanian Devil (Kettle Sour with raspberries). Co-owners Brandon Padilla and Nathan Van Zandt, who founded Shanty Shack in 2016, first met as fellow home brewing enthusiasts. They are both music lovers and the brewery regularly hosts live music. Some customers plan shopping trips to nearby Costco with outings to Shanty Shack before or after. Rotating food trucks appear at the brewery several days a week. Shanty Shack features an outdoor dog-friendly area. 

Location: 138 Fern St., Santa Cruz

Steel Bonnet Brewing Company

Scotland natives Donald and Sue Cramb own and run Steel Bonnet, which was Scotts Valley’s first brewery when it opened in 2015. The Crambs strive for their brewery and tap room to provide the same sense of warmth, family and community as the local pubs they experienced growing up in Scotland. The beers they serve are primarily American and British Ales. Work Street Pilsner and Big Trees Red Ale are very popular, along with flagships Hop the Heck IPA (the first IPA they ever brewed) and English Rose Pale Ale (one of Steel Bonnet’s first recipes, and one the five beers on tap on opening day). “Big Trees is our take on a classic beer that was a staple at Boulder Creek Brewery,” says Donald. (Note: BC Brewery closed in 2015). Steel Bonnet has a continuous rotation of local food trucks selling food like fish and chips outside the taproom.

Location: 20 Victor Square, Scotts Valley

Woodhouse Blending & Brewing

Photo and header photo by Monica Multer

Woodhouse, which opened in 2020, consists of a production brewery, kitchen, and tasting room located off River Street between downtown and Highway One. The small batch beers on tap rotate and include IPAs, lagers, Saisons, and kettle sours. The Egyptian Cotton Hazy IPA is a top seller. The brewery’s experimental sours, including a sour made with ube, are very popular. Other drinks include cider and wine on tap and Living Swell non-alcoholic Kombucha. Customers can taste beer while enjoying entertainment such as live music including alt-country, Brazilian, and funk; DJ sets; and more. Offerings at the venue include a large outside patio with picnic tables, and food for sale through occasional popups by local vendors. There are several owners at Woodhouse; two of them, Will Moxham and head brewer Mike Rodriguez, have known each other since middle school and are happy that Woodhouse has become a beloved community gathering place.

Location: 119 Madrone St., Santa Cruz