HOPPY TIMES ON CENTRAL COAST
Craft breweries have become nearly ubiquitous. Throw a dart at a California map and you’ll likely hit a town that offers stellar beer-drinking opportunities. And if that dart lands on the Central Coast, you’re in luck. San Luis Obispo County alone boasts nearly three dozen craft breweries that range from mid-size to micro and even nano.
This bustling beer community is a welcoming bunch, which means any beer-centric travel plan is almost guaranteed to result in a memorably jovial time. But unless you have a trustworthy (and patient) designated driver, diving into this vast network of beer destinations cannot be done in a single day or two. That’s where Hop On Beer Tours has you covered.
For the last three years, beer writer and Hop On owner Brant Myers has been shuttling groups from brewery to brewery, putting experts behind the wheel to share hoppy times and plenty of beer history and local lore. The luxe fleet includes a 20-passenger and two 15-passenger retrofitted buses that Myers stripped down and remodeled into a fun environment for this crafty tour, complete with hardwood floors and a bar. Along for the ride: qualified beer-geek tour guides, well connected within the beer community, to give participants an insider peek into this world.
On this particular sunny day, geek-guide Jenni Thompson is driving a handful of jolly soon-to-be-former strangers around this Central Coast beer playground. “I love beer, first and foremost,” Thompson said as she introduces herself.
We’re in San Luis Obispo — or SLO, as locals calls it — in the bowels of the BarrelHouse Brewing Company’s Speakeasy. The basement taproom, nestled in the city’s historic downtown, is an offshoot of the popular brewery’s original digs in Paso Robles’ Tin City district. Here, the Speakeasy is dim, rusty and brickwalled, a perfect re-creation of underground bars in days of yore. The beer however, is all things modern — bright, playful and interesting.
As our bus moves into traffic, our little group of random characters starts to get to know one another, choosing our musical soundtrack and handing out bottled water and chips, all provided onboard — for good reason, as we discover four hours later when we start craving salty, fatty refreshment. Thompson takes us out toward the airport, where an up-andcoming industrial park is the new location for SLO Brew. The brewery, which opened in 1988 on SLO’s Garden Street, is the oldest post-Prohibition brew pub on the Central Coast, she told us. With a 30-barrel system, it’s also the biggest producer on this tour. We’re taken through the back production area, and past entire walls made up of pallets of beer cans.
Our next stop is the opposite in every way. Bang The Drum is a nanobrewery, opened in 2014 by a homebrewer and former chocolatier, with a 15-gallon batch system that produces beer by the half-barrel. “They barely have enough production to meet the demands of their tasting room,” Thompson said.
The eclectic tasting room and large, graveled yard are adorned with corrugated metal, palm trees, twinkly lights and a DIY vibe. And, of course, drums for the banging. Bang the Drum features live music and a variety of weekly events, from Jenga tournaments to songwriter nights. We try the King Mate, an herbal British-style IPA, a Harvest Black IPA made with local hops and a barley wine that hints of coconut.
By now, I’m having a hard time keeping track of how many little taster glasses I’ve tried. But instead of slowing things down, the beer is fueling our interest to know more. Thompson feeds us yet more beer lore, before heading out to our final stop, a place in Santa Margarita that showcases the local beer community: the English pub-inspired Dunbar Brewing Public House, tucked inside an old country ranch house. There is wood paneling, Pabst Blue Ribbon wallpaper and vinyl spinning on the turntable.
This is ranching country, with a blink-and-you’ll-miss-the-exit town that dates back to the 19th century. Folks here are “good country people that do a hard day’s work,” Thompson said. And when our mixed-bag group stumbles in, those good people don’t bat an eye. Guest taps are the featured attraction here, but you can also taste through the house beers made by owner, bartender and brewer Chris Chambers. Dunbar is the place where all the other brewers end up. We saddle up to some bar stools and taste a soft Oatmeal IPA, a sweet and malty Smash Beer and a smoky Scottish Heavy. Then a regular cracks open a bottle of cult favorite Pliny the Elder, passing around glasses for everyone.