Santa Cruz's Humble Sea Brewing on staying kooky
In five short years, Santa Cruz's Humble Sea Brewing Co. has gone from one small taproom on Swift Street to a culture-defining brewery with three destination-worthy locations.
Owned and operated by three childhood friends, Humble Sea opened in 2017 and quickly gained a reputation for its kooky, surf-meet-pop-culture vibe — its first foggy IPA, Socks & Sandals, is still a top seller — and wide selection of chuggable beers. They make it all: IPAs, DIPAs, TIPAs, ales, farmhouse saisons and pilsners. And head brewer Nick Pavlina is always innovating, trying new hops varieties or fermentation techniques.
An e-commerce website thrown together at the start of the pandemic got Humble Sea into the hands of beer drinkers outside the Santa Cruz Mountains. And it helped Pavlina, Frank Scott Krueger and Taylor West expand much faster than they expected.
Last summer, the trio opened a second location, Humble Sea Brewing & Kitchen in Pacifica, where they serve their thirstquenching brews alongside double smash burgers near Linda Mar Beach.
Now their newest spot is drawing Bay Area beer drinkers to the mountain town of Felton. Open since mid-February, Humble Sea Tavern is a spacious, 125seat restaurant-meets-taproom located inside the historic Cremer House on Highway 9. It's got a full bar, weekend brunch and a fine dining chef who brings a refined touch to comfort food classics.
We recently caught up with co-owner West to learn more about Humble
Sea's meteoric rise and how they stay kooky.
Q
How did you guys first come together to make beer?
AWe grew up in the Santa Cruz Mountains. Frank and I have known each other since preschool. Nick, who is our head brewer, was the cool older brother of a really good friend of ours. He started homebrewing with his dad and went to Chico State, so he was around Sierra Nevada Brewing. We started Humble Sea with a rigged one-barrel brewing system on Nick's grandmother-in-law's farm in Ben Lomond. After winning national homebrew medals, Nick pitched opening a brewery to us.
Q
What's it like running a brewery with childhood friends?
A
It's definitely a lot of fun. It's really important for us to share hobbies outside of work as well — to take a step back, surf or mountain bike together and visit other breweries together.
Q
What's the inspiration behind your offbeat labels?
A
To be fun and creative but still have a lot of intention. Frank runs a design studio called Good Knife made up of a bunch of designers from around the world. So it's a few designers from that collective who do all of our labels.
Q
We heard you have a Slack channel devoted to brainstorming beer names.
A
We do. It's called #beernames and there are 112 people on it.