Hamiltons Tavern

 

Visited with my wife on a recent trip to San Diego and Los Angeles.

Tried the following:
Nickel Beer Star B Wet Hop Pale (draft)
Nickel Beer & South Park Brewing Stay Inland (sample)
Societe Brewing The Pupil (draft)

Beers ranged from below average to good. Service was fast and friendly as we never had to wait long for drinks, and I had an interesting convo with the bartender. Great neighbourhood vibe in here; super busy on our visit. Loved the tap handles on the ceiling. Our overall experience was solid, but the draft lineup left a lot to be desired (especially for one of the top-ranked beer bars in the city). Still, we'll give this place another shot if we find ourselves back in San Diego.

The brother bar of the former Monkey Paw (RIP). Cool old school pub type atmosphere; dimly lit, not fancy. You can count on them for a good selection of beers on any given night. It can get crowded and take on sort of a locker room type of humidity in the summer but hey, welcome to San Diego.

 

Lively pub with large bar on left that seats about 25, a few booths and small tables around room divider. Pool tables and shuffleboard. They had a great Black Friday special: all dark beer $5 a pour.... Sweet. The wings were excellent also.

Super cool bar and glad I got to try it and while out and SD and not fall trap to all the gaslamp bars. Well worth the uber ride and check it out.. Only wish they did some flights or half pours so I could have had more to taste.

 

Awesome bar; amazing selection, reasonably prices, and good food. Bartender was super cool; to be honest aside from if you want Pliny or Cable Car I much perferred this to even Tornado. One of my favorite bars while traveling.

 

 

 

 

Dark space and total dive bar feel, but the selection on tap and in bottles is pretty phenomenal. Lots of goodies on tap including some beers brewed just for the bar.

Reading through the bottle selection made me salivate and wish I had company to share a bottle. Very impressive.

Prices for pours weren't bad and the server was happy to let me taste a few before choosing a pour.

 

Fortunate enough that Hammies is my neighborhood bar, a top-10 beer mecca, and within walking distance. Friendliest bunch of hop heads anywhere. A destination beer bar with nary a competitor in sight. Nice that Cosimo Sorrentino, brewer extraordinaire, is Brewing immediately nextdoor at South Park Brewing Co. Lucky me!

 

 

 

South Park was an interesting neighborhood. Some older quaint homes, restaurants, shops, and a tavern. This place had a grungy feel which probably added to a unique vibe of this place. They had tables, games, I think a few booths, and a long bar. They had lots of tap handles hanging from the ceiling.

The tap list was nice. Alpine, Pliny and the usual suspects. The server was friendly and quick to serve even though they were busy. I appreciated that.

It was crowded today, so I just ordered a goblet of flanders red and left.

I may try again when I'm in the neighborhood.

Yet another stop on my San Diego visit. Very friendly place with a pretty nice set of taps and a pretty robust bottle list. Ended up doing more bottles than taps since I found stuff that is hard to get in WI.

 

Hipster, dive bar atmosphere with a large selection of quality craft beers. Little food window in the back cranks out AWESOME tater tots, good grilled cheeses and delicious burgers. Also, if you love dogs, this is the place to go.

 

 

Avoid this place like the plague on friday/saturday unless you like standing with your beer awkwardly with no place to sit or move around.. Seriously no room to move at all during one of these peak nights and my other complaint is their diversity of beers. One any given night, 80% of their beers are IPA or IIPA's, with very few saisons, sours, or stouts. Other than that, lighting could be better but the service is very good and the pours are legit. In terms of wings, they are definitely hit and miss and sometimes have the consistency of microwaved wings. Do yourself a favor and get one of the burgers if you want a well prepared meal. From my experience, weekdays are a much more enjoyable time to hit up Hamiltons.

 

 

Relaxed neighborhood hangout in South Park. Pool tables, tap handles hanging from ceiling, and you can order burgers and wings from the back. Extensive bottle selection and choice taps. Don't expect to have a conversation here, the music is pretty loud. Fortunately the music is pretty good. This is the sort of place you can bring your dog if he/she likes noise and crowds.

 

 

 

 

 

Fairly small, dingy/divy, and when I was there on a Saturday night, it was a surprisingly mixed crowd by age, gender, ethnicity, level of hipster quality, etc. Good to very good tap lists...but they had Pliny, so....

 

 

 

Everything is great, except seating. My favorite place to indulge.