I'm going to be in San Jose for a business trip Friday and Saturday. I won't have a car and I'll be at the Doubletree next to the airport. Where am I going to get my beer? Help me Beer Advocate, you're my only hope.
If you can get downtown, Good Karma usually has some good taps. Wine Affairs on the Alameda has a few taps but is a little pricy. Harry's on Saratoga has a good number of taps and awesome ambience. Not really sure which buses run where, but you could check the VTA website.
Check out this thread: http://beeradvocate.com/community/threads/bottle-shops-in-san-jose.12145/#post-141249
Pretty much sums it up here, make sure to hit up Wine Affairs during happy hour since they usually have Pliny and Double Jack always on tap and their taplist is getting more adventurous now. Good Karma is a tiny vegan restaurant but they have like 12 taps and pretty eccentric choices, and the food is really good. They usually have Pliny and Old Rasputin. Smokeaters near 4th and Santa Clara downtown just revamped their beer list with about 8 taps and some good stuff (they had Aprihop and Palate Wrecker when I passed by this weekend.) Bobby's Liquors on El Camino is the best bottle shop in town, BM if you want to grab a beer and I can tell you about some other good shops, cheers.
Even though I live on the peninsula, I am not that familiar with San Jose, but if you have access to Cal Train you could head North. Midway up the peninsula are two very good beer bars. In Palo Alto there is Rose and Crown. Two stops north in Redwood City there is Gourmet Haus Staudt (my personal favorite). Both are easily walkable from their Cal Train stations.
I am sorry-working in SJ I found a little beer nirvanas here or there-usually there being out of town. There isn't much that I can recommend with out a car-
