Fairfield/Napa Where to Go?

My hometown! There's Rare Barrel in Berkeley. It's about an hour south of Fairfield.

 

I'm in Vacaville. Solano county is really quite the wasteland for craft beer.

Heretic is obviously your key place. There's a new place in Suisun that opened called Left Eye (maybe it's right eye). Very small.

I'd say your best bets would be Beryessa Brewing up in Winters. Also hitting up Preserve and/or Main Street Cellars. They both have some really good taps. Another option is Rhusthaller in Dixon. They just opened a tasting room by their hop field.

Outside of that, Davis Beer Shoppe/University of Beer. Anything west, and you'll be in Bay Area Traffic.

Going towards Napa, you have Napa Smith, Napa Point, Downtown Joes, and Carneros Brewing. All very 'meh' IMO.

 

You pretty much have to sit in the bumper to bumper traffic to Lagunitas en route to Russian River, as it is directly between Napa and Santa Rosa unless you are taking the loooooooooong way or hitting it coming from the North, so double check your map and use the traffic feature on Google Maps. 101 in Marin and Sonoma can sometimes be a god awful mess and there is a major racetrack on 37 if you are headed that way which becomes a parking lot on raceday.

Also, I want more detail before I add this to BeerFly, but Morimoto in Napa also has several house beers and, essentially, claims to be a brewery as they have one beer brewed in-house. If you are not familiar, this is a restaurants owned by one of the original Iron Chefs. If you have some cash to blow on some serious food and you love fish, you may want to consider this, but there are tons of other high end options.

When I last spoke to their beverage manager he said that they were considering expanding the brewing, but plans were unknown. Their standard house draft is called Chopstick and I am pretty sure that they rotate through a number of different batches but always keep the same name. Tasty. They also have several bottles of a Morimoto brand beer which I assume is a contract brew.

Also, if you are into sake, they have quite a selection including some tasting flights.

 

Definitely stop by Berryessa as you will be filled with bliss by their fine craft beer. They fly under the radar due to their location being "out of the way" but Chris is brewing great beer. Also, Berryessa provides enough room for your boys to run around and stretch their legs. Seems like you are on the right track with Heretic and Davis Beer Shoppe.

 

Great advice from reefer_bob. Heretic is brewing some very good stuff, I have not tried Right Eye Brewery yet.

 

If you are headed up to Davis, if you keep going east just over the causeway, in West Sacramento there are two pretty good places ----- Yolo Brewery and Bike Dog Brewery.

Sacramento has got plenty of good places but I don't know if you want to drive that much.

 

Isnt Morimoto still contracted by Rogue?
Morimoto is an otstanding restuarant but I prefer thier cocktail list over their beer list.
If OP is headed to Napa, Downtown Joes is his best bet

 

FYI traffic isn't necessarily always bad between Petaluma and Santa Rosa. Obviously, it's bad during rush hour, but I've rarely had issues during non-peak times. It's a crapshoot, but fine much more often than it is bad. If there's Neckar, though, it is a nightmare. You can see what RR has on their site, but anything super special may kick quickly. I was informed about Compunction being on on a Friday afternoon and it kicked that night. Not sure how long it had been on, though...

 

Compunction was available for several days. They may have done a PtY, and only put one keg on a day or something like that...

 

It depends. Best bet is to call each brewery just to confirm but this spreadsheet is pretty up to date.

https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet...U1FrNkhWdnRYbWJVeEVLV1ZUY2c&usp=sharing#gid=0

 

That spreadsheet is a good one. Plenty of variation from brewery to brewery however.

 

Track 7 is a fun place, I don't remember them having any sours though
Those 2 West Sac places I mentioned; Bike Dog and Yolo are good, again no luck on sours (at least last time I was there)

There are couple others which aren't bad either, not sure if I would say "Have to Hit", but I have enjoyed myself there.
New Glory and Device are two. Sadly I am having a brain lock on others, sorry.

While not a brewery, Capital Beer and Taproom is a cool place with a good selection on tap and bottles.