Sacramento to Riverside stops

Good to know Corona is now North San Diego... (It's not)

Yeah, don't go to Indian Wells.

 

Westchester liquors in Bakersfield (near the freeway) has a pretty decent sized selection of KRBC as well. It's a hell of a detour to Kern River from the 99/5. Roads are small and narrow if you're not taking the back way (which i don't think you can from the direction you're coming)

 

Good to know. Highball!

 

good point, i more meant if youre leaving from riverside to san diego, its on the way... thats the only real time i stop there

 

to each his own, FW would be my stop

OP, if you happen to end up in Joshua Tree, Sams Liquor has a decent beer cave...

 

How long do you have in Sacramento? Outside of The Bay Area and SoCal, we are the best concentration of quality craft in California, both from a local view but particularly from a distributor's view. Since you're not from California, we're an excellent chance to be exposed to a lot of beer that you don't get in Indiana and you're certainly not going to get in Ceres, Fresno or Riverside.

Dust Bowl is certainly a must. My other call for a great brewery in the Central Valley is High Water Brewing, which is HQ'd at Taps Barrelhouse in Stockton with a good selection of both HW and other beer.

As far as Alpine goes, think of it like an economist.... You have a limited amount of time. Using this time, you can either visit one brewery (Alpine) or 5-10 breweries in San Diego, depending on how gung ho you are.

 

For this, either the 78 where you start at Stone in Escondido then to Lost Abbey, Rip Current, Belching Beaver is then down the freeway a little with a little cluster of other places all around it (mother earth, aztec, booze brothers, some are ok, some are meh).

Miramar area: white labs, alesmith, ballast, duckfoot, amplified, pure project, legacy, saint archer, rough draft (again, some are meh, some are fantastic)

Kearny area: societe, kilowatt, council and a few others I won;'t bother to list...hehehe..also O'Brien's for food (this is a 10-15min drive from miramar area btw).

North Park: good ol 30th street. Park at one end and see if you can drink your way to the other end. This is where most of the breweries have their satellite tasting rooms and a nice spot to get to a lot of what SD has to offer.

Edit: Also this is a better description of the areas.
http://www.beeradvocate.com/community/threads/visiting-san-diego-winter-2016.372021/

 

if you google "the best san diego brewery map" a link to a google maps viewer overlay should be the first link from thebrewproject.com... this link will open google maps on your phone and place markers for every san diego brewery and you can see which are by each other. this is very helpful in planning the san diego portion of your trip

 

Hahaha, his phone map would be covered with little markers and show nothing else. We have....too many.

 

on Wednesday consider a pit stop in Visalia at Pita Kabob (the downtown location on Court Steet, 45 minutes south of Fresno, on your route), great food, 31 taps, and they just had a Modern Times tap takeover last night (about 10 Modern Times beers), and most will likely still be flowing throughout the week.

 

Where are you going to lunch? Might I recommend Michaelangelo's or BC's Pizza. Where are you staying in Fresno? While in Fresno you can check out:
House of Pendragon - best beer in Fresno imo, taproom only but you can bring food in.
Tioga-Sequoia - Beer garden in downtown, usually has a food truck around
Spokeasy - great bar, small tap list but always something tasty on and a small but well-curated rotating bottle list.
Michelangelo's Pizzeria - Great food, solid tap list, one of my favorite spots in town. Also, some good lunch specials on food.
BC's Pizza - Similar to Michelangelo's but larger taplist and pizza is different. Also a favorite of mine.
Some other new spots are Tac Ops Brewing(I think they are open Wed evenings), Pine & Palm Brewing(no formal hours but they post on FB), Rocket Dog(small taplist but probably the best happy hour in town with solid food, had 3$ pints of Waldos last week, and Kunisama(great teppanyaki/sushi spot with a great tap selection).

On the way out on the 99 South, as someone mentioned above a stop at Pita Kabob in Visalia is something you can't go wrong with. Also, Dionysus Brewing in Bakersfield is getting a lot of attention atm, though their hours are limited and unsure of when you're passing through.

Also, if you do bypass Fresno to take the drive to Kern, which I can't blame you because I do love me some KRBC, you could stay right next door at the... what is it? Kern Lodge?

 

Kern Lodge is a fun hotel and the drive up to KRBC is great. Downside of staying overnight in Kernville is that there isn't much to do at night.

If I were personally making that drive, here's the places I'd stop:
https://goo.gl/maps/syKrrHWtMLz

If you're heading down from Riverside to San Diego, you have more options than you know what to do with. If you're going to Stone, you'll be in Escondido and at the eastern edge of Highway 78. Alpine is about an hour from here out inland. If you are traveling to Alpine, you have all of the Miramar breweries on the way. Including but not limited to Ballast Point, Alesmith, Green Flash, Societe, Council, Saint Archer.

If you decide to stay in North County, heading down Highway 78 you can hit Lost Abbey, Aztec, Rip Current, Belching Beaver, Toolbox, Pizza Port and a short detour north up the 5 to Oceanside you can hit Bagby.

My recommendation is if you do SD you stay in a general area or you'll eat up half your day driving from place to place and there are some awesome clusters wherever you want to be.

Anyhow this is pretty meandering but if you're going to Anaheim you absolutely have to hit Noble and Bottle Logic.

 

Long Beach has Beachwood. Go to Long Beach. I'm guessing you get some beach/bikini time with said girl as well.