Brewery Day Trip: Sip your way through San Ramon
For this month’s brewery day trip, I followed a tip from a Contra Costa County reader, Bob Skok, who suggested I explore San Ramon. There was an underappreciated brewery there I needed to check out. Join me!
Canyon Lakes Brewing
The Canyon Lakes Golf Course is one of only two golf courses in the United States with a brewery on-site — and Canyon Lakes Brewing was the first. The other is at North Carolina’s famed Pinehurst.
The course first opened in 1985 as a private club, but Don Naumann bought the property in 2015 and reopened it two years later as a public golf course with its own brewery. Naumann is also the winemaker and owner of Cupertino’s Naumann Vineyards in the Santa Cruz Mountains, so you’ll find his wine at the golf course restaurant.
Meanwhile, brewer Dave Scott was working at a succession of well-known Michigan breweries — Arcadia, Dark Horse, Grand River — when he saw a job listing for a new brewery on a golf course. As an avid golfer (he typically plays in two tournaments each month), it looked almost too good to be true.
As Canyon Lakes’ brewer, Scott keeps 18 housemade beers on at any given time including his flagship, Green Jacket, a solid West Coast IPA with great herbal flavors. Player’s Premium Lager is a light lager that’s easy to drink and full-flavored.
The core lineup also includes Knee Knocker IPA, a smooth, not-too-sweet, hazy; Pinseeker Pale Ale; and Fairway Gold, a great throwback cream ale. The remaining eight tap handles are made up of rotating seasonals and experimental beers, allowing Scott to play around with the selections. I was especially taken with his O.B. Brown, a nutty brown ale, and Walk or Ryed, a rye IPA that was deliciously spicy.
The brewery is adjacent to the golf course pro shop and its restaurant and bar, which offers an extensive menu — and you don’t have to be a golfer to check it out.
Details: Opens at 11 a.m. Monday-Thursday and 9 a.m. Friday-Sunday at 640 Bollinger Canyon Way; canyonlakesbrewery.com.
Fieldwork Brewing
The other brewery in town is a taproom for Fieldwork Brewing. Fieldwork was founded by East Bay native Barry Braden and his brewing partner, Alex Tweet, whom he met while working in San Diego. Tweet was brewing at Ballast Point Brewing, and the pair decided to open a brewery in the Bay Area, with Tweet in charge of the brewing end, and Braden managing the business side.
The original brewery opened in Berkeley in 2015, and all their beer is still brewed there today. They currently have eight locations across Northern California, including the San Ramon taproom which opened in 2018, with outposts set to open later this year in Santa Rosa and Roseville.
The San Ramon taproom is at City Center Bishop Ranch, the big shopping center that opened in 2018 with an array of restaurants, shops and entertainment venues. Fieldwork taproom takes up a corner of the complex with three rooms and a large beer garden. The back room is known as “The Links at Fieldwork” and has two Top Golf simulator stations and interactive games such as zombie baseball, dodgeball and virtual hockey, all with ample seating for spectators.
The taproom serves all of Fieldwork’s nearly two dozen beers organized into a few helpful categories, including Light & Lager, Sour, Belgian and West Coast. Its line of Drink Fieldwork beverages offer a mix of craft N/A beers in different styles and Supertonics, sparkling non-alcoholic fruit drinks. And the taproom’s menu ranges from starters and salads to pizza.
Details: Open at noon Monday-Thursday and 11 a.m. Friday-Sunday at 6000 Bollinger Canyon Road, Suite 1206; fieldworkbrewing.com/san-ramon.
SAN FRANCISCO BEER WEEK 2025
Perhaps you’ve noticed that early February has come and gone with no San Francisco Beer Week. This year’s celebration of Bay Area beer is a little later than usual, with events scheduled from Feb. 21 through March 2. Learn more at sfbeerweek.org.
Know a local brewery or brewpub that’s knocking it out of the park but isn’t getting the recognition they deserve? Drop me a line at BrooksOnBeer@gmail.com and tell me why you love them.