A couple of weeks later, on the day I finally flew back to the UK after my Central Coast and Bay Area brewery exploration with my friend Rick, we made one last tasting stop before he dropped me off at San Francisco Airport. We took a scenic drive across the Oakland Bay Bridge to have lunch in the San Francisco neighbourhood of Dogpatch. Located between the Bay and Potrero Hill, this dockside area had been a shipping centre since the 1800s. In recent years the now-empty industrial warehouses have become populated with galleries, residential lofts, shops, and the Museum of Craft and Design, and the neighbourhood also offers plenty of restaurants and trendy watering holes.
We parked the car and stopped into a venue called Daily Driver, where we sat upstairs at one of the balconies overlooking the activities below and lunched on freshly-baked bagel sandwiches. When we left to go back to the bar, we spotted the Dogpatch Saloon just up and across the street, so we decided to walk over and give it a try. And when we walked in, we instantly felt as if we were in a good old-fashioned California tavern. We took a seat at the bar in order to chat with the barmaid, Tabitha, who impressed us as being a strong woman who definitely knew her beers. We had a choice of nine taps, one featuring Old Speckled Hen on nitro, and three from California’s Barebottle Brewing. I decided on a pint of Fresh Squeezed IPA (6.4% ABV, Deschutes Brewing Company, Bend, Oregon). This was an amber-coloured brew that made a good zippy hops announcement inside my mouth. Rick went for a pint of Royal Hazy IPA (6.4% ABV, Barebottle Brewing, Santa Clara, California). This was quite a gorgeous pint, and the Nelson hops imparted a real Galaxy-style mmph! to the experience.
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