Berkeley Brew-seeking: Fieldwork Brewing/The Rare Barrel

A close up of the "non-protest" side of the "Berkeley Big People" sculpture tandem
from Scott Donahue, located (somewhat oddly) on a freeway pedestrian bridge

In craft beer terms, one generally thinks of the San Francisco side from a historical perspective: Fritz Maytag's efforts with Anchor Brewing provided the inspiration for numerous homebrewers of that era and the original wave of modern craft breweries. However, Berkeley, located on the opposite side of the bay and generally is better known for non-craft beer topics, has a little bit of its history here as well in Triple Rock, opened in 1986 and touted as the oldest original brewpub in the country.

These days, the craft beer scene is looking up: one of the companies spawned by Maytag's efforts, Sierra Nevada Brewing, opened up a hub for their beer along Fourth Street in the form of The Torpedo Room in November of 2013. Other newly established efforts such as Fieldwork and The Rare Barrel, both of which we visited during our time in town, have been earning their own acclaim.