When it comes to being a brewery here in the Bay Area, you definitely have to stand out from all the others over at Barebottle Brewing, located in Bernal Heights, they are doing just that. Barebtottle was started by Lester Koga, Michael Seitz, and Ben Sterling, who were both friends and classmates in college. After a few years of homebrewing and winning contests, they decided to open up Barebottle Brewing, to which the name refers back to their humble beginnings of homebrewing and bringing their product in a bare bottle(no label) to share.

For the episode, I was joined by Lester and Magic(Head Brewer) and their story on what is going on currently at the brewery is incredible. When you listen to the episode you are going to hear some incredible feets that the crew at Barebottle are tackling. Barebottle is killing it when it comes to production and distribution (honestly no matter where you go you will find them) and also they are tackling other products including roasting their own coffee beans, which I had a cup of the Nicaraguan during the interview, and wine! What is fun about this episode is the fact that Barebottle is the podcast’s first brewery with a secondary location down in Santa Clara, and during the episode, Lester alluded to the news that there will be more locations for Barebottle in the near future. What impressed me the most is during our conversation about the beginning of the pandemic, no one on the staff of Barebottle was fired or left! 

Another little treat to this episode that you’ll enjoy is the fact that we are releasing this the day of the SF Beer Week kickoff, and as you’ll listen, you’ll get a little preview of some of their events and also the SF Region collaboration beer.

It’s amazing what is going on over at Barebottle and I can not believe it took this long to get them on the podcast. I hope you have the time to check them out because the future is bright for this San Francisco staple.

Cheers \m/,
Joe Hawk