About Beer By Bart
The premise: A list of good beer venues grouped by the nearest Bay Area Rapid Transit Station forms the home page. An alphabetical list of venues down the right column of all pages gives an alternate way to find transit info to a specific destination. We also include beer travel blog posts now and then, and some special projects like our NHC pub crawl information page and pdf collection.
This site is a labor of love (of good beer) by two long-time San Francisco residents, Gail Ann Williams and Steve Shapiro. We went live with the site in March, 2007, after extensive field research. Beer By BART is not a bar guide and it’s not a rating site. There are many other sites that do that well. Beer By BART is aimed at getting appreciators of good beer to places to explore the craft. Period. Of course, everyone’s definition of good beer is different, so there is a degree of subjectivity involved in our selection of pubs and breweries listed here.
We start with a list of pubs that brew their own beer. We then also include a select assortment of pubs and bars that feature a reasonable number of top local or regional microbrews, and in a few cases, unique imported beers. Further we care whether the serving staff knows about the beer they pour and are willing to talk to patrons about them. We particularly like the pubs who will pour you a taste of beers you’re not familiar with so you can learn about new beers or encourage a companion to expand her or his beer drinking universe. Finally we appreciate pubs who will pour smaller than a pint glasses for a nearly-proportional fraction of the price of a pint. This encourages people to try more different types of beer at a time, and is good for the customer as well as the pub. Not all of these venues do all or most of the above, but we hope they will eventually.
And, of course, we encourage travel by public transportation. Why not let train operators be your designated drivers, since they’re going your way anyhow? The pubs featured on our site are within about a 1 mile walk – “four shoes” – from some major form of transit. (About a mile — we had to add in a couple of five-shoe walks we just couldn’t stand to leave off.) Most are quite a bit closer than a mile from a Bay Area Rapid Transit (BART) station. But we also suggest some that are easily reachable by connecting from BART to local bus systems, regional commute train or ferry.
We think this site will be useful to locals as well as to visitors to the Bay Area. When we travel, we’ve often wished there were similar guides available in the cities we visit. Until then, we’ll organize our own beer tourism with info from pub and brewing sites, maps and copies of magazines like the Beer Celebrator and other regional beer related publications. The craft brewing revolution adds a wonderful extra dimension to travel, both here in the San Francisco Bay Area where the modern brewing revolution was born, and wherever good beer is made and enjoyed.
Scouting these locations has helped us expand our personal preferences beyond the big California IPA and double IPA style we originally wanted to track down, into the Belgian varieties and their up and coming American cousins, and back to some of the better German styles we’d turned away from years ago. It even inspired us to take a course in beer judging, which has broadened our beer community as well as our flavor perceptions.
It’s a pleasure going back to these fine places to see what new interpretations they’ve added to their menus, shelves or recipes as we learn more about beer, too. So explore, enjoy and please keep in touch. You can reach us by posting a comment on the site, or by email at:
beerbybart. at. yahoo. dot. com (We trust that you can figure out how to format that as a normal email address and that autospammers with their bot and spider programs can’t).
Cheers,
Gail and Steve
January 11, 2008 at 2:55 pm
I think your website is awesome. My wife’s birthday party is tomorrow (1-12-08) and we are going to go pub crawling by bart. We have a group of about 20 people and we are going to go from Berkeley to SF and back. Thought you might be interested!
Thanks,
Austin
February 24, 2008 at 2:07 pm
Hey – I wanted to invite you guys into my social network for beer drinkers – http://www.democracysdrink.com – a good number of bloggers have been joining and promoting their site in our growing network. We’d love to see you there. Cheers.
June 1, 2008 at 9:12 pm
Hi Gail and Steve,
the other Dave, Eric, and I really appreciated you two showing us around to the Monk’s Kettle and City Beer on Saturday after the Longshot judging. Make sure to give us a yell if you’re ever in San Luis Obispo. You may be able to get down there by train now as I’ve heard the Starlight Express/Surfliner/Whatever-Amtrak-is-Called goes up to San Jose. Thanks again,
Dave.
June 1, 2008 at 9:29 pm
That was an excellent afternoon… can’t wait to get down there to visit you guys.
September 26, 2008 at 10:21 am
Hello,
My name is Brian and I work at MicroMatic.com. We just launched a new Beer Social Network. It would be great to have you guys join.
http://kegerator-social-network.micromatic.com/
Our goal is to connect the worlds’ beer drinkers, distributors, home brewers, micro breweries and everyone else who loves beer like we do.
We also have an affiliate program:
program.http://affiliates.micromatic.com/
Any questions please email me.
Brian
March 16, 2009 at 6:09 am
Dear Gail and Steve,
As beer aficionados, you may be interested in our free Airport Beer Guide, a great way to find great beer in many major U.S. airports. I’ve found it can help make a flight much easier. You can find it at marketing.cheapflights.com/guides/beerguide.pdf. Please feel free to link to it or use it on your site; I’m sure your audience will enjoy it.
I recently discovered your site, and think it’s a great resource; I’ll definitely use it when I visit San Francisco this summer, and wish there was a similar site in Boston.
Thanks,
Martin
April 11, 2009 at 4:40 pm
Hi Gail and Steve,
What a great site! Thanks for creating a resource for beer drinkers to transport themselves responsibly. I thought you may be interested in a special event that is occurring this Thursday (April 16)… it’s a one day showing of a craft beer documentary called Beer Wars. It’s a look at the struggles of the craft brewer in a marketplace dominated by the giant beer corporations. I thought it would really appeal to you as well as your readers.
The movie is being shown in many theaters around the bay area and accessible by BART. You can check out the film online at http://www.beerwarsmovie.com and see theater locations here, http://tinyurl.com/cz6gnr
Thanks for your time!! Please help spread the word.
Sheila DeStefano
April 13, 2009 at 6:44 pm
Hi Sheila! We are juggling our schedules to be able to be there at the SF screening. I am doing a little blog post in the ‘field notes’ portion of our site about what good beer place is near what theater. I think Hayward wins, near to the Bistro for top-flight before or after drinking, but SF will be easy for me after work…
April 13, 2009 at 6:47 pm
Hi Gail! Sounds great. I will be at the SF showing as well… planning to meet up at Thirsty Bear beforehand. They are offering a free pint to those with a ticket stub. Perhaps you’d like to join us?
October 27, 2009 at 2:23 am
Hello,
I help run a site related to online gaming and having fun. It is basically all about letting people pass some time doing the things they enjoy!
Anyway, I am writing you because I came across your site and am impressed with all of the helpful information. Your site has the potential of reaching out to a wide range of people! I would like to request to have our site posted on your site, by way of paid contextual link advertisement. Let me know how much it would cost me to have my link placed on your main page, or other related internal pages.
We look to find some potential partners quickly and are ready to make a quick payment. Please contact me at your earliest convenience so we can further discuss this interesting business opportunity.
Have a great day!
Rob Sanchez
November 14, 2009 at 10:24 am
Steve & Gail,
We bumped into you at the bar at Pi last weekend. Thanks for reminding us of your great website. Keep up the good and important work!
Craig & Paula
March 13, 2010 at 1:43 am
Hey Steve and Gail, just found your website and LOVE the idea and effort you put in. I will be in San Francisco April 29,30 to Start my Hike from the Golden Gate Bridge, following the American Discovery Trail to be in Delaware the end of December. The hike initiated by the one beer bet (hence the website following my journey). As I’m not from S.F I hope to network to meet some cool people I can have a beer with while i’m there. Any meetups happening about that date?
March 18, 2010 at 1:01 am
Look forward to seeing you out here, Woody. We will do our best to help get your great adventure off to a hopping good start.