I am in Sonoma Valley for the week, please help me with good beers spots

I am staying in Guerneville with some friends this week. We already have plans to visit Russian River, Lagunitas, and Bear Republic, and we went to Stumptown last night for dinner. I also stopped at the Whole Foods in Santa Rosa yesterday on my drive up here, and it was totally worth the stop. By far the best craft beer bar & selection I have seen at a whole foods, plus they have a good selection of homebrew supplies. And they gave me a discount for my AHA membership to boot.

Aside from those, where should I be going for good beer while I'm here?

You've already hit my favorites in that area, but you can do some research on your own at the Beer Mapping Project.

Yah I think you've already named the classics... have fun!

You aren't terribly far from Anderson Valley Brewing.. They have a few very nice brews. That's well worth the trip.. You can take the coast route up and over.. or just head up 101 to Cloverdale and over.. either way it's a very nice trip. Mendocino Brewing isn't far up the road in Hopland. Red Tail Ale used to be a favorite.

Anchor steam, Speakeasy, and 21st Amendment is an hour and a half done 101.

Linden Street brewing is a fine lager joint in Oakland.

weirdboy said:

I am staying in Guerneville with some friends this week. We already have plans to visit Russian River, Lagunitas, and Bear Republic, and we went to Stumptown last night for dinner. I also stopped at the Whole Foods in Santa Rosa yesterday on my drive up here, and it was totally worth the stop. By far the best craft beer bar & selection I have seen at a whole foods, plus they have a good selection of homebrew supplies. And they gave me a discount for my AHA membership to boot.

Aside from those, where should I be going for good beer while I'm here?

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Grab a copy of The Northern California Craft Beer Guide by Ken Weaver. It has all the info you could ever want about where to go in NorCal. You might checkout Heritage Public House in Santa Rosa on Wed night. They feature a craft beer every week starting at 6:30PM hosted by Mario Rubio, a local beer blogger.

If you venture down to Pittsburgh (Northeast Bay Area) you can visit Jamil's brewery, Heretic. They will arrange a tour if you call ahead.

I second HbgBill with the Anderson Valley trip, they make some great beers and it's a cool destination.

Thanks for the suggestions! That book suggestion really helped. It also turned out amazon.com was nice enough to let me just browse through all the relevant parts of the book on their website, because it wasn't in any of the bookstores I checked, and it would have arrived to late if I tried shipping it.

Didn't make it up to Anderson Valley, but I did make it to Hopmonk Tavern and Barley & Hops in addition to the aforementioned places...and probably a couple others that I cannot remember now. It was an great trip, and I had a ton of excellent beer, wine, and food while I was there. Now I need the rest of the weekend to recover.