The ‘Battle of the Bay’ series between the Oakland A’s and the San Francisco Giants has me contemplating which side of the bay has the better brewery list.

A handful of personal favorites from east of the bay bridge are Drake’s Brewing Company, The Rare Barrel, Faction Brewing, Triple Rock Brewery, and newcomer Fieldwork Brewing Company. On the other side of the bridge, in San Francisco, Anchor Brewing Company, 21st Amendment Brewery, Speak Easy Ales and Lagers, Almanac Beer Company, and Cellarmaker Brewing Company represent ‘The City’ quite well.

Anchor Brewing and Triple Rock bring each side of the bay long history on their respective sides of the bay, although Anchor Brewing opened for business decades earlier. Anchor (San Francisco) was born in 1896 and Triple Rock (Berkeley) was established in 1985.

Drake’s (San Leandro) has been in business for over 25 years, while 21st Amendment and Speak Easy (both in San Francisco) have been open for business for over 15 years.

Cellarmaker (San Francisco), Fieldwork (Berkeley) and Faction (Alameda) are all newcomers to the craft beer scene who have created a buzz amongst beer geeks in Northern California.

Sour beer fans have two of the best sour beer producers on opposite sides of the bridge. Almanac (San Francisco) and Rare Barrel (Berkeley) release limited production batches that get their fans to line up on release dates.

Regardless of your baseball alliance, I think we may all agree that both sides of the bay have a spoil of craft beer riches. We have it pretty good up here in the North Bay as well with world class breweries such as Russian River Brewing Company, Lagunitas Brewing Company, Bear Republic Brewing Company and almost two dozen other options.

-Peter Lopez Jr.