Craft lagers and creative ale ingredients make New Bohemia a Santa Cruz destination
New Bohemia’s craft lagers include a Santa Cruz take on pilsner.
New Bohemia Brewing Co. opened in Santa Cruz in 2015, and co-founder and brewmaster Dan Satterthwaite’s education (Siebel Institute) and experience (brewing at Trumer Brewery and Gordon Biersch after honing his skills at a small family-owned brewery in Germany) led him down the path of brewing craft lagers years before those styles gained the popularity they enjoy today.
In addition to traditional German styles, New Bohemia produces a wide variety of creative takes on IPA and dark beers, often integrating unique ingredients. Japanese white peach hazy session IPA, pineapple hefeweizen and peanut butter and jelly imperial porter are a few recent examples.
Easy to find and locally made, Laughing Monk has grown from homebrew to regional staple
Laughing Monk brews in San Francisco and sells locally.
Since the pandemic has limited the number of opportunities to leave the house over the past year, I’ve taken the opportunity to drive around visiting local breweries as a way to spend a couple hours on a Saturday afternoon. One of my favorite Bay Area breweries during this time has been Laughing Monk Brewing, launched by homebrewers Andrew Casteel and Aaron Hicks in 2016 in San Francisco’s Bayview neighborhood.
Laughing Monk’s creative varieties of Belgian brews, lagers, pale ales and IPAs – both West Coast and hazy styles – are consistently flavorful and well made. (Another new favorite is Santa Cruz’s New Bohemia Brewing Co. – read more about it next month.)
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