Tasting notes, fast facts, and expert reviews on every brewery in the San Diego region
By Bruce Glassman
By Bruce Glassman
This small operation, tucked inside an office park, offers beer tourists another good option while cruising the Mission Valley/Friars Road area of town. Opened in June 2013, Benchmark is an inviting and casual family-run business founded by a father-and-son team of brewers and a wife who is a craft beer enthusiast.
The tastefully designed space offers visitors a number of options for sitting or standing, and various charming details—such as the clever lighting fixtures at the bar, the flowers on the tables, and the satisfying and chunky tasting glasses—give Benchmark unique appeal.
Brewer Matt Akin oversees a solid lineup of well-crafted, mostly English, Belgian, and American styles that offer big flavor and impressive balance—many of them at 5% ABV or lower. The brown is widely considered to be one of the best in town, and the Table Beer and Belgian Dubbel are standouts as well.
San Diego is all about great beer—and there’s an awful lot of it! We currently have more than 120 working brewery locations in our county, with an estimated 30-40 more in the planning stages. That’s a lot of breweries to sort through. So where to begin? Well, the answer is right here. If you want to plan any kind of brewery experience, The San Diego Brewery Guide is your most essential tool. Not only does it list the location and key information about every working brew house that’s open to the public, it also allows you to search for breweries that meet your specific criteria. Do you only want breweries in a specific neighborhood? No problem. Only want places that have patios for dogs? You got it. Do you want to keep your search limited to small or medium-sized breweries? Yup, we got that.
With so many breweries to choose from, we hope you’ll keep coming back to consult The San Diego Brewery Guide on a regular basis. Our ultimate goal is to make it easy for you to plan the perfect day or weekend of brewery tours and tastings in San Diego—and to do it time and time again. If you haven’t already, you’ll see that there’s nothing better than enjoying a great brewery-fresh beer right where it’s made.
So get out there and explore! Sip. Savor. Socialize. And get ready to be awed by some of the best brews to be found anywhere on the planet. Enjoy!
- Bruce Glassman
Edit ModuleShow Tags
