Crooked Goat Brewing
They opened in the Barlow promising no flagship beers, no kegs out the door and nothing in stores. Customers picked a few core beers anyway, and the rest of the board is still whatever the brewers feel like.1
Why go
All the beer is brewed here in Sebastopol and trucked seventeen miles to the Petaluma taproom, which opened in 2022.1 Neither room has a kitchen, on purpose, so the food comes from the neighbours: Acre for pizza, Barrio for Mexican, Chippy for sandwiches and fish and chips, Salt and Sea for poke and casual Japanese.1 You order it at the bar when you order the beer, off a pared-back menu of each restaurant's best sellers.1 Dogs are welcome at both.1
Order this / avoid
- Order: whatever is newest on the board. The whole point of holding tap space back is that something is always being tried.1
- Order: the fish and chips from Chippy with it, if you are in Sebastopol.1
- Avoid: arriving hungry for a kitchen. There is not one, at either site.1
Good to know
- Sebastopol runs 11:30am to 9pm Sunday through Wednesday, to 10pm Thursday and to 11pm Friday and Saturday.1
- Weekly trivia, plus monthly line dancing, comedy and community nights. Most are free and the ticketed ones are cheap.1
- I cannot tell you what to drink. The brewery's own site names no beer at all.
Verdict
could-visit — Crooked Goat opened in the Barlow about ten years ago on a promise of no flagship beers, no kegs out the door and nothing in a store, and its own account is that customers overruled part of that and picked a set of core beers into permanence. The rest of the board stays free for whatever the brewers want to try. There is no kitchen, so the food comes from the neighbours: Acre for pizza, Barrio for Mexican, Chippy for fish and chips, Salt and Sea for poke, ordered at the bar with the beer. Held here because the brewery names not a single beer on its own page and I could not find anyone else writing about it.