Blue Oak Brewing Company — Restaurant in San Carlos

It's absolutely tragic what happened to this brewery over the last few years.

I used to be a regular here back when they were like a single storage unit and served beer out of the back door. Six years ago, I gave it 5 stars. Back when they had quality Belgian Quad and Dubbel. When the owner joked about "all other breweries selling out and serving only IPAs". When they had board games and staff you could actually talk about beer with.

Now the Belgians are gone and the entire menu is 50% IPAs and 50% fruity garbage, talk about selling out. There's a reason it's not even half full on a Friday night while Devil's Canyon is packed to the brim.

Bring back Father François, I would love to have a legit brewery in bay area again..

Edit: Another very suspicious review. interesting owner response, what's suspicious about it?

Edit2: Anyone reading the review above please report it for COI and a fake review promoting a competitor. Your last visit was June 10th, 2023, and you're just leaving a disparaging review now? Why?

My last visit was the day of this review, Devil's Canyon ran out of Amber so we decided to give Blueoak another try. Then went Alpha Acid after. Before that, you're probably right and it was 2023, when I first realized you completely sold out. But sure, whine about negative reviews instead of making better beer, geezus christ. What's "COI"?

Edit3: And because you chose to be petty instead of taking criticism, here's the snippet of our bike ride that day and the 5-star review I left you 6 years ago (different account). Is that how you still maintain high rating, by calling every negative review fake and reporting it? So anyone reading this review, feel free to report it, or judge the owner and establishment by his response.

One more edit, then I'm done here: You accuse someone of being a hater and fake for no reason, and then when called out immediately go for a sob story about how hard it is to run a business. Yes, I know, it's hard. No one was hating on you, I even stated you were fantastic when you started. As for other ratings, on the only other recent negative review, you also claimed it was fake and COI, and asking to report it, even though the guy didn't even mention any...

We live in Redwood City and had heard lots of recommendations to check out Blue Oak from friends in the area, but we had never been. When we started planning our wedding last year, we were looking for venues to host a welcome party for ~75-100 guests for the night before our wedding, and we saw that Blue Oak had a large event space that could be rented out. I reached out and heard back right away from their event coordinator, Brad, right away letting us know he could give a tour whenever we liked. We showed up later that week and he walked us through the space and talked us through what the event would look like. We had questions and he happily answered us, but the best part was that they seemed very amenable and willing to work with us which really set us at ease that we would be able to have the event happen exactly as we hoped. We signed a contract and paid a deposit for the space and then discussed connecting closer to the event to select beers for it. Around two weeks before we went in with my parents and Brad let us go one by one (and also back for plenty of seconds) through every beer on their current tap list. He was very knowledgeable about the beers and was honestly just a very great guy. For the event, we had outside catering delivered (they do not offer food) and were able to come to set up prior to the start time. Brad handled everything and hardly let us help when we needed a few things rearranged. They had a side room with a fridge and small food warmer where we could store a few of the trays of warm food. We were able to stream a video reel to a TV in the space and play music through their Bluetooth setup. Brad manned the taps and made sure everyone had a great time. We had such a wonderful experience with Blue Oak. Their beers are fantastic and the brewery and event space are awesome – we can’t recommend...

This place has grown up since I saw it last! (Which was years ago when it first opened.) Great vibe in this industrial warehouse/rollup-door style brewery right alongside the 101 in San Carlos. Plenty of seating both inside and outside. I showed up to meet a friend at 3:30; by the time we left at 5:00 the place was filling up with an eclectic crowd of people getting ready to hang out, play board games, or just chat around the tables. Looked like they were setting up some kind of taco bar situation too which I sadly could not stay for.

So for the most important part - the beer! I had a Doppelbock style lager and a bourbon barrel aged Imperial Stout. Both were really nice, malty goodness! I didn’t bring my beer nerd notebook or anything but suffice to say the beers were really good - expertly crafted with no off flavors or weirdness; both really nice examples of their styles. My friend liked his hazy IPA so much he got that again for round two and took home some cans to boot.

Most notable about the beer selection is there’s something for everyone - they’ve a number of fruit-sours, several IPAs, the Bock and Imperial Stout I mentioned, a lager, even a seltzer. So if there is any style of beer that does it for you, they’re likely to be able to...