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This article showcases our top picks for the best California based Brewing companies. These startups and companies are taking a variety of approaches to innovating the Brewing industry, but are all exceptional startups and companies well worth a follow.
We tried to pick companies across the size spectrum from cutting edge startups to established brands.
We selected these startups for exceptional performance in one of these categories:
- Innovation
- Innovative ideas
- Innovative route to market
- Innovative product
- Growth
- Exceptional growth
- Exceptional growth strategy
- Management
- Societal impact
Ladle of Contents
Top California Brewing Companies
Data sourced from Crunchbase and SemRush.
Cann
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Cann is a provider of low dose tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) beverage used to offer all-natural flavor drinks.
Tastry, Inc.
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Leading AI and Sensory Sciences Company
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Fermented Sciences
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Fermented Sciences makes handcrafted organic hard kombucha products called Flying Embers. It comes with probiotics and botanical adaptogens.
The company’s line of live beers with active bacteria cultures, bring to life ancient brews and remedies to the modern-day. There are 6 refreshing flavors that Flying Embers offers, these are berry, lemon, ginger, pineapple, cherry, and grapefruit, all USDA certified organic with zero grams of sugar and carbs.
It is a low-calorie, gluten-free, vegan beverage ranging from 4.5% to 7.5% alcohol by volume. Fermented Sciences was founded in 2016 by passionate entrepreneurs focused on disrupting the alcohol beverage industry through the creation of a revolutionary platform of great-tasting botanical brews with functional benefits.
It is headquartered in Ojai, California.. .
Better Booch
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Better Booch manufactures Premium Small Craft Kombucha expertly brewed in Los Angeles.
Mine Shaft Brewing & Cali Orchards Hard Sparkling Water Santa Clarita, CA
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Invest In A Team Behind Some Of The Greatest Beer Brands Ever + IZZE Soda AT THE END OF THE DAY YOUR INVESTING IN People Passion Product Process Story If you like investing in the fast-growing Beverage space in pre-rev companies and like to get in at the A Round stage, we may be a perfect fit. We have a clearly defined plan, very seasoned team and a defined exit in 3 to 5 years with high multiples.
We are a Reg D offering for quality accredited investors if you are open to learning more and why our investors invest in MSB let us know.: With more than a quarter-century of experience in the beer category, specifically craft, our team’s passion for quality has on display. Leveraging our experience in the super-premium, premium, premium light, sub-premium, malt liquor & flavored malt beverage categories, our brew crew has been involved in the development and introduction of both specialty and seasonal brews, including brewing, packaging, marketing, and sales..
Topa Topa Brewing Company
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Topa Topa Brewing Company engages in the production of hand-crafted beers.
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Voga Coffee
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Voga Coffee develops a coffee brewing machine to provide an efficient way to batch brew specialty coffee. They are a coffee technology company that is breaking the boundaries of the coffee industry by designing an exceptional immersion batch brewer.
The company was founded in 2015 and is based in San Francisco.. .
Roast Master USA
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Roast Master designs industrial, food-grade components, and reliable electronics with an advanced control system to create unique roast profiles for each coffee. Once a profile is created, coffee can be roasted with precision and consistency by entry-level staff – with the push of a button.
Their advanced controller allows for precise duplication of roast profiles while roasting thousands of pounds of coffee per month.. .
AIBrew Corp
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iGulu the world’s smartest beer brew appliance, selected as an CES 2017 Innovation Award that will change the conventional way of beer brew
Seva Coffee
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Seva Coffee offers a coffee machine that roasts, grinds, and brews coffee to individual taste.
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Wine Hooligans
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Wine Hooligans bring artisan wines made by passionate winemakers and viticulturists to market. Wine Hooligans was founded in 2013 and is led by Dennis Carroll.
It is headquartered in Santa Rosa, California.. .
Karl Strauss Brewing Company
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Karl Strauss Brewing Company is a craft brewery company.
Strike Brewing Co.
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Strike Brewing is a brewery based in San Jose, California.
Bay Pac Beverages
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Food and beverage consumers worldwide are increasingly demanding products that are pure, healthy, organic, sustainably produced and socially responsible. Bay Pac’s products fill this need.
They develop and distribute beverages from around the world that are made with unique, sustainably farmed and, where possible, Fair Trade Certified ingredients… and they never compromise taste! When a consumer purchases one of their brands, they can be assured that they have chosen quality, purity, taste and social responsibility.
As an added benefit to investors, all of their brands are positioned in the fastest growing segments of their market, Social responsibility matters to us… they believe that their stature as a company is measured equally by the positive contribution they make to the lives of people, communities and the environment, as well as by achieving financial success.
All Bay Pac brands have a strong appeal for socially-minded consumers. Additionally, chain store, hotel and cruise line buyers who are actively seeking products consistent with their Corporate Social Responsibility programs are attracted to these products.
Their current products include the FAIR line of premium spirits (a quinoa vodka, a London dry gin, an aged Belize rum, a coffee liqueur, and a goji berry liqueur), all made with Fair Trade certified ingredients. A value-priced GMO- free French wheat vodka and a low gluten amber ale craft-brewed with quinoa are additional products..
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Eight Bridges Brewing
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Eight Bridges Brewing is a self-distributing production brewery and tasting room focused on delivering a great craft beer experience.
Agave Underground
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Agave Underground is a multi-award winning tequila brand. They currently have distribution in 26 states, 2 provinces of Canada and are preparing to launch Europe.
The company owns multiple design patents and trademarks. The executive team is comprised of: Michael Ivey, Founder and CEO, Chris Ivey, Legal Counsel and Partner at Stradling, Yocca, Carlson, Rauth.
Fran Vivenzo, Global VP of Sales & Distribution, and Nicole Gaes, Operations. Their Board of Directors is: Steele Platt, founder of The Yardhouse Restaurant and Bob Smith, past President and CEO of Alliance Beverage.
They bring over 50 years of combined experience in the adult beverage industry. They have an aggressive market plan that consists of individual state marketing and film crews.
They also currently sponsor the Danny Rowe Race Team which includes 3 Pro Mod, NHRA race cars along with a 53′, fully branded Semi. They also have over 100k in their current inventory of bottles..
Beachwood Blendery
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Beachwood Blendery is a batch beer producer that produces Lambic style beers. The company’s beers are produced using ingredients, equipment, and brewing methods that are steeped in tradition and admittedly modern.
The modern approach uses non-traditional ingredients, including unconventional grains and tropical fruit, and involves keeping a mixed house culture constantly propagating and developing in incubators.. .
Fireman’s Brew
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Fireman’s Brew is a microbrewery that creates premium ales and lagers. It delivers premium beers of outstanding quality, and give Americans an everyday means of saluting the brave men and women working to keep the communities safe.
Originally created by firefighters for firefighters, Fireman’s Brew is now available in both bottles and kegs for retail and on-premise sales. It was founded in 2000 and is based in Canoga Park, California..
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Eagle Rock Brewery
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Eagle Rock Brewery produces artisanal beers using the best ingredients to promote the ongoing development of the beer community. It aims to produce small batches of artisanal beers, using quality ingredients and upholding them to the highest standards, has helped in the development of L.A.’s community of beer drinkers.
Furthermore, Eagle Rock Brewery’s emphasis on the ongoing development of the local community, collaboration with other small businesses, and efforts to support various charitable causes underscore its commitment to social responsibility. The company was established in 2009 and is based in Los Angeles, California..
Ficks Beverage Co
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Ficks Beverage Co is a San Francisco based beverage manufacturer set on making the bar better-for-you. Their hard seltzers are the first flavored with real fruit juice for authentic taste, and their line of premium cocktails mixers are half the calories and sugar of other all natural mixers.
Their products can be found at major retailers like Target, Kroger, Whole Foods and H-E-B.. .
Acaia
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Acaia is focused on transforming the coffee brewing experience by creating new accessories, technologies and software for the specialty coffee industry. The Acaia Lunar & Acaia Pearl coffee scale are smart coffee scales that connect to acaia apps via Bluetooth technology.
The Acaia Coffee and Brewmaster apps organize essential coffee brewing data, calculate brew ratios, and live-graph your pours. For more information on acaia, visit http://acaia.co/..
Magnolia Brewing
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Magnolia Brewing operates as a brewery company that specializes in craft beers.
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BarBack LLC
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Mobile application that allows you to order and pay for your drinks on your phone
Weaver’s Coffee & Tea
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Weaver’s Coffee & Tea offers coffee, tea, cafe, e-commerce, manufacturing, espresso, and cold brew. It features fresh Hand Roasted Artisan Coffee & Fine Hand Blended Tea.
The company was founded in 2007 and headquartered in San Rafael, California.. .
Berkeley Brewing Science
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Berkeley Brewing Science engineers yeast strains to help brewers create beers that are delicious and sustainable. The company was founded by Berkeley PhDs in 2017.
It’s headquarters is based in Oakland, California.. .
Adaptive Path
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Adaptive Path helps organizations develop product concepts through experience strategy and deliver on those concepts through experience design. In the fall of 2000, as the bubble was bursting, Peter Merholz sent an email to the future co-founders of Adaptive Path.
He was thinking of striking out on his own but didn’t want to go solo. And he wanted to focus exclusively on user experience problems.
Despite the chaos of the market, it was clear there was a demand for user experience services. Were they interested in joining forces? A few months later in March of 2001, probably the worst time to start a business, Adaptive Path was launched at SXSW on the rooftop of the old Waterloo Brewing Company.
From the very beginning, the company has worked with recognizable brands on hairy problems. NPR and PeopleSoft were the first two Adaptive Path clients.
Other early clients include Intel, UN Relief Web, PBS, and Wells Fargo. It was important to the founders to approach client work differently than most consultancies.
No telling clients how to do business. No forcing a rigid methodology.
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Lagunitas Brewing Company
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From points distant and beyond they all converged on Petaluma in 1993 and ’94 with an unenunciated desire to be more than they were before. The core of Lagunitas came from Chicago, St Louis, Memphis, Walker Creek, and the highlands of Quincy.
The Chicago contingent initiated the brewing and the gravitational effect of its suchness did the rest. They all loved the beer but the mission was larger than the ordinary joy of a hoppy-sweet quaff.
It was driven unseen by an urge to communicate with people, to find their diasporidic tribe, and to connect with other souls adrift on a culture that had lost its center and spun its inhabitants to the four winds to wander lost and bereft with a longing to re-enter the light. Beer, they have learned, has always been a good lubricant for social intercourse! The Lagunitas Brewing Co.
was not so much an act of ordinary ‘foundling’ as it was willed into being by the unspoken desire of supportive beer-lovers in Northern California after which they continued to nurture their creation and urged us forward to fulfill the unifying needs of that same beer-loving diaspora from coast to coast and beyond. It is good to have friends!.
Rate Beer
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RateBeer is a web portal that offers reviews on beer.
Ss Brewtech
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Ss Brewtech engages in professional craft brewing and beverage equipment.
BrewFirst
Crunchbase | Website | Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin
BrewFirst is the first Nano-Brewing System that performs like a Micro-Brewery.
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Daily Grape
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For more than 5 years, through Wine Library TV, Gary Vay-ner-chuk provided you with a useful and fun, though far from conventional, daily dose of wine education and recommendations. Today, Gary continues expanding palates and breaking down wine barriers with Daily Grape.
Subscribe to the newsletter and access his exclusive tasting notes, reviews, and videos from the wine industry’s most passionate personality, along with wine deals put together for you by Gary. Discover the hottest new wines, where to buy them, and the wine bars pouring them..
Two Roots
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Two Roots is a privately held company that makes both traditional ales and lagers, as well as non-alcoholic brews.
Steeped Coffee
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Steeped Coffee operates as an environmental single-serve coffee solution that focuses on the compostability of its packaging. The entire solution or product is made using renewable and compostable materials plus it is printed with non-toxic VOCs inks.
The company was founded in 2017 and is headquartered in Scotts Valley, California.. .
Pilot Software, Inc.
Crunchbase | Website | Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin
Pilot was the leader in operational performance management solutions for customer operations, public sector, and Web channel organizations. The culmination of more than 15 years of development and industry expertise — starting with the first-ever performance management solution deployed — Pilot’s solutions dramatically improve performance by rapidly aligning day-to-day execution with strategic objectives.
Pilot’s operational alignment framework includes software components for strategy plans and pathways; initiative management and prioritization; scorecards and dashboards; reports and ad hoc analysis; and modeling and integration. Customers include Advanced Navigation and Positioning Corporation, American Heart Association, The Boeing Company, Coors Brewing Company, General Services Administration, Health Net, Ingersoll-Rand, JetBlue, Pacific Life Insurance, Sarasota County Government of Florida, and SMARTpages.com®.
Pilot Software is privately held with funding from Excelsior Venture Partners III, LLC, a private equity fund managed by U.S. Trust; G-51 Capital, a Texas-based venture capital firm; and individual investors, including management team members..
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Saint Archer Brewing
Crunchbase | Website | Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin
Saint Archer Brewing Company was founded on a unique strain of creative talent.
BrewBilt Manufacturing Inc.
Crunchbase | Website | Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin
BrewBilt Manufacturing Inc. designs and manufactures custom brewery systems and tanks for craft brewers dedicated to making excellent beer.
Black Hammer Brewing
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MALT FORWARD Black Hammer Brewing will brew and serve the best European Ales and Lagers in Northern California in their San Francisco brewery and tasting room in SoMa. In a sea of umpteen-percent-ABV hop-bombs, Black Hammer Brewing will create malt-focused, superbly balanced sessionable beers that are based on styles that have persisted since the Reinheitsgebot in 1487.
Using their microbrewery and tasting room in the heart of San Francisco as their launch pad, they plan to serve their beer at their taproom, while quickly expanding to a regional presence on the West Coast through strategic brewing and packaging partnerships. LEADING EDGE BREWING TECH They are launching with a diverse skill set and technological approach that is relatively uncommon in the startup craft brewing industry – their team consists of Jim Furman, a skilled chemical/nuclear engineer and brewer, and Kevin Jackey, their CFO and a skilled financial professional.
They’re employing brewing process control technologies that even most established breweries haven’t yet adopted, including proprietary fermentation approaches and gluten-reduction techniques that are only recently gaining traction in the industry. They don’t just see brewing as an ancient art, they see it as a science where quality, production and design can be enhanced by new technologies..
Evans Brewing Company Inc
Crunchbase | Website | Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin
Evans Brewing Company Inc is a company that produces beer & supplies beer & other food products to restaurants, retailers and beer drinkers.
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Half Moon Bay Brewing
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Half Moon Bay Brewing is a warm, friendly oceanfront restaurant and brew pub situated on Pillar Point Harbor in Half Moon Bay.
Third Window Brewing
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Third Window Brewing is a local brewing company.
Los Angeles Ale Works
Crunchbase | Website | Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin
Los Angeles Ale Works is a craft brewery that produces high quality, fresh beer for local and regional markets.
Rincon Brewery
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Rincon Brewery is dedicated to providing the highest quality, full-flavored, malt beverages. Our inspiration originates from the beautiful Rincon Beach coastline to the fresh, thriving local Carpinteria farmlands.
Combined, these “waves of grain” provide the ideal blend that define the essence of Rincon Brewery. With a strong commitment to preservation and restoration of our natural environment, we promise to bring you the freshest, most exceptional, hand-crafted beers the Central Coast has to offer.
Our vision is to create an environment at Rincon Brewery, where along with serving the finest beers, friendships will be made, businesses will be shaped and conversations will be cultivated.. .
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Rubissow Family Wines
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Rubissow Wines operates a brewery that offers different kinds of vineyard wines.
Blackbird Beverages
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Blackbird Beverages is specializing in locally handcrafted cold brew coffees.
Faction Brewing
Crunchbase | Website | Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin
Faction Brewing produces and sells a wide range of beers.
Insight Coffee Roasters
Crunchbase | Website | Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin
Insight Coffee Roasters specializes in sourcing, roasting, and brewing organic coffee.
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Grimhardt Brewing Co.
Crunchbase | Website | Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin
Grimhardt Brewing Company brews beers.It also offers knowledge including tastings, classes in beer-food pairing,brewing science and history.
Fieldwork Brewing Company
Crunchbase | Website | Twitter | Facebook | Linkedin
Fieldwork Brewing Company is an online store for craft beer.
Hermosa Brewing
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Hermosa Brewing is a food and beverage company that offers self-brewed beer and an eclectic menu of tasty and reasonably priced dishes. Its taproom and restaurant provide an easy-drinking craft beer, food, t-shirts, and glassware, as well as online food ordering services.
Dave Davis and Jorge Delgado established it in Hermosa Beach, California.. .
Mountain Rambler Brewery
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Mountain Rambler Brewery promotes the enjoyment of its artisan ales in a responsible manner. Its menu is designed around providing quality, hand-crafted foods that bring new and unique flavors to its town.
The company was founded in 2013 and is headquartered in Bishop, California.. .
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Ambitious Ales
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Ambitious Ales is a microbrewery company that seeks to contribute to the culture, image, and selection of craft beer. They reinvent classic beer styles with unique ingredients that engage craft beer enthusiasts and those new to craft beer.
The company aims to be a catalyst in community development by providing unique beer that brings people together and a tasting room that serves as a hub of community partnerships.. .
Mendocino Brewing Company
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The American Craft Brewing Renaissance .
Bavarian Breweries and Distilleries
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Bavarian Breweries and Distilleries distributes, installs and commissions complete breweries and distilleries.
Weird Wave Coffee
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Weird Wave Coffee is a food and beverage company.
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This article was written by Benjamin Friedberg from Toast Fried. The editor for this article was Tess Page. If your company is featured in this article and you want to have amendments made please contact us on: [email protected].
Alternatively you may write to us at: ToastFried/Fupping Ltd, First Floor, 61-63 Rochester Pl, London NW1 9JU.
