Preserve Public House
200 Railroad Ave
Winters, CA 95694
(530) 795-9963

A buddy in Dawson's (Dixon, CA) said to try the Preserve in Winters.
So I did.
It was like drinking good beer in a giant wine barrel.

Preserve is California.
You walk in and to your right you find...what?
Preserves, of course.
What good beer bar does not offer a fine selection of homemade preserves.
A horseshoe-shaped bar consumes the building. The bar itself is made of welded and riveted sheet metal by a local HVAC guy.
When you sit at the bar you feel that you are in an industrial attic.
The entire bar ceiling is a huge fruit drying rack. It matches the shape of the bar, rounded at the closed end of the horseshoe, slats for drying.
It helps provide the barrel-feel of the bar with wooden slats and the bar itself a big metal ring. It is brightly lighted.

The real ceiling is a few feet higher and it is wood beam,dark wood. The bar back is brick, a wine barrel is prominently placed in the closed end of the horseshoe. Barstools are metal; the tables that ring the bar are metal and clun ky . There is a post-industrial farmhouse general store feel to the place...oh so California.

Somewhat incongruously there is a shuffleboard table. The bottom rack of it is filled with antique cameras.
The back of the building has large windows that look out on an enclosed patio where a few tables and seats can be found.
Did I mention the couches? The bar has couches. It also serves wine.
Are you surprised?

The beer list is on the wall behind you as you sit at the bar.
It is behind a table so if people are sitting there, as they were on my visit, you can't read the list.
Wine trumps beer. But the very good news is they have 21 rotating taps and some really good beers.
There was a German beer and Raging Bitch from my home state of Maryland.
There were Portland beers, a Chicago beer, and lots of CA beers.
A nice surprise is how far the local Berryessa brewery has come in such a short time.
The Berryessa Double Tap is currently my all-time favorite IPA and the Preserve served it up just right.

They have an interesting food menu, short and varied, but with the Buckhorn steak house down the block I'd have to be an idiot to eat here.
By the way if you need Coors or Bud Light/Lite you could have that on tap too.

The Preserve serves good beer in a cloyingly cute California wine bar/pub/fruit preserve store.
It was a surprisingly nice find in the little town of Winters.
As the former Governator said, “I'll be back.”

University of Beer
615 3rd St
Davis , CA 95616
(530) 759-1990

New brick and mortar Universities are rare in this day and age but low and behold, one has appeared in the college town of Davis, California. It is a schizophrenic little place with high tech menus and yet no website. The interior bar has a post-digital décor - blecch - and yet it is part sidewalk café. Its employees are indifferent yet friendly once engaged.
The place is the University of Beer.
All beers are face-to-face - there is no distance-drinking. The beer list says this is clearly a liberal arts institution with more of a focus on domestic issues than on globalization.

The University of Beer experience is transformative, inspiring students to be inquisitive, expressive, strong, confident and inebriated.
Its graduates are passionate leaders for change toward a better, more equitable brewing society.
They are also better heeled than the graduates at other Davis locales since their beers are a bit pricier.

UB has 60 beers on tap and they say they are adding at least one new beer each day. The taps are supplemented by bottles that are more global than the taps.
A major feature of the bar is its beer list, prominently displayed on three large screens above the bar in that new IT that uses bright white and yellow print to list the beers and the batting average of beer, its ABV.
The Perfect Pour in Columbia, MD uses an earlier version of this technology. It is actually quite handy as it flashes the list alphabetically and then by style. One screen is reserved for the bottle lists and new beers are prominently marked. Meanwhile, at the pour station of the bar (that's right, this is California, after all) there are several tablet sized versions of the digital beer list anchored to the bar to enable the most erudite quaffer to research each choice before it is made.

The bar has a strip running down it that is chilled, set your beer on it and it keeps your beer cool. Did we really need this? Most people order their beer by number. Really? There is a recessed border on the server side of the bar that is coated with sand or salt or sumpin sumpin that is used to dry the bottom of a fresh pour. I am not sure how I have lived this long without that.

Your intrepid reported made the mistake of thinking the website could be used to provide you with a detailed description of the beer list.
Alas and alack, that will not happen. Therefore, here is what you should know. It is a damn good selection of mostly domestic beers that represent the Nation's geography quite well. From Dogfishead to the Bear Republic the regions of the US are well represented at UB.
The knock on the place is that most pints cost $7, although some are more and some are less, in a town where the Beer Shoppe is serving up a nice but smaller selection of $4.50 and $5 pints.

The highlight of our visit was the road trip that was not. A huge, almost bus sized, limousine/party bus stopped across the street from UB. The driver left the empty limo with its engine running and its door open while he disappeared into an adjacent building, presumably looking for a client. We tried to interest some of our sidewalk café brethren and cistern in grabbing our beers and heading for the limo but there were no takers.
Just as well, we were about two beers shy of commandeering that bus and it was time for commencement, so we commenced.

The Davis Beer Shoppe
211 G Street  
Davis, CA 95616
(530) 756-5212

Davis is a quiet little town.
Way too quiet for a college town.
Way too polite for an East Coast boy.
So if, like me, you need a little confrontation and impatience in your life, head to the The Beer Shoppe and fight for a seat.

The Davis Beer Shoppe opened in 2011 in a recessed little store front. It makes no real attempt to announce itself and that is just as well.
Here is why...they have great beers, good prices, and no room for the people who would like to go there.

Even so, against all odds we were able to grab a barrel and three stools that were way too high for the barrel. What the hell - at least we were sitting.
That means we had a place to put our draughts. On this day there were eight well-chosen and varied choices with the ninth tap a nitro.
There is no sense to name them because they rotate regularly. I started with an Erdinger Hefe in a hefe glass and it was so good I could not tear myself away for the Lagunitas, Stone Cali, Carolous Cuvee, or the other choices. It was happy hour and the beers were under $4 for a pint. The bulk of the store front's space is given over to an amazing array of retail beers, where you can find bottles of many of the West's better beers and more than a few East coast icons, like Dogfish Head.

The cold box offers a nice selection of bottles for the way-too-small seating arena (chairs for maybe 20 people) and you can drink any of the beers in the retail section but there is a corkage fee for them.
But here is the bonus: cue the Beach Boys, “I wish they all could be California girls…” You will too. I nearly choked on my beer three times and almost spilled one just perusing the clientele. I suspect any who saw me choked too, albeit for an entirely different reason.

Food at The Beer Shoppe is limited to chips. Don't plan on eating there. I have had a nice variety of beers there and on this day the retail cold box has three Russian Rivers ...part of my own California mania. “I wish they all could be Russian River beers...”
If you get to Davis hit The Beer Shoppe with the pretentious "e" at the end.
Go early if you want to sit.
Forget prime time when there has actually been a line outside waiting to get in. When a bar has this many nice beers that just ain't right.
"Get us more seats!" would be a good rebellion theme but Davis is way to chill to rebel against anything.

Tornado Pub
547 Haight St
San Francisco, CA 94117

You are in the Haight and you are in the 21 st century... until you cross the threshold of the Tornado Pub . Inside it wants to be the 60s. If I lived in San Francisco this would be my home bar. There is no food, no macros. There is only good beer and lots of it. Sandwiched between a carry out pizza hovel and a great sausage sandwich hole-in-the-wall, you don't have to go far for sustenance in case you want to spend some time here. And many people do.

This is not your happy hour-on-the-way-somewhere-else crowd. The Tornado feels more like part of your life's destination. It is an alcoholic portal-of-entry to the 60s. The crowd feels laid back, very unlike the intense San Francisco that cares way too much for its liberal causes, man. I mean...this place is cool. The choice of beers...it has to be 40 or more taps...is out of sight, man, and some of the offerings are primo, especially the Russian River beers, we can't get back east. It's the kind of place you might drop in to find out what condition your condition is in.

The décor is simple. Dark and beer. Beer taps adorn the walls and intrude on the ceiling. A scattered deer trophy keeps an eye on the denizen drinkers. Did that deer just wink at me, man? Far out. The bar runs from the door to the walk-in refrigerator. Opposite the bar is a line of tables against the wall that sit four people each on raised stools. It is a worn and comfortable place.

The patrons were all born in the wrong decade; they are flower children at heart. The clothes are contemporary slovenly. No one was dressed to impress here, no one was returning from a high pressure anything. There were no fashionably dressed men or women sitting anywhere with their legs crossed. The Tornado is the release valve. And great beers are the release.

I wish I'd taken better notes, dear reader, but it was an eastern Questor's nirvana of hard to get West Coast beers. There were four Russian Rivers on tap and with a selection of Moonlights, Lagunitas, and lesser known “I wish they all could be California beers” beers. Some Deschutes and a nice array of German wheats and beers of most styles, although stouts and porters were under represented for the most part.

I enjoyed the RRs and fell prey to some repeats I had only had in bottles, like Aventinus, hardly a West Coast beer. All the beers were served by a friendly and knowledgeable but minimally so beertender, who could have been extolling the virutes of Columbian or hydroponic weed. I think he just returned from a love-in; just the right level of personable. A list of beers is available at http://www.toronado.com/draft.htm but consider it representative rather than up-to-date.

This place is groovy and it just may be San Fran's best beer bar.