September 18, 2008
San Francisco, near Japan Town, July 2008. Down the street from Hotel Majestic, stopped in and found wonderful cheese to go with beer and wine from shelves upon shelves. I found some great bottles, esp. Three Philosophers and Stone’s 12th anniversary Oatmeal Stout. The cashier was not only well informed on all the store contained, but also downright enthusiastic about Stone beers and California brewing in general. How wonderful to have a beautifully stocked, thoughtful store so close by. BevMo should migrate north.

June 6, 2008 [ Updated August 31, 2009 ]
Been in Bevo-Mos all over. Lots of local stuff and good prices.

September 2, 2007
All BevMos are similar within a given region. However, there seems room for local products in most of them. So it’s worth stopping by any of them every so often to see what new things have arrived. Lots of old standards all the time; so lots of same old, sameold. Beer is low margin compared to other beverages, so it doesn’t get major attention. Hence no one seems to care about seeking out product; they wait for the distributors it seems. I usually find something new, at least seasonally, in the Walnut Creek BevMo.

August 9, 2007
Some nice CA beers hard to find other places. Overall I was dissappointed with the lack of most the quality brews from the Golden State. With all the great beers they could get from San Diego to Eureka, they waste shelf space with Chimay, Anchor, and other widely distributed drinks. Not bad stuff by any stretch of the imagination but with all that floor space you think they would be able to find room for some of the rarer AleSmith, Lagunitas, and Stone brews at the very least.

June 16, 2007
City location on Van Ness. Surprisingly small selection of beer, and mostly six packs. Some of the beer appeared to be rather old. Had that big chain vibe throughout, and obviously no beer geek behind the choices. Eh.

December 7, 2006
These are always great stores to hit when you can find them. I’ve been to 4 different ones on the pensiula and they always have a great local selection of micros from all over CA and West Coast. Not so much from east coast or midwest, but thier way, this is the best chain that consitently delivers for great selection.

June 19, 2005
Colma - very large store, lots of sixes from all over, smaller bomber selection in the fridge. San Mateo - smaller store, better CA bomber bottles e.g. lagunitas, stone, even Maverick’s in the cold case. Redwood City - medium to small store, good bottles cold and warm.

November 22, 2004
I shop at my local Albany store. My advice with a place like Bevmo, is to get to know the beerguy. I have been taken into the inner sanctum to taste beers while shopping. The selection is large, but beers seem to disappear sometimes. You get to really liking one and then poof. They tell me that the deal is that if you want to sell at Bevmo, you have to sell at ALL the Bevmo’s. Not conducive to very small breweries. Other tan that, it is place with great customer perks,.

August 16, 2004
Visited the Geary location. They need to have more singles, but I guess they arent into that. Found some good bottles from local places, but bought mostly bombers and 1/2 magnums. Beer was in the back on 3-4 rows of shelves and in some coolers. Only had 2003 Stone RIS, not 2004 so they are not on top of things and may be lazy waiting for things to sell out before getting new releases.

July 13, 2004 [ Updated December 21, 2005 ]
12/21/05: SF Bayshore location: Easily the best Bevmo I’ve been to. Far more American craft brew singles than the RC location, and they now carry AleSmith! 6/30/05: No Stone or Bear Republic this time. Went to Whole Foods Redwood City 1/2 mile away and they had them as well as the ability to purchase all beers as singles. No brainer. On a recent trip to San Francisco, I also visited the Geary St. location in San Francisco. The free underground parking was a plus. The store itself was cramped, making the use of a shopping cart difficult. The store is also not very well organized and the staff is not very knowledgeable about beer. I called ahead to this store and to the Bayshore store to see if they had Stone Old Guardian and in both instances the person on the phone thought I was talking about wine and couldn’t tell me without looking if they had it. The do have a very large selection of California microbrew and brewpub bombers in their coolers from the likes of Marin Brewing, Moylans, Hoptown, etc., and a reasonably good selection of Stone beers was also available. Nice selection, although from what I understand, not as good as some of the larger stores.