Every San Diego beer story starts here. Karl Strauss opened downtown in 1989 as the city’s first post-Prohibition craft brewery, and it is still the oldest surviving brewery in the county. It did not just ride the craft beer wave: it started it, and 37 years later it is still pouring in nine brewpubs across Southern California.

The basics

• Location: 1157 Columbia St, Downtown San Diego (original brewpub); also Carlsbad, 4S Ranch, and Sorrento Mesa in San Diego County, plus Anaheim, Corona, Costa Mesa, Downtown Los Angeles, and Temecula
• Founded: 1989, by Chris Cramer and Matt Rattner with master brewer Karl M. Strauss
• Known for: Being San Diego’s first post-Prohibition brewery; Red Trolley Ale; a Great American Beer Festival Mid-Size Brewery of the Year award; more than 120 medals since 2009

Karl Strauss began when Cramer, inspired by a visit to an Australian brewpub, teamed up with his college roommate Rattner and his cousin Karl Strauss, a former Pabst Brewing production executive who had fled Nazi Germany in 1939. Strauss brought a library of hundreds of recipes and served as the company’s master brewer and public face until his death in 2006. The first brewpub opened on February 2, 1989, and was the first brewery of any kind to operate in San Diego since 1953.

The company bought its original downtown building outright in October 2023 after leasing it for decades, then remodeled it in early 2025. The flagship now carries a neon sign reading “We Launched this party,” a refurbished bar with a quartz top, an awards wall, and a private events space beside the brewing tanks.

The taproom

Karl Strauss brewpubs are full restaurants, not tasting rooms with a food truck outside. Expect a proper sit-down menu of West Coast pub fare alongside the beer list, with indoor and outdoor seating. The downtown original is the one to visit for the history: the red-brick building, the photo wall, the awards, and the sense that you are drinking where San Diego craft beer began.

Service is full-service and family-friendly, and the vibe is closer to a neighborhood restaurant that happens to brew its own beer than to a beer-geek destination. That is a feature, not a bug: this is a place to bring people who do not think of themselves as craft beer people and let the beer convert them.

Standout beers

• Red Trolley Ale (5.8% ABV): The flagship Irish red ale and one of the most awarded beers in the world. Rich toffee and caramel malt with a gentle hop balance.
• Tower X West Coast IPA: The classic San Diego-style West Coast IPA in the lineup: piney, citrusy, and assertively bitter in the old-school way.
• Mosaic IPA (5.5% ABV): A showcase for the Mosaic hop, bursting with grapefruit and tropical fruit. The session-strength sibling is reviewed on this site too.
• Oktoberfest (5.0% ABV): The annual fall Marzen, brewed since 1989 with Vienna and Munich malts and Hallertau Perle hops. Toasty, nutty, and built for a long table.
• Windansea Wheat: The easy-drinking wheat beer in the core lineup, light and refreshing for a warm San Diego afternoon.

Our take

Karl Strauss is not the most exciting brewery in San Diego anymore, and that is fine. It does not need to be. What it is, is the foundation: the brewery that proved San Diego would drink local beer, still independent, still pouring a Red Trolley that tastes like it always has, in a downtown room it finally owns.

Go to the downtown brewpub first, order a Red Trolley and something from the seasonal list, and read the awards wall. You will understand why this city has more than 100 breweries today: because in 1989, two guys and a master brewer bet that San Diegans were ready for beer with personality. They were right.