Pure Project is the brewery San Diego’s beer nerds name when they want to talk about ingredients. Founded in 2015 by friends Mat Robar, Jesse Pine, and brewer Winslow Sawyer, the brewery opened in Miramar in January 2016 after an original plan to launch in Costa Rica fell through on paperwork. A decade later, it has five taprooms across San Diego County, a shelf full of Great American Beer Festival and World Beer Cup medals, and a reputation for small-batch, ingredient-driven beers that rarely taste like anyone else’s.

The basics

• Locations: Miramar (brewery and flagship taproom), Balboa Park, Carlsbad, Vista, and North Park
• Founded: 2015, opened in San Diego in January 2016
• Known for: Murky (hazy) IPAs, ingredient-driven seasonal beers, barrel-aged stouts and sours, and a serious sustainability program

The taproom

Pure Project taprooms share a look: reclaimed wood, fallen timber, custom-built furniture, and a lot of plants. The Miramar flagship is the working brewery, a compact space inside the Brewery Igniter campus where the tap list changes constantly. The Balboa Park location adds an outdoor biergarten across the street, and the newer satellite taprooms in Carlsbad, Vista, and North Park carry the same warm, wood-and-greenery feel with rotating taps and beer to go. Expect a frequently changing list, knowledgeable staff, and a crowd that actually reads the menu.

Standout beers

• Diamond Dust (murky IPA): The brewery’s signature hazy IPA, built on Cashmere and hand-selected Mosaic hops. It debuted in 2017, kept coming back by popular demand, and joined the year-round lineup in 2023.
• Pure West (West Coast IPA): The clear, bitter counterpoint to Diamond Dust, a classic San Diego-style IPA for hop purists.
• Tropical Mist (citrus blonde ale): An easy-drinking blonde with a citrus edge, one of the core beers that anchors the tap list.
• Rain (pilsner): A crisp, clean pilsner that shows the brewery’s range beyond hops and haze.
• Rewild (West Coast pale ale): The newest core beer, brewed with Citra and Centennial hops to support regenerative tree-planting efforts.

Our take

Pure Project earns its reputation. The murky IPAs are genuinely good rather than just hazy for haze’s sake, the core lineup covers a lot of ground without feeling generic, and the seasonal and barrel-aged releases through the Cellar Cyndicate bottle club give serious beer fans a reason to keep coming back. The sustainability angle is real, not marketing gloss: the brewery is a 1% for the Planet company, donates 1% of sales to grassroots environmental groups, and is certified climate and plastic neutral. The one knock is consistency of experience across five taprooms, since the smaller satellite locations lean on the same rotating list and can feel less special than a visit to Miramar itself. Still, if you want to understand where San Diego beer is right now, Pure Project is essential drinking.