Best Craft Beer Bars in San Francisco

San Francisco is one of the ten most important cities in American craft beer history. Anchor Brewing invented steam beer here in 1896. Fritz Maytag revived it in 1965 and essentially created the template for what craft brewing became. The city's best craft beer bars carry that weight without being reverent about it.

Toronado changed how West Coast bars thought about tap lists. Cellarmaker proved that a 12-seat bar could produce beers that top national rankings. Today the action is split between the legacy Haight-Ashbury institutions and the SoMa warehouse taprooms that opened in the last decade.

The Mission sits between both poles, with The Monk's Kettle and Zeitgeist catering to different ends of the spectrum. One pairs beer with food intentionally. The other pours cold beer without complication. Both are essential to understanding what craft beer means in San Francisco.

This list ranks 14 bars across four neighbourhoods. Some are institutions. Some are newcomers that proved their worth in months. All of them understand that a great craft beer bar is not about the number of taps. It is about the conversation that happens in front of them.