Popular Santa Cruz brewery Humble Sea opening Alameda location

Alameda Point’s Monarch Street is known as “Spirits Alley” due to its cluster of artisan distilleries, wineries and breweries such as St. George Spirits, Rock Wall Winery and the Faction and Almanac breweries. Now another up-and-comer for imbibers is about to join their ranks as the plucky Humble Sea Brewery puts the finishing touches on their latest taproom, set to open its doors next month.

Based in Santa Cruz, the Alameda outpost will be in the Storehouse Lofts, a renovated historic building that now includes apartments and offices on Sarasota Street near “Spirits Alley” on Alameda Point. The location will join Pacifica as the brewer’s second in the Bay Area.

Humble Sea also operates taprooms in Felton, the Santa Cruz wharf and its original location that opened in 2015 on Santa Cruz’s westside. Taprooms don’t have brewery facilities on-site — they just serve mostly beer on tap.

When the pandemic forced Humble Sea to shut down their taprooms, they began selling their “foggy” IPAs (India pale ales) — Humble Sea-speak for “hazy” IPAs — and other beers directly to consumers. That’s when co-founder Frank Scott Krueger noticed that most of their online orders were coming from East Bay residents.

This led to the breweries’ brain trust having a collective Oprah “a-ha” moment and deciding that their next taproom would be in the East Bay. The decision to open in Alameda wasn’t purely a business one, though.

“We have tons of beer fans in that area,” Lee DeGraw, Humble Sea’s marketing director, says of Alameda Point (the former Naval Air Station Alameda). “People have been asking us to plop a taproom down in that zone for years, so this is crazy-exciting for us! Alameda is this awesome island that fits in perfectly with our nautical vibes.”

As for fitting in with Alameda Point’s burgeoning “Spirits Alley,” she sees that as a no-brainer too. “Breweries crush it out there. Faction and Almanac are a staple in that area, and we feel like there is plenty of room to join in on the fun!”

Fun is in Humble Sea’s DNA. Their Pacifica taproom is next to Linda Mar State Beach, a popular surfing spot as well as a place where novice surfers can take lessons. Picking up on this, the taproom offers a single patty burger called the “Kook,” a surfing nickname for beginners.

Visitors to the Humble Sea website are also greeted at the landing page with “Welcome, Kook. Are you at least 21?” Even the beer names are wacky. Their offerings include beers named “Happy Krillmore,” “Kooks, I Did it Again” and “School of Rockfish” — pretty punny.

The Alameda location’s ambience promises to be equally joyous, says DeGraw. She describes the theme as a 1990s pool party. In case invites to pool parties were scarce for you then, DeGraw explains that the decor will be “bright colors, neon, pink tiles. Think your neighbor’s pool in the ’90s, and throw in a few extra palm trees.”

Being a taproom, the beers available on any given day “will rotate,” she says. There will also be “guest” beers made by other breweries on tap, wine and non-alcoholic options.

“We can a lot of fresh, new beers each week, and we plan on having plenty of options as well as a retail space for buying cans and bottles to go,” says DeGraw.

For food Humble Sea is taking a different approach than its Pacifica location, where the grub — often accompanied by copious amounts of tasty tater tots — is made in-house. At Alameda Point, the brewery is sticking with the East Bay by tapping up-and-coming sandwich phenom The Saint, from Oakland’s Dimond district, to operate a food truck on-site.

Although the sandwich shop’s exact menu plan for Humble Sea Alameda has yet to be finalized, owner Saint James Boney says they will be “staying pretty true to what our shop in the Dimond does.”

Those options include “The Saint” (salami, ham, provolone), “The Bird” (turkey, bacon, avocado) and “The Curry” (curry chicken, currants, celery). A vegan version of the The Saint, “The Saint Francis,” will also be available as well as a few burgers, potato and pasta salad and a yet-to-be-determined dessert. With any luck that will be The Saint’s banana cream pie with Oreo cookie crust.

Humble Sea and The Saint hooking up was fairly serendipitous. Boney says Humble Sea employee Joe White lives near The Saint’s MacArthur Boulevard shop in Oakland and became a regular. It’s also his mom’s favorite sandwich.

White recognized that the Saint’s kitchen manager, Abel Oleson, a former colleague, worked at the sandwich shop, so he mentioned that Humble Sea was going to open in Alameda. Boney says he wanted to see “if we might be interested in doing the food for them. Abel let me know, and we had a meeting about the opportunity.”

And the rest is beer-and-sandwich history. Humble Sea’s new Alameda Point taproom opens next month at 2350 Saratoga St., Suite 250. For more information, visit humblesea.com.

Paul Kilduff is a San Francisco-based writer who also draws cartoons. He can be reached at pkilduff350@gmail.com.