Rip Current Brewing

Amazing beer, friendly staff and comfortable environment! Gotta stop in & experience Rip Current.

Thanks again Cee Cee and Chad! You two make coming here a welcoming experience! Can’t wait to have another beer with you guys! See you VERY soon!

Awesome place! Super nice people and servers. Great selecton of really tasty beers too. Super chill and nice that its dog friendly.
Thank you for the great service. j

Creative types of beer from a very small brewery. A lot of the brews were just average, but they do a great price on flights.

Super chill place… Beers are great and they’ve got awesome speciality beers. I wouldn’t recommend this place for anyone that doesn’t like beer… Also no food but you can order anything in or bring your own

Really good beers at great prices! I think about $ 6 a pint! Even for those 11% stouts and IPA! They have good food in the back kitchen. I had the spicy southwestern burger! Amazing! Walking distance to other breweries. Also free parking on the street if you can find it! Good luck!

Great beer and even better service. I sampled a five beer flight and didn’t have one I didn’t like

Great beer! Probably my favorite local brewery along with Lost Abby. Please give this place your patronage so it stays around forever!!! Lastly, they have the BEST glassware. Very proper for tastings or just a cold pint.

Their beer is great! Unfortunately my first time into the place I bought the growler and had it filled (price a little steep $ 20 for the growler + $ 20 to fill) to come home and find the growler wasn’t even full. I got approx 36 oz of beer. Very disappointed :/​now I’m stuck with a growler I won’t be refilling anytime soon.

Killer rescue buoy RIS, love the hazardous hazelnut porter (or for the non hazelnut lovers the palomar chocolate porter). I stopped in here solo and met some of the friendliest folks. There are tons to try, especially for the IPA fan, so i’ll be back with the family so I can sample more. Definitely an excellent place to stop after a tough workout at Crunch… or the nearby Nordstrom Rack.

Nice place a little small, but that’s awesome! Staff is really down to earth, beer is on point. Really nice place to go to after work for a few drinks.

I gotta say. Justin and the crew here at Rip Current have done it right, for a good few years now! I am honestly pretty embarrassed I had not posted a review for this place yet. I will apologize by drinking a beer with all whom I have offended!
The tasting room here is spacious with a nice little side room for overflow on those busy weekends, so do not fear my friends there is room to enjoy a beer and mingle.
But the beers here are the real story. I have not found one I haven’t liked. Try an few and you will see why they won Best Very Small Brewery of the year last year. And I believe that wasn’t just a local honor!
The IPAs, Darks and even the Belgians have all dragged me back for more. And I have found that they are also well into a great barrel aging program, so look out for some additional amazing tasting brews to come out of that oak very soon!

Hazelnut porter! The greatest beer there for me, but they have amazing other flavors! Get there and enjoy a few pints or flights.

«2015 Very Small Brewing Company and Brewer of the Year! — Great American Beer Festival.»
Pretty much sums up this awesome brewery in San Marcos. Unilocal had one of it’s «off the books» events here called a Brewventure and considering we live only a few minutes away, I’m glad we discovered Rip Current — which reminds me more of a man-​cave than a place of business.
One of the walls inside looks like something from a beer can museum. Old and new beer cans from all sorts of different breweries and all sorts of different ages. I even think I saw a beer can made of out of papyrus.
I like boozier, heavier beers so my favorites from Rip Current so far would be the «What Would Dave Drink?» Belgain Dark Strong and the «Rescue Buoy RIS» stout. Hats off to Paul Sangster and Guy Shobe for allowing us to sample their award-​winning beers!

The beer just keeps getting better and better and the service is always excellent. Brianna is always pleasant to deal with and very knowledgeable about what’s on tap. I have been coming here more often and will continue to because they do it right.

I came here for a Unilocal!Brewventure event, and boy am I glad I did! The San Marco’s area offers a lot of craft breweries for you to choose from and if you’re in the area this is definitely a place you should have on your list. I can honestly say that I made two incorrect choices while visiting:
Bad Choice 1: My first bad choice was because I felt like having some lighter styled craft beers. So I chose a Cutback Kolsch and an Orange Honey Cream Ale (both at 5%). While both of these beers were good (notice not great) I should have selected either their IPA or stout beers. Everyone having these look like they were having a rocking time!
Bad Choice 2: I’ll sum up my second bad choice by saying the following: «So many tacos, so little time.» Mexico City Cuisine dragged their food cart to the event, and they brought the house down! I think I spent more $$$ with them than I did at Ripcurrent, but who doesn’t love street tacos made before your very eyes (and don’t even get me started on their green lava salsa!)
All in all, if I had it to do over again like I said above, I would have chosen their IPA and Stout Beers over the lighter variety I selected. Maybe I could have been guided better by the bar staff who knows what medals or awards they’ve one for their craft beers. Face it, SD is an ultra-​competitive craft beer space, so welcoming folks and bragging about what you do best probably could have made all the difference. Who knows if I would have listened though? If you go, and you should, I recommend going heavy!
Here’s the rundown:
Satisfied? Yes
Return? Yes
Advocate? Yes

Rip Current San Marcos.
Who doesn’t like beer?!
Rip Current San Marcos has the same great tasting brew as their sister store in North Park.
This location is a bit smaller but it makes up for the lack of space with the extra parking spots.
It’s definitely easier to get to.
The crowd was chill and the bartenders kept the beer flowing.
The brewery is small but does has enough room to keep about 200 people entertained.
There are a few barrels which are used as tables and the bar counter seats about 12 comfortably.
There are several TVs in the main area and another in the secondary room.
This place will be around for sure as they have a great selection of beer and excellent service.
Cheers!

This brewery just won Very Small Brewery of the year at the Great American Beer Festival… and deservedly so. Epic… EPIC IPA’s fill their surfing inspired menu board. The taproom is open air to the brewhouse with a laid back atmosphere.
I tried their barrel aged black lagoon (the same scottish wee heavy that won Silver at GABF in 2015) and it was over the top. I cannot say enough about this brewery’s tap selection and the quality of the beer. You never know walking into a brewery what you’re going to get these days… and Rip Current is solid. Some of the best beer in the country. Yes, I wrote country.

San Diego’s North County’s craft beer scene is catching up with it’s southern counterpart in a big way. I spent a recent Sunday afternoon at Rip Current brewery and was impressed with everything from their beer quality and selection, staff, décor, and even the patrons.
With a name like Rip Current one would expect it to be an exciting venue — and they delivered. With an entire wall of beer cans through the decades, I guess you could even call it a beer museum. The original beer cans were made in America and it took a while for them to become a household staple. First of all, they required a special tool to open, but more importantly, the beer had a chemical reaction with the metal cans. In a time without computer graphics, they were able to develop some eye-​catching designs for these canned beers. As a graphic designer, I really enjoyed spending time looking at all of the artistry from decades past.
I love a good rye beer and when I saw their rye IPA I just had to try it. It was less hoppy than most IPA beers but still had the distinctive flavor of rye in it’s profile.
The name Rip current reminds me of surfing and I decided to make up a little game to play called stool surfing. I sat on the bar stools and used my core muscles to balance on only two of the 4 legs of my stool. I had to sit upright and stay in control to keep my bar stool from touching the other two legs and getting lost in the Rip Current.
After my first beer this game got a lot tougher to play so I moved to a seat at the bar. It seemed that everyone knew each other, one of the patrons even brought in some of his coveted beer as a gift to the brewtendress serving us. By the end of my visit I had made new friends, gawked at the historical significance of beer graphics, and pretended to exercise with my new beer game. Yep it was a fun time indeed.

This place is amazing, from the beers to beach themed décor. And this is one of the few breweries I’ve been to that showcases beer history (cans).
It’s amazing to see what was made decades before our time, all while drinking some great beer with fellow enthusiasts.
Definitely worth a visit (and many more).