Over the course of five years of entering and judging beer competitions, we noticed a simple, but largely unrecognized insight: the best, most innovative beers in America are being brewed by homebrewers. In almost every competition we judged, the award-winning homebrewed beers were more inventive and daring than the majority of commercially available beers on the market. That insight, along with an enduring passion for the craft of beer making, led us to create the Barebottle, a San Francisco crowd-inspired craft brewery. Our philosophy and process is pretty simple: 1) Use the things that inspire us every day from the SF/Bay Area as the foundation for each new beer we make. 2) Inspire our merry band of super-talented homebrewing experts (which includes our head brewer, the founders, and some of the bay area’s best homebrewers) to create new beers. 3) Just like in regular competitions, we pilot-brew a select group of the best finalist beers and ask visitors to the brewery to cast their vote for their favorite beer. May the best beer always win. We believe that this approach will lead to some incredible beers, and we hope you are eager to help us try some of them.- Ben, Lester, and Mike