Beverages and More (BevMo!) - San Bruno

Visited December 23, 2013.

This is a smallish Bevmo across the street from the Tanforan shopping center right on El Camino. It’s not overly visible from El Camino but you’ll see it once you drive into the shopping center. This is a fairly uninteresting Bevmo by most standards. They have a little more beer than some locations that I’ve been to but it’s really just two aisles of beer containing the usual things with a couple of interesting/seasonal beers from Firestone, Rogue, and Sierra Nevada. The rest of the stuff like Lost Coast, North Coast, Anderson Valley, AleSmith, Drakes, and Speakeasy are there as well. They have a few fridges with beer in them, less than other locations I’d say. I’ve stopped trying to make sense of what’s in the fridge and what’s not. They also have the standard Bevmo import selection. It’s actually somewhat comical how similar the import section is at every Bevmo. I’m starting to think that there is a corporate list of mandatory imports. Luckily among those you can find Rochefort, Dupot, St Bernardus, Orval, and Rodenbach. Oh, and Vitus. Prices are pretty standard across all Bevmo locations: decent to good.

Overall quality is middle of the road here and there is literally nothing that sets it apart from the other hundred or so locations, aside maybe for a couple of bay area beers like Black Diamond.

Two long ailes with beer, one for imports and one with a american craft beer. A decent selections of belgian beers but else the imports was not very impressive. A good selection of american craft beers and there was one cooler with bombers.

My first BevMo visit, so I might need to adjust my score later on, but overall, I’m satisfied. Don’t like the sixpack-idioty in the states though, but can hardly blame BevMo. Anyway, I was satisfied with the selection, found lots of unsampled beers, and the prices were decent as well. At least according to Norwegian standards.

Medium-seized BevMo next to Tanforan shopping mall in San Bruno. As at most of these stores, the emphasis is on mass and bulk. At least. that’s the feeling I get as I walk the aisles stacked high with cases and even pallets of booze. this one has two long aisles of beer: one aisle piles up the beers by country; the other is labeled "Craft Beer, " and seems to be all US micros. A smallish cooler section. Overall, not a terribly impressive selection. Mostly stuff that can be found fairly easily elsewhere. Some discounted items near sell-by dates. Almost all bombers and packs. No small singles (which can be a problem, if you want to sample somthing new without buying a lot of it). Staff seemed fairly indifferent.... but then again, that’s pretty much how I felt about the place.

A standard Bevmo feel. A smaller selection of craft beers compared to other Bevmos. but they did have nice selection.

Every BevMo has a different stock catering to the breweries in there area and the regular stock available at every BevMo.