With the opening of Camino Brewing and Uproar Brewing, San Jose now has 10 breweries in or near downtown. While that’s just a drop in the keg compared to other beer-loving cities, San Jose can boast of having the El Camino Real of beer — a 3½-mile path that catches nearly all its craft brewers.

There’s a directional sign post on the bar at Uproar’s cavernous taproom in the arty SoFA District that points the way to other beer offerings in San Jose and beyond. “We’d be happy if there were more,” said Uproar’s Steve Vandewater, who traded in a career in information technology for hops and barley. “For a city our size, we should have a lot more.”

It’s true. Santa Cruz, with a population of only 65,000, has about as many breweries as San Jose. San Francisco is home to more than 30, and San Diego boasts more than 150 breweries — and added 17 in 2017 alone. The South Bay’s options look somewhat better when you add in the rest of Santa Clara County with Campbell Brewing Company and Rock Bottom in Campbell, Golden State and Taplands in Santa Clara, Tied House in Mountain View, Loma Brewing in Los Gatos, Faultline and Firehouse in Sunnyvale and El Toro Brewing in Morgan Hill.

But for most of the past 30 years, despite a colorful beer history, San Jose proper had slim choices: Gordon Biersch, with its brewpub on San Fernando Street and its brewery and bottling plant in Japantown, and Mountain View-based Tied House, which had a brewpub in San Pedro Square.

When Tied House closed its San Jose location in 2008, it moved its equipment to an industrial space on South Seventh Street and that’s where Hermitage Brewing Co. was born. Brewmaster Peter Licht started out making bottled beers for Tied House’s Mountain View pub and branched out to creating a number of ambitious and award-winning beers under the Hermitage label.

Hermitage served as an incubator for other startup breweries, including Strike, Santa Clara Valley and Almanac (which grew up and moved to Alameda). And it started the recent taproom surge when it opened one at its Seventh Street location in 2013.

Like different beers, each taproom has its own style and story. Hermitage has a funky, warehouse vibe. Floodcraft, upstairs at the Whole Foods Market on The Alameda has gorgeous, open-air views of downtown. Santa Clara Valley Brewing Company celebrates the area’s history, with both its beer names — Peralta Porter and Electric Tower IPA — and the historic photos in its Alma Avenue storefront. And Gordon Biersch, despite its corporate status, still has one of the best beer gardens in the South Bay.

Hapa’s Brewing is a little off the beaten path in the Mercantile Arts building on Lincoln Avenue, but it draws lots of Willow Glen fans (and food trucks) with its laid-back atmosphere. Clandestine Brewing recently re-opened a taproom on South First Street, where it’s producing an array of beers — most with spy-related names like “From Prussia With Love” and “Quisling” — and developing a following.

Nathan Poulous and Allen Korenstein pushed the boundaries of downtown when they opened Camino Brewing this month in an old body shop on South First Street a couple blocks beyond Interstate 280. Coincidentally, the brewery and taproom is just steps away from one of the mission bells that serves as a historical marker for the original El Camino Real. But the brewery actually gets its name and its scallop logo from the Camino de Santiago, an arduous 1,900-mile cycling trip through Europe. “It’s a difficult and intense journey,” Korenstein said during Camino’s grand opening. “That’s what led us here today.”

San Jose’s often isolated culture also was a driving force in deciding where to open, Korenstein said. People here can get stuck in a work-home cycle. They need more ways to interact with each other, hence Camino’s slogan, “Beer Brings Strangers Together.”

With their taprooms, all the breweries are doing their best to create those social experiences. For the past nine years, during San Francisco Beer Week in February, Hermitage has hosted a “Meet the Brewers” event that brings together about three dozen craft brewers and hundreds of beer fans. Santa Clara Valley hosts new release parties on a regular basis, and Hermitage has taken a page from the wine industry by starting a beer club with members receiving a box of bottled beer every month.

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San Jose’s Post Street is now the city’s first LGBTQ district But the thing that could really foster San Jose’s brew culture would be a weekend shuttle that looped around to all the taprooms, Napa Valley-style, while also stopping at Caltrain and light-rail stations to keep patrons out of their cars. Santa Clara Valley Brewing co-founder Steve Donohue says that with buy-in from all the breweries, that plan could help make San Jose a beer destination.

“What’s great is that it’s still a small, tight-knit community,” Donohue said . “If someone needs something, we’re always there to help each other.”