Bear Republic Brewing Company
Bear Republic Brewing Company was founded in 1995 by the Norgrove family in Healdsburg, California, in the heart of Sonoma County wine country. The brewery became celebrated for its race-car-themed ales, with Racer 5 IPA — a Gold Medal winner at the Great American Beer Festival — accounting for the bulk of its sales. After 24 years of operation, the original Healdsburg brewpub closed on November 22, 2019. In February 2023, Drake's Brewing Company of San Leandro acquired Bear Republic's recipes, formulas, and intellectual property, and the brand continues under Drake's ownership. The original Healdsburg location no longer operates as Bear Republic.
Beers by Bear Republic Brewing Company
9 beers
← scroll to see all 9 beers →
The recurring character behind the beers
Bear Republic Brewing Company brew across 4 style families.
Across these 9 beers, 4 notes keep showing up:
Four notes carry across the range. That's a tight house style — most breweries in the catalogue share just one.
Compared with the wider catalogue of similar styles:
How we measure this
Two thresholds are at work here:
- The signature list shows notes that recur in at least 6% of this brewery's beers. A low bar — enough to flag a pattern, not high enough to call it an exclusive trait.
- The peer comparison below shows only notes where this brewery's coverage differs from similar breweries by at least 20 percentage points. A higher bar — enough to call a real difference, not a nudge.
A note can appear on the signature list without appearing in the peer comparison: it recurs here, but similar breweries do the same thing.
Racer 5 IPA
Their beers place in the Top 50% of the catalogue on average, across 9 ranked beers. One clear standout well ahead of the rest.
Similar Breweries
hopIQ exclusiveBased on style overlap and flavor profile
About Bear Republic Brewing Company
Bear Republic Brewing Company was founded in 1995 by the Norgrove family in Healdsburg, California, in the heart of Sonoma County wine country. The brewery became celebrated for its race-car-themed ales, with Racer 5 IPA — a Gold Medal winner at the Great American Beer Festival — accounting for the bulk of its sales. After 24 years of operation, the original Healdsburg brewpub closed on November 22, 2019. In February 2023, Drake's Brewing Company of San Leandro acquired Bear Republic's recipes, formulas, and intellectual property, and the brand continues under Drake's ownership. The original Healdsburg location no longer operates as Bear Republic.
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